Creative Writing 3 & 4:
The Last Leaf
She walked down the long, beaten path. The sounds of nature echoed through the forest around her. Rays of bright light shone through the trees, highlighting roots and dew drops. She wondered to herself about times when this was the whole earth. Lush green trees, crisp vegetation sprouting from beneath decaying fallen leaves, and the songlike manifesto of the birds in the canopy of high rising branches. She took a deep, long look, processing each twist and turn, each edge and tip, each color and sound, of this piece of the once flourishing planet. This was the last patch of green on the whole earth. The last patch clinging to life in a manmade incubator. She remembered as a child nature rapidly dissipating and the world above her only concerned with war, and money. All of the bees had died, and the topsoil had become totally toxic due to pollution both on land and sea. 50% of the populace of animals, birds, and insects had gone extinct in a matter of two years. She remembered the last time she had seen a deer. It was malnourished, ribs exposed under loose fading fur, scrounging through a pile of garbage on the edge of what was once a forest for any sign of green. It slowly looked up to meet her eye, she saw only despair and sorrow. She could feel the starving doe’s words. “Why? Why did you let this happen to us? All of us. We did everything we could, and you have done nothing but destroy it, and now none of us have anything left.” She felt a tear roll down her eye as she watch the deer shakily walk off into the “forest” of dead and empty trees. She knew she had gone off to pass away. This was the last time she saw animal life.
The Silver Lining Within Murky Reality
Ugly. Something ugly that I can find a silver lining in. Well there’s a lot actually. So many options in which I can choose from. I am choosing addiction. See in my family, we’ve fought addiction not only for years but for generations. It’s been spiraling down son to son for as many as four. My grandmother’s grandmother lost her life due to a violent outburst during her grandsons. My grandmother faced years of abuse from her father and her husband due to theirs. My mother and grandmother faced years of fear of suicide and overdose from both of their sons, and I have faced years of watching my brother disintegrate into nothing but a shaking shell filled with heroin.
A shaking shell rattling the words help. Words I feel I have ignored. A face I feel like I have abandoned.
My family is not very close. We seem like it to the outside world but we are far from it. There’s not much communication. We’re like a key that just barely fits into a lock, it keeps tricking people into thinking it will fit but then it stops right when you’re ready to walk in. These things have caused a lot of problems within individuals making us solidly individual and not really able to rely on one another, and my brother’s problem has caused us to push further and further apart. I hate that I can’t help him and I wasn’t ever able to, but I have found that I can take the pain from that scar and help others through the healing of theirs.
I know what it’s like to watch someone let their ambitions and life to the wind and fall into the deceptive embrace of a substance. I know what it feels like to have a broken family from it. I know how to talk to others who are going through it. I of course haven’t experienced the full conclusion to the situation, but I know how to recognize and get through the lighter areas of the full dark picture. I have found that I can provide comfort and encouragement to some of those going through similar things and to me it is therapy in itself.
I have found that it is better to treat others with so much kindness they think it is fake but it’s not because while I’m helping them, their thanks and appreciation is help to me. I only wish that I could do the same for my family.
Day Dream of a Nearing Future
I’ve always loved the company of people. Of course, I like to be alone as well, but there always has to be other people in different areas of where I am alone. For instance, when I’m at home, I like to spend time alone in my room but with others in the house. When I’m at work, I like to be alone in lobby cleaning with my coworkers in the back of the store, and when I’m at school, I like to be alone at the back art table with the rest of the class in the front of the room at their tables. I love the company of people, but I like to work and be alone. I’ve just known this my whole life.
I know that even though I like to be alone, I want to help people. I love to be with large groups of people instead of one on one because it’s easier to access more than one mind at a time. When I’m at school and we are talking about something I feel very strongly about, I love nothing more than to share my views in hopes that I may guide others to feel the same if it was for a good and greater cause. I think this is one of the biggest reasons I want to be a teacher. Whether people see and believe it or not, teachers have so much power. They really do. They have the power to make people see they can drop the t off of the sentence “I can’t”, they have to power to open minds, and best of all, they have the power to speak the good into existence.
