"I want you all to dig deep into yourselves, find your inner you who has been locked up. Free that captive personality, even if he has no freedom yet even if he seems like the bad guy, just try to converse with him, let's see what he has to say.."
I listened to our emotional health teacher Mrs Green give us our assignment for the week.
She walked around this class of socially estranged misfits and hoodlums, totally uncaring of the glances some of them gave her nor the names they gave her.
"Here you go Trent." She says at my table as she hands me the paper and its pen.
Hi Trent,...
Was boldly typed on the page.
"What am I to do with this?" I asked her, uncertain as I took the paper.
"Write a letter of course." She answered with a smile
"A letter to who?"
"A letter to you." With that bit of unhelpful information she went to the next table.
After sharing all the papers, the class was dismissed. As Mrs Green walked out, the class went into an uproar.
Some began playing dodgeball with their papers, others used it to make kites, while some just decided to ignore the paper.
I decided to step out too, to avoid my paper being drafted in as Ammo for the war.
Outside the class, I decided a stroll would help me think about what to do with the assignment.
So I walked around in the woods, wondering how my friends in the real world would be faring by now.
It didn't take me 10 mins before I reached the 20 feet tall fence.
It has been 3 years since I was locked in here.
Tess's School for the Troubled, it was a psychiatric hospital for teenagers in the simplest of terms.
Of course no one wants to acknowledge they were troubled, most especially the troubled themselves, I ended up making more trouble denying the fact, eventually forcing my parents to send me here.
It was hell and my first 1 and half year here was spent denying the fact that I needed help.
Been in Mrs Green class before and I was like those folks throwing their papers around a while ago.
Heck I might have started the war when she was still in the class all in a bid to fight against the fact that I needed help.
When I clocked my second year here, I understood that if I didn't change, well nothing was going to change for me, so I sat up.
Began getting more involved in their teaching processes, and I feel like I was making progress, at least all the activities have been easy enough.
- Write what you feel about this music.
- What does the painting look like to you?
- What do you think about yourself?
Easy questions that are easy to lie about if you know the correct answer.
Then now I get this?
I looked at the paper again with the words "Hi Trent" written boldly on the upper left side.
"Hi Trent!!" I turned around to see Laura, my underclassmen skipping towards me. It seemed like she was happy today.
"Hi Trent, I saw you walking out of the building and I just knew that you would be somewhere in the woods, so I ran around the woods near the walls till I found you and here you are and I was right. What is that?" She said in one breath.
Took me 10 seconds to digest all she said while her eyes were wide looking at the paper like a puppy that has seen a butterfly on a flower. Her joy and energy was contagious and I found myself smiling.
"It's my assignment." I finally said walking to sit down near a tree stomp while she sat on the grass and played drums with some sticks - where or when she got the sticks, I do not know.
"What's the assignment about?" She asked, throwing a stick away and using the other stick to draw on the ground.
"I'm meant to write a letter, a letter to myself." I answered, suddenly curious about what she was drawing on the floor.
"A letter?" She asked "Boringggg!" She then concluded, applying the finishing touches on her stickman throwing a fireball on a tree.
"It is boring", I concluded with her.
"Yet you need to do it." She answered again, now looking at me intently with full concentration.
"Uhhh, yeah" I replied, a bit thrown off by her change of pace.
"Then maybe I should help." She said, standing up and dusting her gown.
"Help how?" I asked.
"I'm going to show you a trick I always use when I want to talk to the real Leah." She says, searching in her gowns pocket for something.
She brings out her iPod then carries me over to a grassy patch.
She then sat down cross legged and invited me to do the same.
"I didn't know that you meditated." I said, surprised at the usually hyper and unpredictable girl I know.
"I don't meditate, I sit down cross legged in a calm and serene environment with my iPod music on, then I try not to sleep. It's different." She corrected me.
I laughed out loud at that one, then joined her on the grass.
She put the iPod on speaker and put the music on.
It was a calming song and I did feel relaxed just sitting there silently feeling nature.
After the first song finished I heard a snore, looking to my side, I saw Leah with a drool sliding down her face, barely sitting but completely asleep.
It was a site to behold, kept me wondering the amount of practice she would have had for her to sleep so soundly cross legged.
The next song wasn't as calm as the previous, it started with a long guitar solo then a British guy started rapping to himself.
Everything he was saying his alter ego shuts it down, it was a conversation and I was entranced.
I picked up the iPod and saw the name of the song.
It was a bombshell to me, depicting my feelings exactly.
I doubted myself, doubted my abilities to make things happen, so I locked up that side of me, I didn't want anything to do with him, yet here was this fellow who did not only converse with his personality, he argued with him, he reasoned with him, he won against him.
Indeed it was a constant battle and if we don't keep on battling it only gets harder to try and understand each other.
The song had finished but my creativity and optimism just started.
I stood up immediately, startling my dear Leah, she fell on her back and continued her sleep.
I took her stick and wrote her a note on the floor that I had borrowed her iPod.
I ran to the library, running into Mrs Green on the door, she just smiled as I excused myself and ran in.
'Did she know what had happened?' I'm not sure.
Only when taking my seat did I realize that I had forgotten my original paper with Leah.
I wouldn't go back for it though, this song had opened a window of opportunity to talk and I wasn't going to let it close.
I was going to shove this letter through this window to my soul.
Calming down a bit, I tore a piece of paper from a random notebook in the Library, put on the earpiece and played the song.
Imagining myself in a prison cell meeting up with the prisoner.
I took up the pen and wrote on the paper.
"Hi Trent...."
This story was inspired by the fabulous song Hi Ren.
It was actually the first song I heard from this guy and it moved me so much.
Everyone suffers from that demon of doubt but there is that 5% of people who it's a constant struggle for them to do anything due to doubt.
This song was a window to Rens soul as he is a part of that 5% of people, although he seems to be getting better.
Maybe everyone should write their demons a letter..
- Header Image made by me using Canva