String

The Troubles of a Sensitive Mind

 Most of the memories Lottie held of her higher education had been pushed back. Confrontation never settled well with her character, so she found it more bearable to avoid such memories. However, despite her wishes for some things to be forgotten, the memories of her schooling still ended up shaping her in more ways than expected. 

To others, she was strange. To herself, she was lost. Her insecurities were never easily hidden behind a smile or laugh, because at the core of her very being, Lottie was painfully sincere. Sincerity is something many tend to take for granted, so when it presented itself in such a raw form as Lottie, they became uncomfortable. Looking back, Lottie found this aspect of her adolescence almost humorous. 

It was the tiny, little incidents that ended up sticking with Lottie the most. At her high school graduation, she had tripped while on stage. Looking back on it, she could still hear the tiny eruption of laughter that came from her classmates seated behind her. She could still taste the thickness of the air around her as she had tried to stop the tears from escaping the corners of her eyes. She could feel the weakness of her limbs as she struggled to push herself up from the floor. The burning in her cheeks had been the worst, though. 

Despite her longings, university had hardly been different. She had sensitivity, a fragile timidness that had made Lottie an easy target, even to herself. Internally and externally, criticism constantly took place.

Lottie ended up being accepted into the University of New York. Turns out being a loner in high school did have its benefits. Well, whether getting into NYU was a benefit or a wicked curse to Lottie is debatable.

Despite all her insecurities, Lottie had known from a very young age that her true soul rested in the art of performance. And when she said art she had meant the term literally, for she wanted to create sets similar to that of Broadway and to engineer designs that could steal the breaths away from any audience. So when Lottie had received the acceptance letter, she knew the chance of letting her dreams be real had finally been handed to her. 

University was not what she had been expecting, though. Lottie had found herself struggling to balance the memories of her past with the hopes for her future. She had her high-school years to thank for that. Her entire high school experience had consisted of blocking past traumas from her mind so that when she finally found herself moving forward in life, everything came crashing down. 

There were still some highlights, though. 

For example, that first morning in her dorm room. The sun, though hidden behind a faded mask of cold clouds, had shown through the blinds, scattering tiny pools of light all over Lottie's carpeted floor. It had seemed as though the sun was begging to be released from the blind's blockage. Lottie decided to answer its call, padding barefoot over to the window, and pulling back the blinds, only  to be met with the sun's glittering light. The sky outside hadn't been painfully bright or bitterly grey, but just.. still. It had been unsettling at first, but once she had opened the window and was greeted by the scent of fresh rain, everything in the universe had felt in place. Lottie had felt her first taste of independence that morning, and nothing in her life had ever been so refreshing. 

She recalled all the late nights she had spent studying and, more often than not, procrastinating within that room with the grey wallpaper and cream carpet. By her second week of university, the bareness of the walls had already started to irritate her. Lottie had moved in with barely any possessions, so naturally, her dorm room reflected such short-comings. Lottie decided to pursue her too often-ignored hobby of sketching in order to start filling the walls. She didn't want to see a single space left. 

It started out sweet; her focus on filling the walls. She would draw shaded images of magnolias, white roses, lilacs, and every other kind of flower she could think of. The many petals and stems eventually reached every corner and crevice of the wall behind Lottie's bed. Multiple papers combined to make one large tropical leaf in some corners, but the wall's center always had to be filled with the petals and buds of the flowers, like a massive bouquet. She then began moving on to other walls, making sure each had a different theme. Each theme had to be as significant as the last, though. Nothing could particularly stand out in terms of pattern, Lottie made sure each wall followed the specific order as the last. Soon enough, one wall was filled with different species of birds, another was butterflies, and then one was wildcats. And even through the questionable stares that persisted every time she went down to the library to grab more paper,  Lottie remained entranced by her determination to fill the blank spaces with things that mattered. 

It had grown into a sorrowful obsession. And, before she knew it, grades began to drop and her  classes started to become more and more meaningless to her.

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Author's note:

Hello all, 

Is anyone wanting me to continue writing this story? I have a pretty irregular writing schedule so I want to know if I do have an audience out there who is genuinely intrigued by the story so far. 

I'm not going to stop writing String completely, but I might take a break and come back with a stronger determination/ writing schedule to improve. Thanks for the feedback, if you choose to provide any. 

Much love, 

L.E.