Grade 8, Learmore Institute
She wore the blazer with confidence and dignity. She held her head high as she walked along the corridors of her school. Everyone saw a girl with discipline and order, but inside she was broken; she was like a shattered glass.
She wore the blazer as an armour that was protecting her; it was the last gift her late mother gave her. At the school, she heard whispers. “She’s strong after everything.” “She’s probably used to pain.” But they didn’t know she had tried to bury her pain in the box that would open once the sun sets, when all the pain would come rushing in on her.
The person she loved had departed from this life. What about her father? He was not there for her even in the past and had never been there after her mother’s death. Her mother died in her arms. On that day it was raining cats and dogs. The hospital machine beeped, steady then slower, and she held her mother as she felt colder. “Please don’t go mom, I’m not yet ready,” she whispered. But cancer doesn’t wait for readiness, and now she was standing in front of the mirror, blazer on. “You are fine”, she whispered. “I am fine.” But she was not, she was just surviving a life where the only person who loved her was now a memory. She was curled up on her bed all lonely, as tears streamed down her cheek. The silence was eating her flesh as a consent reminder of how her life was now. She knew this was the only time of the day she could express herself fully without being judged.
She knew that she could only cry when nobody was watching, because her mother taught her that brave people don’t cry in front of others. Still she woke up every day, put on the blazer, and went to school regardless of her pain. She was silently defying the pain now she was walking through the halls of her school again, with a soft smile that was just pretence, and she was back with perfect marks, back with confidence, but the grief still followed, she was still sad, still lonely, without a father as well as without a mother.
She’s tired and needs rest, not just physically but emotionally as well, She’ trying but it doesn’t change that she is broken. She’s trying, not because she wants to be noticed but so that she can prepare herself for the future that would still hold the saddest memory of her life.