The sun setting made the water grow golden. My toes twinkled on the water, I watched as the leaves fell from the trees and danced in the wind. The long horizon of red and orange trees around me made me feel warm inside.
It was just me, all alone, whistling with the breeze that late September afternoon. I came here often to think, sometimes just to get away from reality. I was the kind of person that wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my life alone in the middle of nowhere. I lived with my grandmother and my little sister Harper. My father left my mother when I was 6, just a few weeks after my mother got pregnant. By the time Harper was 2 my mother found out she had cancer with 3 months to live. My mother was a beautiful woman. She was petite with a perfect olive complexion and long auburn curled hair. I looked just like her. “How could this happen... why to my mother?” I never got it, but she was strong and proved the doctors wrong and made it a year, I got to have one last Thanksgiving with her, one last Christmas, one last Easter. It wasn't enough.
It was just me, walking in the forest to my little secret spot by the lake, like I did everyday. We moved out to my grandmas little house after my mother passed. We were just outside the city but you wouldn't know that living where i did. My grandmother's house was surrounded by tall oak trees and little streams, you sometimes forgot life went on outside of what I called our Tiny Town. It was secluded, but civilization was merely a 20 minute drive. I first started exploring the property when I was 12, that's when I found my spot. I have been going there since. Skipping rocks, picking flowers, and talking to the frogs.
It is just me, putting away the dishes after cooking dinner for me and my grandma. I leave a small plate of food out for Harper just in case she decides to wake up before it gets dark out, sometimes I swear she's nocturnal. I am 19. I enjoy reading, and the littler things in life. Harper is 13, she hangs with older kids from school. She wears all black, and listens to music where I can't even make out the words, all I can hear is screaming. Her box colored candy apple red hair reeks of cigarette smoke. She comes home with bloodshot eyes everyday. Then there is my grandma. She is 75 and has seen better days. She forgets my name some days. The house that was once filled with little girls laughter and the smell of fresh baked cookies is quiet and stale. The most noise we ever get around here is the slam of Harper's door when she returns from school.
It was just me, in the hospital waiting area when the doctor came out to tell me my grandma passed from a heart attack. I was 22, with no adult in my life. Harper was 16 and was nowhere to be found that day, we barely spoke. My grandmother left the house and property to me. There i was, an adult, still walking to that same spot I had been for 10 years. I sat on a rock and looked out at that golden water once again and let the salty tears stream down my cheeks. For the next few weeks Harper was hardly ever home and when she was, she was locked in her room. Doing what? I wish I knew, I couldn't get anywhere with that girl.
It was just me, I was 24 and sitting in that hospital once again. I had received a phone call early saturday morning around 4 am. Never did I think I'd be going to confirm the body of a young girl they found unconscious at a party that they believed was Harper. Sure enough it was. She was in coma. For how long? No one knew. She overdosed on pain pills and god knows what else.
It was just me, on my way to pick her up from the hospital after being in coma for 2 weeks. I thought I had lost the last person in my life. I didn't lose her that day though. I lost her 3 days after bringing her home from the hospital when she committed suicide.
It was just me, at that place again. The orange and red trees that once made me feel warm inside are naked, and I feel cold.
It was just me, forever.