Alone

Author's Note: This was are creative piece I wrote in the Writing Lab. It is about a boy who just moved north from down south and is standing in a field while it was snowing. But he feels alone, and it is not because he just feels sad about leaving he just truly is on his own. Let me know what you think:)

As the world spun around him, and the cold air blew, he was lost in a sea of white.

What in the world is this? He thought. 

Being as he had just moved north from the south, he had never seen snow in this sort of situation. There was no way out... he felt lost with no where to go. Like he was alone in the world, with no one around. In the dark there was nothing, no one, not anything at all. Just him in a wonderful world of white

As he stood in that field thinking, he thought about a lot of different things... about his life, about his family, about his new friends he made a couple of weeks ago, and about his old friends he had just left.

I feel alone he thought... like there is no one here to help me. No one understands anything at all, about me or about anything. Why do my parents treat me like i'm three years old with no where to go in life? Why do my friends new and old not treat me with the respect I deserve? Why is my life so complicated? These just must be one of those many different things we all must face... alone.

As he was standing in his winter wonderland. Almost like he was in a snow globe, a beautiful snow globe that contained everything about him. He was alone and not just because no one was there with him. But truly because no one understood him. This new place he was calling home was just as scary as he thought it was going to be.

Even though I feel alone... and I am alone... sometimes you may just have to do things on your own, right? 

Even though he never did find out that answer, he knew it was true, and he knew that he was going to have to learn to make it on his own. This is because he knew one day, he would be on his own, with out anyone there to guide him in the right direction.

Even though I am alone now. I won't be alone forever. He thought.

And this was held out to be true. He would not be alone forever.

But for now. At this point in time... he was alone. In his own little winter wonderland. 

Courage and Bravery

In the book Just Jane by William Lavender, Jane is a little kid who has moved from England to the American colonies, leaving part of her family behind to live with her aunt and uncle in the new world. She is hesitant about it all being that, her mother died when she was very young and her father had just died recently. So all she had left was her care taker Mrs. Morley, who eventually leaves her to help out an aunt's mother. Throughout this book Jane faces many moments when she needs either courage and/or bravery. Sometimes you just need a little courage and bravery to make it through life, and that's what Jane shows in this book. 

Have you ever moved? Either to a new house or school? Even a new state? Even if you haven't the feeling of just maybe having to move can be a little scary and sad. Imagine if you had to move across an ocean to a new home with people who you are related to, but have never met. I know I would not take that as just a new adventure, I would be very scared. Jane on the other hand was not, with her care taker Mrs. Morley by her side she felt as if it was just a new start after a rough year. Sometimes she was sad and sometimes she was happy about meeting the other members of her family, but on the other hand she also missed her father who had just passed away a couple of months before. It took a lot of courage for her to get on a boat for a long trip to a new land; she wasn't thrilled about it but she never showed that on the outside. Mrs. Morley was nervous about the whole situation so helping her stay calm and staying calm herself Jane realized that this might not be so bad after all.

Even though she went on this trip with Mrs. Morley saying she was never going to leave her side, it wasn't quite like that, once they actually got to the colonies. Mrs. Morley met a new friend, Jane's Aunt Harriet's mother, and they were the same age and had a lot in common. They loved each other’s company so much that Mrs. Morley decided she couldn't let the elderly lady live on her own. For Jane being alone in a big house with her aunt and uncle, who she was currently living with, was a little scary. But the bravery she showed when Mrs. Morley packed her bags and left was amazing. I would have never been able to just let go of someone that had never left my side since I was a little kid. Even though this was sad for Jane it helped her realized she wasn't really as alone as she felt. 

One of the books that shows the same theme in it, of courage and bravery, is The Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny have their parents killed in a fire. They moved in with several family members who all either left them or got murdered by the person who was after their family fortune. They showed a lot of courage through out these books by not backing down to Count Olaf, the murder after their fortune. They also showed bravery by taking on many challenges in all of the different places they had ended up. They showed bravery throughout this series because they were doing all of these things without someone who really cared about them. Their parents died and their family members were just taking them in so that they would have somewhere to live. But throughout these books they learn that they are truly on their own and the only things they really have are each other.

Another book that has the same theme as, Just Jane and The Series of Unfortunate Events, is Elephant Run by Roland Smith. Nick is a teenager who lives with his mother in London England. He gets sent away to his dad's elephant plantation when the Japanese start to take over England.  After a couple months at the plantation, the Japanese take the plantation over and hold him captive, and the Japanese take his dad to a prison camp. He had a lot of courage in this entire book because he has to sneak away from the Japanese soldiers and save his dad from dying in the prison camp without getting caught. Nick has a lot of bravery in this book because moving away from the person you have spent your entire life with to live with a parent you have meet once is really scary, not only for him but it could be for anyone.

Sometimes you don't need a lot of courage and bravery to do things in life, and sometimes it's not you who needs it. It's the people around you who need to know that you're not afraid. In all of these books, all of the people learned a lot about themselves. Their courage and bravery not only saved their lives, but made some situations less freighting for others. Even though sometimes you may be scared, having courage and bravery not only helps you, but showing it sometimes can help the people around you. 

