Love is a gift; a feeling that is deep down in your heart. Love can not be chosen. It chooses you. Once you are chosen, there is no going back. Love is a gift, so don’t abuse it. Once your heart gives itself to another person, you are stuck. If they give theirs back, you are lucky. Not everyone is that lucky. I fell in love at first sight. My heart gave itself to someone. His heart does not belong to me. It belongs to someone else, who also hasn’t given theirs back. Love is a tricky thing. We try to control it, but can’t. I’ve stopped trying to get my heart back a long time ago. Two years ago. My heart still belongs to him. It still chooses him. He doesn’t even know it. He stole my heart without even knowing it.

I am afraid that my heart will forever belong to him. I am afraid I will never give it back. I am afraid that the only way I will get it back, is if it is broken. Shattered to pieces. Unable to come back together. Love is an instint. It is a gift. If used in the wrong way, it is a tradgedy. If not used at all, it is a waste. Try love. You may get hurt. You may end up broken. However, you will have tried. If you try, you could be happy for the rest of your life. Love is not a skill. It is an instint. It is a gift. So use it the right way. If your heart gives itselft up, try and make due without it. Who knows, you might even get someone else’s back.

My goodbyes are about to come. We just finished packing all of my things into boxes. My room looks so empty; it looks so lonely and plain. I sit on my bed as I watch all the memories of me in this room flash through my head. I feel like a true artist, repainting the images of my childhood in my head. Some of them are days from before my art. When my life seemed to be perfect. No struggles, no rush, no problems. If only that was still possible. I snap back into reality. I am going to Rhode Island School of Design because of their art program. I’ve been pursuing art for a long time now, and my parents think it’ll be good for me if I continue to do so. I love art, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like something is missing. I think going to the school might help me find that missing part of myself. There is only one problem: the charges. They were super expensive. My parents paid for most of the expenses, but I had to put in some of my money too. I payed them by selling my old paintings. All of them.

“Ava, come on. That’s the last of them. Time to say goodbye.” My mom shouts from outside. Ah, the goodbyes have come. The part everyone has been dreading. I will visit them for the holidays, but it isn’t the same as if I were seeing them everyday.

“Okay Mom, be there in a second.” I take one last look around my room. It is so bland without all of my artwork hanging, and laying, everywhere. It feels as though it was a blank canvas, waiting to be painted again. Well, it is my parents’ turn to paint it. Though, in their hands, it’ll probably be just as dull.

I head down the stairs. I take one deep breath of air. I want to remember the smell of this place. It smells like, well, home. I start to walk away. Oh wait, I forgot something. I go over to the living room. There is a painting on the wall that was placed there for a reason. I take off the painting and set it down. I look at the wall where it was hanging; revealing the secret that lied behind it. It was a drawing I did as a kid. I drew it on the wall just like my mom did when she was a girl. It is a scene of a girl holding a book atop her chest. She is staring up at the sky, trying to find shapes within the clouds. That girl was me. Almost everyday I would go out and do that. Until I decided to try and paint the sky. Then, I found out about my artistic skills. From there on out, I never went back there just to watch the clouds. Looking at this again makes me want to revisit that place, for the old reasons. However, I just don’t have the time anymore.

“Come on Ava! You’re going to be late.” Her voice is full of urgency, that makes me want to hurry. Somewhere in there, I find a sympathetic tone that knows leaving this place was going to be hard. It isn’t just a place, it is my home. It is where I figured out what to do with my life, and I shared it with my family. The same family that can’t come with me.

“I’m coming. I just need a final look around.” I need to remember what it looks like. I want to remember the place I grew up in. Every detail seems to matter. The color paint, the layout, the carpets, all of it needs to get stuck in my brain. No other place would truly feel like home. For I have only one home. One place where I can completely be myself. That is here. No where else could hold me tighter than this place. My memories are from here. So, most of them will stay here. Keeping my heart along with them. This place is my life. The best parts of my life held hostage within its walls. Unable to reach me. My new place will also keep me hostage. It keeps me from coming home.

I pull out my phone, and snap a picture of the drawing. I take my suitcase and walk out of the house. There is a slight breeze and the trees are shaking slightly. Dad grabs the suitcase from me and loads it in the car.

“Hey Ava.” I didn’t notice my brother was standing right next to me.

“Hey Josh.” I don’t look at him directly in the eyes, so instead I look down at his shoes.

“Well, it’s time. Goodbye Little Sis.” I am older than him, but he calls me Little Sis anyways.

“I guess so. Goodbye.” He hugs me tight, but I only return it lightly. This is the last time I will see him in a while. I start to hug him tighter until we are both practically squeezing each other to death. “Okay okay, enough. I’m dying over here!”

“I wanted you to remember it.”

“Trust me, I will. And I have the bruises to prove it.” He lets out a small laugh. I finally look up at him. He has a broad smile on his face. It only now hits me, I will miss him a ton.

“Goodbye Ava.” My sister takes her turn. She is glad to see me go, and we both know it.

“Bye.” We don’t even hug. She turns around and heads back to the house. I face my parents.

“It’s time, Ava.”

“I know.” I accidentally let out a small sigh. Internally it was massive.

