The Daisy Magnet II By Aliya Kay

The Daisy Magnet II Aliya K Short Story

Sometimes we hit a point in our lives where we just feel done, done with school, with friends, with relationships, with parents, just done. Normally the phase goes away because something greater took it away by outweighing it with good and happiness. Graduating university, falling in love, making peace with a sibling you haven't spoken to in years and sometimes that unplanned road trip. Whatever it is, it drags you from a dark place and back to a wonderful place I like to call an auto piloted life. I never left my dark place and I never wanted to. Here I saw the world for what it really was, a vindictive culprit that was designed to destroy you. At least that's what it felt like for me, everyone around me just felt plastic. I never saw authentic people, or it didn't feel like I saw them, I felt like I was consistently living a lie. I lied to my family when I said I wanted be an econ major, this was to make them happy. Now at age twenty-two I'm in the journalism program and my parents don't speak to me. Well my mother does and my father doesn't. My older brother had no problem disappointing my parents; he stopped caring a long time ago. I wish I would have too, I'd be a lot happier if I had. He was a cadet since a young age and joined the military four years ago. I see him as much as I did in his freshman year of university, which means I don't. I said that life was auto piloted; this is because we're all on autopilot. We aren't living; we tell ourselves that we're living because that is what we're told to believe. Like cavemen back in the first hundred years, we are surviving. We are surviving in a world that is just more developed. We strive for the same things, food, shelter and security-security being our futures. I almost lost mine at seventeen in high school, that's when my dark times started, and they never stopped. It wasn't a phase for me, life played with me too much and like all things that are overused, they eventually stop working or break. Things picked up in the second year of university. I had found people like me, people that weren't plastic and living their lives on autopilot. I had a good boyfriend that I met half way through first year. We had lasted through a lot and my folks seemed to like him. My father and I seemed to have mended things and my brother was getting a chance to spend more days in town. Everything was good for once and then it happened, the self-destruction. I don't know why and I don't think I'll ever have the answer for you, or for anyone for that matter. It was just something I did; I wanted to end my happiness before anyone else could. Before my father could find a reason to be ashamed of me, I gave him one. Before Darius, the "oh so wonderful boyfriend", could break things off I gave him a reason to. Before anyone or anything could hurt me, I hurt them. Was it because life had officially programmed me to expect it? Maybe it was because I was so terrified of letting anyone too close, I shut the door at any sign of light peaking through the cracks. I really don't know, or maybe I do and I just don't want to say it out loud. It was some time in April, during the afternoon, and I can still remember our muffled laughs in between kisses as we messed around in my dorm room.

We were on the small excuse of a bed, his shirt and mine long gone. Left in my tank top, waiting for him to remove it, my phone goes off. He chuckles as I stretch to reach my phone off my side table knocking off a couple of things.

"Never fails", he says rubbing his hands down his face, hair tousled. I looked at the caller ID to see it was Darius. "Hello" I reply. Roman moves my hair, kissing my neck as I try not to sound distracted on the phone. The call quickly ends. "What did you tell him this time?" Roman asks leaning against the bed frame.

"You promised you wouldn't ask questions" I reply with a smirk. Bending down to pick up the fallen things, I notice a picture peeking from one of the books, it was of my family, me, my brother, my mom and my dad. We were all smiling in our life jackets and sunglasses. I remember this day. We were going jet skiing and my dad flipped over almost three times that afternoon.