I won't sink // standalone

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It’s the first time in years that I’ve gone a whole month without painting. I mean, I haven’t even considered doing it. Usually I’d come out every other day to set up my easel and paint the sunset, but I haven’t even thought about it in so long that I’m wondering if maybe I should find another hobby. If you think about it, it is pretty stupid to paint the same exact thing day after day. Why did I ever do that in the first place?

I can remember my dad leading me down here when I was little, setting up my easel for me and teaching me how to paint, all the different brush techniques and color combinations. He used to fold my tiny kid hand in his enormous fist and guide me through the strokes until I could do them all by myself. It had seemed so important to me then, like it was the one thing my dad and I really had in common, but I’m now I’m not so sure that it’s important. In a world where babies are killed on television for the entertainment of the Capitol, I’m not so sure painting matters anymore.

My flip-flops sink into warm sand, and without thinking I kick them off, digging my toes into the earth. I stare out at the ocean and it stares back at me, quiet like it always is at this time of day, the nearly-setting sun glimmering softly on the waves and silhouetting the distant rocks. Of course, I know that it’s only an illusion. The ocean may seem quiet from the shore, but it never truly is. When you swim out into it, you’ll hear the waves crashing loudly again and again, always ready to drag you under if you’re not paying attention. The ocean is vast and powerful and terrifying, capable of swallowing entire ships in one gulp, and yet it’s so often described with words like ‘peaceful’ and ‘calm’ and ‘serene’. But the people who say things like that are looking at it from far away.

I met Hallie on this beach a few months before, when a crab pinched her finger and I’d come to her rescue, and she’d seriously thought I was some kind of angel. It wasn’t so long ago, even though it felt like an eternity. We’d ended up kissing that day somehow, despite my previous history of liking boys and her previous history of being so shy. I catch myself smiling faintly at the memory—how she’d taken me to a secret cave and we’d watched the ocean together. We would have been great friends, but she’d said she didn’t want to be just friends.

I shouldn’t have done what I had done. It would have been smarter of me to just walk away from the entire situation, to have told Hallie that if she couldn’t settle with being friends, we couldn’t be anything at all. I’d led her on, though, and made her my girlfriend even though deep down inside I knew that I was only doing any of this because I felt pity for someone worse off than me. Hallie was even lonelier than I’d ever been, and I’d thought that was a good reason to force myself into believing something that wasn’t true, but that was never the right way to live. Once I’d started keeping things from my parents and failing to be honest with myself, my life had started shaping up into one big fat lie. So I’d broken it off, because I couldn’t live like that. Is that what I get for trying to be selfless?

I’m so tired of myself. All my life, all I’ve ever done is garden and fish and paint pictures that no one but me will ever see. Being with Hallie had only made my reclusiveness worse—I’d hidden our relationship from everyone because I was too afraid of what people would think, especially since I wasn’t even sure what I thought. I’m a waste of talent—brains and strength spent on a paintbrush and flowers. I’m daydreaming my life away, when I should be throwing away the coulds and shoulds and woulds and replacing them all with just one will.There’s more inside me, I can feel it. I’m a bird in a cage, and all I need to do is let myself out.

I start running across the sand towards the trees, the same ones Fynn had led me into.

I never stop to think about an absolute destination, and for once, I couldn’t care less—I’m running away from the city, away from school, away from Career training, away from my parents and Hallie, away from everything that’s been shackling me down to this god-forsaken country. In the back of my mind somewhere, I know I’ll have to go back to it all at the end of the day, but does that matter? I’ve got to run away, just a little, or I know I’ll explode. There comes a time in a young girl’s life when she just wants to hit things and yell, and I think I’ve reached that point.

I’m sprinting now, faster than I ever have. I’m winding through trees and jumping over exposed roots and kicking up the sod that squishes cold under my bare feet, adrenaline muffling out my lungs’ faint cry for mercy. The world is a never-ending blur that races around me, never stopping to notice that I’m passing through it, the same way it’s always been. I’m tired of living life like that, just another grain of sand, indistinguishable from those around me. Now more than ever, I’m ready to be noticed. I’m going to be a seashell, and someone’s going to stop on their way to the ocean to bend over and pick me up out of the sand and look at me. I just want everyone to look at me.

Then all of a sudden the trees are gone and I’m running to the edge of the cliff, where the land ends and all I can see up ahead is a red sky. It’s bold and beautiful, the way I will be. The way I am, although no one has seen that side of me yet. Maybe I’m just like the ocean, quiet from afar but strong and powerful when you take a closer look. And maybe I’m not like the ocean or the sunset, maybe I’m just me, and maybe I can be a wonder all my own.

When the ground disappears, I spread my new wings and fly into the sea.

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{ooc-yeah I know I owe posts but I needed muse & I just wanted to write a thing}[/center][/i][/b][/font][/font][/font]
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table by the wonderful zoe<3