The New American Dream

Part Three: After | Chapter Twenty-Two

HELLO

So you might be wondering why I'm uploading another chapter today.

If you're familiar with wattpad then you know about the annual Watty Awards. Me being the idiot that I am thought the deadline for submission was the last day of August, when it's actually the last day of September. I will easily finish editing my story by then.

I really want to participate so what'll happen from now on is that I'm throwing my upload schedule completely out of the window and I'll be pumping out several chapters a day (I've edited up until chapter 37 so far), so that I will have a completed story before September 30th and I will be able to submit it to this years Watty Awards.

So have fun, you'll get a lot of content in the next few weeks :D

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The next month flew by like it was nothing, it felt like I blinked once and suddenly it was February. Nate's birthday had blown by, he didn't celebrate his eighteenth birthday. None of our friends had, no one had been in the mood to celebrate.

However, life had the annoying habit of continuing whether you were ready or not, whether you wanted it or not. So I held on and kept living.

In the end I did talk about my self-harm problem with my therapist. Dan had been right, I had been dealing with Mark's death pretty well and maybe therapy had been the reason for that. What if it could help me in this way as well? Therapy visits were increased to twice a week and for now my medication was increased again as well. The latter was a double edged sword. Sure it was great not wanting to die all the time but also I felt how I was repressed by it again, like my personality and my emotions were behind a wall again. It was something I would have to learn to cope with, thankfully I was being taught how to.

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It was a particularly sunny February day when we started organizing our senior year trip. We decided to split our year into four groups as we were so many students in our year. We wouldn't have been able to fit all of us together on a trip and even if, people wanted to go to different places, there was no way nearly 400 people could agree on one destination.

Now, this thing was important to me. I had been on vacation before but I had never left the US and the times I had been on vacation were rather limited. My parents liked to stay close to home. So while I had been at Six Flags and Disneyland and had had beach vacations multiple times, the only time I had been further away from home than my own state or the neighboring ones, had been when we went to Washington D.C. to visit the white house a few years ago. To conclude: I needed this to be amazing and I allowed myself to be just a little selfish about this.

Someone proposed London and that sounded like a good idea but I was worried that my family wouldn't be able to pay for it. The flight alone would be incredibly expensive. It seemed like I wasn't the only one that thought so.

"We'd have to take a flight from here to New York and then to London, there are no cheap direct flights. It could be possible that we even have to make a stop in Amsterdam before we can go to London, that would be three flights," someone threw in.

New York, that would be another thing I would be interested in. I had always been interested in New York and more so after watching Glee and seeing Rachel be so set on it. But I wanted to leave the U.S. finally. Just once I wanted to go overseas to Europe so I could be one of these people that talked about their Europe vacation during high school when they bragged in front of strangers.

But that comment rang a bell with me.

"Well, what about Amsterdam then?" I asked. "That would be one less stop and it's less expensive right? Not just the flight but I think the rest too, wouldn't it? Hotels and whatnot. Some people can go to London if they want to and another group can stay in Amsterdam."

Several people seemed to agree with me.

"Amsterdam sounds good," Dan agreed with me and all our friends started agreeing as well. Many more people liked the idea.

I had been slightly obsessed with Amsterdam for multiple years now too. Especially after having devoured The Fault In Our Stars as much as I did when it came out. I had read nothing but that book for six months straight and the movie was memorized by now. I was enchanted by Amsterdam.

Two groups had already separated from us, they had decided to stay here in the U.S. so they were planning things for themselves now. Our two groups separated now as well to work out our own details. Amsterdam it was.

"Oh, I'm super excited. I've never been outside of the U.S." I told Dan.

"No? Well then Amsterdam is the right thing for you."

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"And where is Louisa going?" mom asked me when I told her about the decision made that day.

We stood in the kitchen, both with a mug of tea in hand. My mom had never liked coffee and it seemed I inherited that from her. During the winter tea was my primal source of hydration.

"I think she wants to stay here in the U.S., there's a group that wants to go to NYC, I think she's with them. I didn't really pay attention though, she was with the other group from the beginning."

Mom sighed. "Alright, time to save money again."

It was an awkward moment. I had never heard my parents talk about money in front of Louisa or me.

"Uh, you're able to pay for it though? Right? If you can't then I could stay here in the U.S., I know that therapy is expensive-"

"No, we will pay for it," Mom said, shaking her head. "You deserve it and so does your sister. You only have one graduation trip."

"Well... thank you," I said and then thought of something. "Oh! Uh, the YouTube channel is throwing off a bit of revenue. We managed to monetize our videos and we're getting some ad revenue. We split it between all of us. I could pay part of the trip on my own," I suggested.

"Take that money and spend it when you're there. You're going to be there for a week and I'm sure you're going to want to go to restaurants with your friends and shopping and whatnot."

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That afternoon I stood in front of my easel and for the first time since Mark's death I painted something. It wasn't anything in particular, I let my imagination wander and played around with colors, expressing myself and my feelings that way. The canvas was an explosion of red, yellow, orange and blue by the end of it, with some occasional specks of black here and there. I thought it looked pretty cool and decided to hang it up once it would be dry.

After that I sat down with my guitar and notebook, writing down whatever I could come up with lyrically and playing along here and there. It would have sounded better with a piano, I decided, but I didn't have my own piano so the decision was between guitar and violin. I thought guitar was the better option.

I had never written a song before and I didn't really think of myself as doing that right now, but it was the most freeing feeling I had experienced lately. Just getting all of my feelings off my chest and out there, making the words sound nice, was almost like therapy, but more intimate.

I had always had a thing for nice words and good grammar, that's why I liked to write occasionally. This was an excellent way to combine it with making myself some room that didn't involve me engaging in dangerous behaviors such as harming myself. After a while I worked out a tune to some passages I liked and was busy for the rest of the day.

"Alissa? Dinner is ready, are you coming?" mom asked. I hadn't realized how late it was.

"I'm not hungry," I said truthfully, but saw the look on her face. "No, I'm serious, I'm not hungry right now, I'll eat something later. I'm busy with something and don't want to interrupt it."

"Alright, I'll put it on a plate and in the microwave for you."

"Thanks mom."

Mom nodded and left again and I took a look at the several pages worth of lyrics I had written. It was an accomplishment, I couldn't deny that. Yet I was from done.