All of the teachers that I have an immense admiration and love for, have done this which has resulted in me wanting to do the same. I really don’t think I would be here if it were not for my teachers. In all of my years of being at school, I’ve only had one bad experience with a teacher, all of the rest, I have learned something valuable from, not just a math lesson or a historical event, but life lessons. I want to take all of the traits that I have come to love and appreciate and give that back to a class full of students. I want to be there for a student and be positively influential they way all my teachers have been for me. I struggled finding a career path, but I really believe teaching is the path for me.
For the Love of Going Away On the Holidays
Okay so looking at this graph of break ups, I’m seeing the highest rates of break ups are during spring break and around Christmas. I’m guessing the reason for spring break ups is because people want to go away and have “fun” and they aren’t planning to be loyal to their s/o, now for Christmas I’m guessing it’s because people are either cheap asses/greedy, or because the stress from the families is too much which is very understandable. Now my relationship advice for the holidays would be “don’t get in a relationship if you aren’t planning to be loyal” and “don’t stress your bf/gf out about gifts and family.” For one, if you’re truly happy with a person, is breaking up for a week because you want to mess around worth the long term loss? If so, why are you even in a relationship if you’re thinking about being with someone else? Second, money isn’t everything, Christmas is about more than gifts and money. It’s about love and yes people do buy things to show love, but you don’t always have to. Do something heartfelt and meaningful instead of spending $200+ that could be saved for something bigger. Don’t expect 50 gifts under a tree for Xmas from your s/o but be grateful to them that they are there with you. Another thing about Christmas that might stress people out is the families. Maybe their s/o’s family is so unbearable and they are pushing them to go spend the day with that family. That would stress anyone out and honestly even though families are supposed to be brought together on the holidays and they’re supposed to be loving, they usually lose sight of that and the times are filled with stress and fighting. That’s what I’ve noticed anyway. So let your bf/gf’s opinion be heard on Christmas. If you want to spend time with your family on Christmas and they don’t, maybe split the day up or offer do something with one on Christmas and the other on New Years. Nobody wants to be pressured into doing anything that will make them uncomfortable or in a slight destitute place, so don’t force them to see your family, and don’t give them hell over the amount of presents you have.
The Making of Peace in 2017
February 27th 2017, about 6:30pm. In the gym that I have sat in each of my four years, yet I sit in this gym for the 10th year. I sit in the chair labeled “Kiara Briggs 12th” next to fellow students I have shared few words with over time, but still have time that has been shared. I look down the row and see two former friends, they’ve grown beautiful, strong, and independent. I look to the front, I see the youth of our time, smiling, glowing, bright. I look to the posterior of our chairs, I hear the howling crowd of parents, filled to the brim with pride that their children are making a difference at such a young age, scratch that, that their children are making a difference in during this time. The speaker reads that during a time filled with hate, violence, and fear, all of us have come out of the darkness to make a difference. The light of that line gleamed upon a trunk hidden in the back of my mind, coated with dust and debris of distraction. The words of the children singing “it’s up to me, it’s up to you” referring to the world being in our hands and to protect all of its inhabitants, shook the trunk knocking loose all of the weight upon it. As I walk across the stage the breeze between each handshake dusts the hazy coat of soot off of the trunk revealing it’s sharp features. I return to my seat and listen to the final words of the speaker thanking us once more, he announces one last round of applause and the crowd of families behind us begin whistling, screaming, stomping, and clapping shaking the floor like thunder, crashing against our skin like rain washing us of all doubt we’ve ever had and wetting the lock on the trunk in my mind. I reunite with my friends for one last photo to seal the memory in time, I meet my family as they embrace me and congratulate me and snap a picture which opens the trunk revealing what I had once put there. The contents kickstart my motivation and my heart begins to beat again. I am reintroduced to my goals, to my future, and to my purpose on this earth. To make a difference.
Questions Through Life
I’ve never understood
Why some never make it to adulthood
Why some never mature
and develop worse personal natures
I’ll never understand
Why to some, a broken nail on a hand
Is more important than a starving man
In the street
I just cannot grasp
Why people NEVER learn from the past
Why they race to societies violent demise
Why do they complain
Why do they strain
Why don’t they do anything.
The oceans and forests are dying
People are screaming and crying
Families are being torn apart
And yet
The most important things in life
Are material