Elm Errington, District Ten

All the nonsense in your head
These days it gets so loud
Best you put it to rest

District Ten
Sixteen

I kind of miss being younger.

There’s a lot of things I miss, and it doesn’t make any sense. It’s like… I’ll look out the window and see the fields stretch on and on, like they do, and my heart will do a little twist in my chest. It’s a good kind of feeling because I’m here, but it’s like... the way I used to feel about my life and my home is a memory.

I’ve been here, I still live here, and nothing’s changed but me. It’s like I’m nostalgic for the happiness, the ignorance, the ability to forget all the things that aren’t so great. Everything feels dull in a way I can’t explain, but there are a lot of good days. Days when I can work till I’m sore, till my heart’s pounding but it’s strong, and my arms pull the weight I need them to. Days when I can come back from school or farm-work and have the whole afternoon to explore. Days when I can meander up to the town square and watch the District move on by.

There’s always bad days too. Some mornings I wake up and my brain doesn’t work quite right, and I’ll look at Mom or Ma or August or Virginia and feel so much annoyance, I have to get away. I’ll put on my boots and brush a hand through my tangled hair and step into the morning air, and the world will start to seem a little okay again.

Don’t get me wrong -- I love my family. Mom and Ma are the sweetest pair, but they come back in from the farm dog-tired, and there’s not a lot of time for conversation when you’ve got to put food on the table and manage wily children who insist on finding trouble together whenever there’s something afoot. We’ve always been like that, me and August and Virginia, the bunch of us so unruly it’s a wonder our mothers even bothered to take us in at all.

But they did, and I’ve always felt loved by Mom and Ma. They chose me -- chose all of us, really -- and their choice has always influenced the kinda life I want to live. To choose what’s important to me, to value even the little things, and to see the potential hiding behind the broken stuff nobody else seems to want.

They said I was a little baby, scrawny as nothing, and my birth parents left me in the dirt of the road. Maybe they thought someone would come by and see me or somethin, but I think it’s more likely they wanted someone to trample me. August says “Maybe they liked not knowing what happened to you,” and that I can understand.

I used to think a lot about it, but then I just got all sad, so I stopped. Mom and Ma are all the parents I ever needed, and I’ve already been bad about feeling like I don’t matter. I never got on well with the other kids, only my brother and sister, and they’re not even in the same year as me. School gets real lonely, so I try to focus on my schoolwork and my work work, keeping company with the goats and the horses and the fish in the creek beside our farm. And August and Virginia, of course, but sometimes we don’t get along well, so I take time away.

Lately it’s been hard to tell them stuff, like how I want to cut my dark hair off and how I don’t feel comfortable when they say words like ”she” when they talk about me. I keep real quiet about those feelings. I don’t even know what they are. I just know that Virginia’s always been the girliest girl I know, and we don’t have a lot in common aside from being kind.

(She’d hate me calling her kind. She’s in this new phase where she likes to think she’s all tough, mostly because August picks on her because she runs faster than him, even when she’s wearing what he calls her “girly shoes”.)

It’s fine. August’s still learning how to be respectful, and we’re all trying to teach him. Mom and Ma will make sure he stops being such a prick, eventually.

I love my family, but I still feel a little off.

There’s not a lot we ever want for, us being self-sufficient farmers and all, but something’s wrong.

It’s like there’s a little stone inside my chest and in my head, and it’s shaking around in there and bruising up my heart and my thoughts till even the world around me starts to feel a little sore. That’s what I tell Mom and Ma, when they ask if I’m okay: ”I’m fine. It’s just heavy today.”

Sometimes it’s a pebble or a grain of sand. Sometimes it’s a boulder.

It’s alright though. I’m alright. I’m strong and I can carry it.

One of these days, I’ll throw that stone into the creek and watch it skip away, leaving nothing behind but ripples on water.

Good fucking riddance, what a day that will be.