Ommetaphobia, fear of eyes. It devolps when a person as a scarring experience with eyeballs. I have ommetaphobia. And, this is how it happened. Once my brother and I were fighting (we were in elementary and just messing with eachother) and my thumb ended up in is eye. He screamed, I shriked. While our mom was coming to see what happened I ran as fast as I could to the other side of the house. I cryed in the laundry room for what seemed like hours, I had thought that I had blinded my brother or serverly damaged his eye to the point of no return. That was my scarring experience with eyeballs and why I have ommetaphobia. It turned out that the only injury my brother came out of that fight with was a scratched eyelide. While I lost a part of my sanity that I may never get retrieve.

Dear Shame,

How have I been?, you ask. It’s obvious, I’m shameful. I feel like a bad sister and role model for my younger sister, even a worse daughter to my mother, who, I would never trade for another. I replay every mistake, tiny or huge, in my head over and over again until it is permanently burned inside my brain. As I try not to let the scarring heal, my heart swells to unimaginable size with the burdens it is filled to the brim with. My hands shake at the thoughts that come out of my head and voice themselves to my friends through my throat and that float out of my mouth. “I’m a nice person” I tell myself. “I’m a good person” I remind myself. But every day at dusk I yell at myself “I am a selfish, horrible, and shameful person.” This is why I write back to you Shame. For years I have ignored you and told lies about you, but the only person I was telling lies to was myself. I can change, I just know I can. Change doesn’t happen overnight though, sometimes I wish it was that easy. The first step to changing something bad is knowing it has a problem. Thank you for trying with me, for begging me to change. Now, I have decided that the wait is over.

A Shameful Person,

Katherine Dawn

Everyone’s story goes like so.

There’s a beginning, middle, and end.

First, next, and last.

Once upon a time, later on, and happy ever after.

No story ever really ends with happy ever after.

Here’s my beginning, my first, and my once upon a time.

February 14, 2002 1:27am & 38 seconds

I am three minutes and 10 seconds old.

My mother is not at a hospital and she is alone. She holds me there in her arms as I cry my first cries.

I never say my mother’s beautiful blue eyes and black hair again.

She died.

But, not from giving birth to me.

She was 19.

_25 years later_

February 14, 2017 1:27am and 38 seconds

I blow out the candles.

I’m in a hospital, neither am I alone.

A nurse sits by my side watching my every move. And, my last breathe.

Now you know my beginning and my end, my last, and my joyless ever after.

In the nature of a story I must at once tell you my middle, my next, and my later.

Giving you my heart was one of the worst decisions of my short but exciting life.

And now I am asking for it back, even though you have shattered it in to a billion pieces it’s still my heart.

I don’t understand, when I gave it to you I told you how broken it already was. I was naive then. I’m not now.

You promised you wouldn’t hurt me.

You said that you would always keep me safe.

You ushered me you would mend my heart, not break it further.

I thought I could trust you. You sounded so trustworthy at the time, but now as I look back I realize I should have saw straight through your lies.

The worst part is I wanted to believe you.

Your name is Neal.

Mine is Dawn.

And these are my heart’s worst decisions.

Staring at the dark, navy blue sky

One… two… three…

Counting the stars that quickly appear

Four… five… six…

Holding up the knife, that I grip shaklee

Seven… eight… nine…

Wishing something, anything would change

Ten… eleven… twelve…

Looking down at my lined paper with ink spelling out my last words

Thirteen… fourteen… fifthteen…

Placing the knife to my Throat

Sixteen… seventeen… eighteen…

My heart is beating like a drum

Nineteen… twenty… twenty one…

Now I am hoping that something, anything would change

Twenty two… twenty three…

Twenty Four

An age that is eight years away

An age that once I move this knife across my Throat I will never reach

The number I reach that signals my brain,

To move this knife across my Throat

The dark, navy blue sky, now full with clouds, crys over the body that lays at its feet

Its tears bloching the ink on the lined paper

The stars now follow the sky,

Blinking off and on as if blinking away tears that never had to fall

Do you have something that you know of that talks to you in a way nothing else does?

Something that makes you ,well, you ?

Art is like that, real and soulful.

Describing me and my soul.

Alive, hearty, just beautiful.

Like pink clouds.

Yellow roses.

Green leaves

And red cherries.

That is art, raw and unfinished.

New or old.

Messy or neat.

Different ……… me

Together we graduate, blessed and together

Here and there Back and forth we go

Soul at peace

Or together we fall and fall into a never ending silence.

At a slash of a wrist and a drop of a pen,

We fall

It is over

Maybe we can start again or maybe not

But for now we are defeated and broken down

The chance is gone

And it will never be found in this silence

Standing watching,

By the black sun

Roll in and out,

Across a lost

At paradise,

Catch your breath

Dusty short little gasps,

Wish you could believe

In paradise,

Pink and green excited parities.

Uneasy creeping over I,

Gripping me every day

Laugh up a chain,

Rattling the words off my lips

Heart leaping,

Draining suddenly as it came

Even fearful drop,

Lost in silent wonder

Wonder always,

Rare to be sure

Stand against,

To make the decision,

To be proud

Change doesn’t just happen overnight. You can’t become a famous youtuber in just 8 hours.

When you think about time you imagine a clock. An old or new one, it doesn’t change anything. Tick Tick Tick, seconds being counted away. Life draining away from you. Or is it yourself that is draining away. Your talents, your personality.

Your gender.

“Avery Adele Whitfield, get off of your laptop, now. Go to bed”

“Okay, mom.”

8 hours later.

Why do I feel so weird? I got up from my bed and quickly walked over to my mirror. A scream escaped from my throat. It wasn’t my normal high pitched scream, it was a low, gravely yell that matched with the body I was seeing.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” I looked over at my mom expecting to see her mouth all the way open in shock. But she acted like everything was okay.

“Mom, what is wrong with me.” Instead of my sing song voice the only way to describe the voice that came from my open mouth was deep.

“I don’t understand Avery.” She said with a confused look in her eyes.

“I’m a boy. A gross boy.” In my now deep voice it sounded weird.

“Yes… you have always been a male. Now get ready for school.” She walked away as if nothing had happened.

What just happened? Deciding to do what my mom wanted me to do I got ready. Clothes, teeth, breakfast. I tried not to think much of the fact that last night I had fallen asleep as a 15 year old girl only to wake up as a 15 year old boy.

At school I tried to approach one of my friends, Dayna, but her reaction was not what I expected.

“Hi, Avery.” she twirled her hair around her finger, then bit her lip, “I was wondering if you would like to go to the movies with me tonight.”

“Yeah, sure.” I said, just like it was old times us going to the movies with our friend group.

I went to all my classes. Everything seemed to be the same. Well, except for me, of course.

When I got home I asked my mom if I could go to the movies at 7 tonight. She said yes. When 7 came around, she drove me there and said she would be back at 9 to pick me up.

I bought my ticket then found Dayna. She was wearing a pretty rose gold dress, the one that recently, we had just talked about how it was a perfect first date dress. Wondering why she was wearing it now I walked into the theater with her.

The movie was good, a real tear jerker but it seemed like all of my tears had dried up. When we got outside, I looked at my phone and saw I still had 15 minutes left until my mom came to get me, Dayna turned to me and said,

“Can we go somewhere more private? I’ve got something to tell you.”

I let her lead me to behind the movie theater.

Before I knew it, her lips were suctioned cupped to mine and it felt like they were going to be there for awhile. I tried to pull away but failed miserably.

When it was all over, before I could open my eyes I heard the sound of my alarm clock.

It was a dream, just a very wacky dream.