Predicting

Not everyone can have everything their own way. Your house, your car, your family, even your friends. They all have many flaws that you will come across. Nick from Elephant Run by Roland Smith, is a teenager with his life ahead of him. But he can't have anything the way he wants it-- his parents got a divorce when he was very young. He lived with his mom in England, which I have to say was not a place he really wanted to be. The worst part of all though, was he rarely ever got to talk to his dad, until the Japanese started to take over England, so his mom sent him away to live with his father on an elephant plantation in the middle of the Burmese jungle. In this book I think that Nick will eventually learn to fit in with the people on the plantation, I think this is going to happen because he truly knows the meaning of not being able to have everything your own way. 

Nick living in the Burmese jungle was his mother's first worry. Her second worry was that he was never going to be able to fit in with the people there. It would have been true in the beginning but as I read more Nick really did learn that having everything handed to you by your mom is not going to get you very far in life. He also realized that where he was, that wasn't going to change. The people he was with, they weren't going to change. The most important thing though is that how much freedom he had there, was not going to change. He was practically stranded, almost like a puppet on strings, if the people there said jump he was to respond with how high. His dad however wasn't around much while Nick was there but towards the end his dad started to shine around more. Nick was starting to figure out that the people who lived here, this was their home, this was their life, and he was just thrown in it. He came to realize that he was thrown into someone else's life and he couldn't make them change to fit what he wanted but he had to change to fit in with their lifestyle. 

Nick never had to do anything for himself in England. Of course being that he was 13 his mother pretty much did it all for him. Once he got to Burma he made some friends and became a somewhat "real kid." He was learning how to fit in not as a "normal" kid but as someone who has lived on this plantation his whole life. By the end of the book if you would have saw him on the street you would have never realized it was the same person. Nick was realizing that he didn't need his mother to do everything for him, and he didn't need his father to always be there. There were some things that he could do on his own but he didn't know that because he had never tried it. A lot of teens are like that, if everything is given to you why change that. I have two cousins who are 25 and 22 who still live at home with their parents, now I can understand why, their mom gives them money, their dad always makes sure there's gas in their cars, there is always food in the house, and all their bills get paid. I believe that anyone would stay at home if that happened for them. But Nick didn't want that, he wanted to be able to know that he could do things on his own without that extra help from his parents. Coming to the realization that he had to make sure he blended in with everyone else and also that he didn't want the extra help from his parents on some things helped him to eventually fit in with the people of the plantation. 

Since I thought that Nick was going to learn how to fit in with the people of the plantation, it reminds me of the book I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You. In this book Cammie Morgan goes to a spy school, she meets a boy named Josh who she starts to like. Every day her friends make her go into town by herself were she isn't supposed to go. Just like in Elephant Run were Nick is learning how to fit into a new culture, Cammie is trying to fit in with normal teenagers because she is not a normal teenager. Learning how to fit in with normal people took the help of Macey who was a normal teenager before she started coming to spy school. With her help Cammie learns how to make it seem like she is just a regular person just like everybody else. 

Even though you cannot get everything the way you want it, or the way that you want everything to be done. It isn't as hard to learn to fit in with other people as it seems it should be. Sometimes everyone overlooks what the true meaning of having friends and family are. Just because you don't like the way they are doesn't mean they are bad people. Even though Nick and Cammie learned how to fit in with the people who were very different from them, they knew that even though they were different it didn't make them bad people in any way, shape or form. 

Crisis

Her mom marched through the room like a bull ready to attack. She sat in the corner on a stool just bracing herself for the hit. It was scary and thoughts rushed through her head of different things she could do.

She thought, mom is obviously drunk. There is no way to look past that, and at this point in time she's a raging bull. There is no one who is here to help me, there is no one who can fix this, and there is no one out there who can save her. I'll just take it as it comes and think about it later. 

As she hit, hard like a brick wall, the girl was propelled into the wall like a sack of potatoes. She was never treated like a human being not since the day she turned three, that morning her mother had turned into a completely different person. That day was like darkness had fallen and the sun would never shine again. 

Darkness, the girl thought, is a very frightening place. 

She couldn't even remember what her mom was like before this "darkness" had taken her over, she didn't know what happened, and she didn't know why no one could stop it. 

Sometimes I feel like no one even knows it's there, except when mom and I are home alone.That's the only time the "darkness" ever shows its face. Why can no one else see that she has a problem. Is it only me? Or does everyone know it is happening and just don't have the guts to help me, help her?

That same day it all got worse as she got chucked like a sack of potatoes against the wall, her mom left. She never came back. When her dad got home from work, the phone rang... but on the other end was just screaming and then a loud noise. As her dad quickly dialed 9-1-1, squad cars showed up at the house. The sirens were so loud that the house shook and her ears rang. As the police told them the news... she realized she was finally free from it all.

The pain. The anger. The sadness. It was all finally gone.