I opened the car door and turn around to face what was once my house. It suddenly looks so depressing. Almost as if, it too, were sad to see me leave. I am on the verge of shedding tears. I don’t even want to leave this place. My home is here. Moving out seems to make me feel as though I am leaving my past behind. It seems like I want to forget. I don’t. The house seems to be pushing me away, yet asking me to stay.

A deep breath of air comes in and out of my lungs. I face the car again, but this time I hop in. Closing the door feels like the end; like it’s cutting off my past from the present. The car engine starts and we pull out of the driveway. I can’t look at the house again. Instead, I repicture it in my head. I start pulling out my phone to look at the image of my old drawing. An idea comes into my head. I could recreate it in my dorm room. Wait, no I can’t. I probably wouldn’t be allowed to. Plus, it was a one of a kind. Making it again would be wrong. So, I brush away the thought.

The car ride seems to last forever. I just look at the scenery. A flash of colors fly by the window. I am sort of spaced out. I am seeing it all, and aware of what I am seeing, but I don’t see it clearly. It is all a blur. My eyes see things, but my brain sees something else. It sees memories of the past. They aren’t as vivid as they were in real life. However, they feel nice; they feel comforting. They are welcoming. It’s like my brain wants me to get trapped in the past. It seems so much better than what the future could be. I don’t know how my life could turn out. Knowing that, is terrifying.

I start to roll down the window when a rush of cold air strikes me in the face. The sweet smell of flowers is flooding the car. The wind blows around my long blond hair. I start to see things differently. It is like the world is going in slow motion. I can see tiny details, now. The individual petals on the flowers, the tiny movements of the butterfly’s wings, it is all so incredible. I wish I could just get out of the car and paint this. It is like a little paradise. The nature here is thriving. It is so wonderful. This reminds me of all the times watching the clouds. Not to paint, so to watch them. The warm feeling in my heart gets stronger. The memories come flooding back to me. It is so nice. I feel addicted to these feelings. I don’t want it to stop, when my dad interrupts me.

“Honey. I know I don’t say this enough, but I’m proud of you.” He looks over at mom. “We are proud of you. You came all this way. And now you are going off to college. A really good one too. I wish there was more we could do for you.”

As I roll up the window, I say, “It’s okay, Dad. You have done enough. You guys were a huge help to me over the years. You got me all my supplies, took me to camps, and helped me believe in my dream. You guys are the best.” They see the smile on my face. I smile when I try to hide something. I think they’ve figured this out by now. Which, I’m guessing, is why Dad asks this.

“Honey, what’s wrong.”

“Nothing, Dad.”

“I know that look. Tell us what’s bothering you,” Dad seems to be investigating me.

“Well, I don’t want to go. I mean, I do, but I don’t want to leave home. It is my safe little world. I can’t leave it behind.”

Mom starts talking this time. “You’re not leaving it behind. You will come back and visit. You will see it soon.”

“It’s not the same.”

“We know, honey. But we all have to make some sacrifices. Leaving our house is one of yours.”

“Why though? Why do we have to make even a single sacrifice? It’s not fair. No one should have to feel bad about something related to what they want to do.”

“Life isn’t fair. We can’t change the way the whole world is. We all have to live with our decisions.”

“But I didn’t choose this, If I could choose, I would choose to stay at home.”

My dad chimes in now. “Okay. We can go home. If you answer this question.”

“Okay.” The excitement in my voice is clear as day. I have complete confidence that I will answer this question and get to go home.

“My question is, what would you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“If we went home, what would you do there?”

“Well, I would….. Uhh…... *sigh* I don’t know.”

“Okay then. Decision made.”

“I guess…” I don’t know what I would do. I could just do what I have been, but what fun is that. I want to improve. I can’t learn much more by going to art camps. College is the best option. I still wish I could be at home, though.

I try to comfort myself by saying, in my head, “You’ll come back to visit. Just don’t think about leaving. Think about what it’ll feel like when you come back and see it again.” I am more relaxed, but now I want to go home even more.

***---- ______________________ ----***

I am just starting to wake up from a nap. My eyes flutter open and I look over at the clock. I had been asleep for two hours. “We must be close to the school by now. Well, closer. We still have about an hour left,” I tell myself silently in my head.

Mom notices I’m awake. She puts on some music. Soft enough that it doesn’t fully wake me up. I take out my phone to play a game. As I’m looking through all my apps, I realize that I don’t feel like playing any of them. Instead, I decide to roll down the window and look outside. I stick my head out the window and look at all the cars rocketing down the road. They seem so graceful. They are flying past us. They start to only miss us by a foot of space. The car starts to rock a bit from the air colliding with it. The hair on the back of my neck starts to stand up. I notice a sudden mood change. A bad feeling starts to come over me. I am scared for what could happen next. I slump down in my seat. Then, my seat belt tightens up. Squeezing my torso. The world is almost in slow-motion. The car starts to roll over and over and over. It feels like it won’t end. When it finally does, we are upright again. The windows are all shattered and the car probably has too many dents. I can see that the door is pushed into me. I look in the front for my parents. They both seem to be unconscious. I’m just barely able to grab my phone. The pain is starting to kick in. I punch in the numbers 9-1-1. The phone rings, the vibrations filling my sore hand. I start to lose hope, when they pick up.