Thoughts Made to Sound Pretty

Leaning Tower of Trust (short story)

The young girl lays down on her bed, tears began to spring from the corners of her eyes. Why did she even get herself into that? She knew what was going to happen. She saw it coming from the beginning, but she didn’t stop herself. That voice that resides in the back of her mind warned her, but she thought, maybe, just this one time, things will work out in her favor.

Some people call their dogs Lucky, or even name their kids Destiny or Fate in hopes that it will be on their side. But what is she, with such a plain name, supposed to hope for? For all she knew, she was only “the one who shares the same name with so-and-so.” But she always hoped that maybe just this once, despite her bland persona, she would stand out in the crowd instead of being the last to be noticed ― right behind how many bobby pins that girl used to keep her hair like that and what was really in that red cup.

But most of all, she hoped that the people she surrounded herself with, her friends, would even remember her the next morning. She seemed to know so many people, yet so little people knew her, or even thought of her. She surrounded herself with these bodies, in hopes that she could receive even a small glimmer of warmth in the harsh, never ending winter that life had thrown at her. She put her faith and trust in everyone she met ― blindly and without batting an eye.

They would never tell the secret.

Each person was another block in her tower; a tower in which she resided on the very bottom. And with all the work she put into balance each in the perfect position, all it took was one blindly placed, mistrustingly balanced-looking block to knock every other out of place. But every time that happened there were always a few that remained standing. They were her sturdy foundation, but even then she feared that someday they will be ― or already have been ― knocked just a little out of place. And with one final fall everything will come tumbling down on her. Yet she still attempts to stack someone and some new back into place. She likes the wonderful sensations the height of her growing tower brings, so she foolishly stacks higher and higher, drawing more and more into her trusting embrace.

And then every few days, when everyone else is asleep, she begins to feel the weight pressing on her. It presses so heavily on her shoulders. She has only the cracked foundation to assist, and sooner versus later it becomes too much on her already crippled body.

And so she falls into another instants of lies, deceptions, and excuses as to why she put those unsteady blocks in the tower.

“They seemed like good people.”

“I didn’t know.”

But the one excuse she refuses to admit, is that yes, she didn’t know. But this is because she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to know the evils they were capable of, because she could only stand the good, she would only allow herself to see the good.

And it is because of this misplaced trust ― this blind faith ― that her mind begins to feel like a large mush, and the tears begin to cascade down her cheeks.

She doesn’t deserve your sympathy.

She knows this.

She deserved what happened to her.

She was stupid,

She is pathetic,

She is useless.