Overprotective

I walk out into the cold winter day, with nothing but clothes that hardly block the freezing wind and black water-proof boots. I run out into the piles of snow around the driveway, the big ones that have lots of snow stacked up on them, and throw the snow all around and jump in it. My mother yells out the door, Come in, you need a jacket! You don't want to die of freezing do you?, and I answer yes, even though I mean no, because it is so beautiful and wonderful and cold, compared to the overheated house I was in, I just can't say no, as if it's betraying mother nature's seasonal gift. But my mother doesn't like it, and makes me come in for warmer clothes.

I hold my breath, 10, 20, 24 seconds before I need to come back up for air. I only take a quick gulp then smash my head down into the cool, liquidy surface and float in my shining world of refracted light and loose atoms. I hold my breath until my lungs feel they are going to burst and jolt my head up just in time to catch my life from leaving with just one breath of fresh air. But my dad runs over and yells, Don't stay under that long without enough air, do you want to drown, and I say yes, not because I mean it, but because of how shimmering the light is under the water, and how cool and wonderful it feels on my skin, and how awesome it would feel to stay there forever. My dad doesn't like it, and makes me take a flotation device so I don't sink.

I have 7 candles in my room, and I light a match for each one, then let the matches burn themselves out on a plate as the candles burn and melt. The flames are warm and blue and the bottom and yellow at the top and too bright in the middle to even look at without having white spots in your vision after you look away. I fall asleep while watching the soft glows of the non-scented candles burn into the wax, vibrating the atoms in the solid candle to turn it liquid and drip into the little bowls around each one, where eventually it tragically drowns in itself. When I wake up the next morning I see my mother, with tears in her eyes and her hands covering her mouth as if she just loudly cursed during church. She asked in a shaky voice, Why did you leave the candles on when you slept, did you want your room to catch fire and kill you, and I say yes, not because I mean it, or want it, but because I'm so used to saying it now, about all the things I love to do because they are beautiful and thrilling and awe-inspiring, and I wouldn't have wanted to go to sleep while staring at complete darkness. My mother just cried, and ran out.

Now I sit in a soft, white room, cowering in a corner until my food comes for breakfast, or lunch, or dinner, or that same person who always comes in comes in, and asks me the same questions. Do you want to die? I say no this time. Do you like playing with fire? I say no this time. Do you have thoughts of drowning? I push back every thought of how beautiful the water looked underneath its surface, because it will make me say yes, and I say no. More questions we both should know the answer to by now, more no's, with a single yes when he asks if I want to see my parents, and he leaves. Because I have eaten less, not because I refuse to, but because I simply don't have the appetite for much anymore, I am thin, and because I sit in a padded room all day, without anything to do or play with, I'm in pretty bad mental shape, which has affected my expression. I have no mirror, but I suspect all of these things because when I step outside of the room for the first time in who knows how long, and see my parents, they immediately burst into tears. I don't really care anymore, I don't really care why they did, or that they're crying, or really about anything anymore. Because I've learned that I've been caring too much in my life, and that was why I was punished, I've learned that not caring is the only way to get through life, no matter how beautiful life seems when you do care. Because it is a lie, and the only way to make it truth is to give up and realize that what is best, is what is best.