At The End of A Rainbow

The door of my room creaks and sounds of heels are getting closer. I'm curled inside my bed, hoping I'd be forgotten and left alone. I don't want anyone to see my face. I know without seeing it how pitiful I look. My hair tangled, bags under my eyes, cheeks gaunted, pale face, and lips so chapped they burn. My body isn't any better... Skinny, ill-treated, no longer athletic. I might look like an abandoned cokehead, after nights and nights being high, looking old and ruined.

My only hope is that this person would be here to finish me. To get rid of my sick and useless carcass once and for all.

But of course, I know this won't happen because this room isn't my room. It's an hospital room, which white walls and disinfectant scent are making me feel even sicker.

I can't remember clearly, but it seems like I've failed.

Someone pulls the curtains, exhibiting me to the broad light of rays of sun through my window. As a reflex, I'm curling tighter and clench my eyes.

It's the same nurse than the one I've seen last night when I woke up. Her voice is like a melody, her calm contrast with the anxiousness and the pain radiating all over my wounded body. She stinks hope and positivity.

I hate hope, this stupid thing making you cling to crumbling branches while expecting for something better to happen, for a miracle to come and change the streams of your worthless life. Yes, I hate hope and I think hope should hate me just the same.

I feel like even breathing is a complicated action. Her brown eyes are staring at me and I can't tell whether it's pity or something else I see in her eyes.

"Your state is a bit better than last night. You're very lucky you father found you right on time. He was very worried..."

There's tears up in my eyes, but not from anger or pain. In my mind, my father have always been someone way too caught up by his own belly to notice he has a daughter completely going awry. There are two possibilities: either I've been wrong about him, either a sudden urge of being a father is growing in his heart because Mommy's death saddens him.

"You have visitors", the nurse says with a smile I wish I could cut off.

"Tell them to get the hell on! I don't want to see anyone."

It doesn't matter who's behind that door. My zombie-like face isn't a vision you want to see right after breakfast. Somewhere deep inside, might be surviving parts of me that are still lively, from the girl who prouded herself with a bright reputation. I'd rather stay face to face with those white walls than being in front of anyone, even those who care about me.

Yet, the nurse ignores by order, surely because she knows it's nothing more than a whim from a child whose heart and soul are sick, with no taste for anything at all.

And so my two best friends appear in front of me. Twilight and Applejack. Although the second before, I was thinking about grabbing the first thing within reach and throw it in their faces, seeing them make flows of shame and guilt come to the surface and I burst into tears.

Immediately, Applejack runs by my side and holds me in her arms. I'm grabbing hold of her as if she was Mommy and flood her thick flannel shirt with my tears.

"Everything's fine, sugar cube. We understand why ya did this and we won't judge ya, don't make an orchard about it."

"Yes, don't worry", Twilight addes, slowly approaching.

"We're going to take good care of ya, and do our best to help ya gettin' better. I've asked Granny Smith, she's OK for ya to live with us until you're recovered."

"But I... don't... want... to be... a burden... for you", I claim between two hiccups.

I can't even bear myself. Insomnias, followed by terrible mental distresses, stopping myself from breathing, making me feel as if the world was made of quicksand in which my body is buried inexorably, a fear of everything surrounding me, then my nightmares, worse than staying awake... During days, being thin-skinned, feeling every emotions multiplying by thousands, with this unpleasant sensation of having the world staring at you, wanting to strangle you.

Applejack's family has been through their loads of tragedy. I can't impose them such a burden.

Yet, my friend wipe off my tears, strokes my back. They're both smiling at me, assuring me there's nothing to fear about. I'll be just fine at the farm. They won't even force me to go to school if I don't want to go to school. I'll be able to sleep until noon, to run and ride horses. I won't be alone and I'll eat only good and sane homemade food.

This kindness gets the best of my stridency. I'm beating in retreat. I haven't been able to disappear, anyway, to join her and make the nightmares stop. If I have to feel bad, it might as well be sheltered in a farm far from everything, surrounded by friends than alone in my father's gigantic house, with cleaning ladies and gardeners as my only company.

I can't even have a pet.

My room's door, ajar, suddenly moves and I'm expecting to see the nurse again, so she could change my drip or bring breakfast, although I probably won't eat it.

Instead, my father comes in. He's wearing his pilot suit, with his cap under his arm. When he steps closer, he stinks cold tobacco, whisky and female perfume. I don't know where he comes from, but I doubt it is the airport.

Out of all the persons in the world, he's the last one I thought would visit me. I've failed. I've tried to kill myself, I haven't fought. He's always saying fighters are the only ones worth something and he refuses to understand. I'm only thirdteen, my mother's plane crashed in front of me, the only person I have left is him, who's never here for me, and I know, I KNOW, he's ashamed he has even conceived such a wreck.

Until now, I was walking straight on a suspended bridge called an adult, and the only stable structures has fallen apart. There's only a stone left between me and the depths.J

"Well... We leave ya, Rainbow. We'll come back later."

Twilight and Applejack both leave the room, in order to let me with my father. I want to stretch out my hand to tell them "come back, don't leave me alone with him, please", but of course, I don't do it. Here I am, stoical, looking at them leaving the room, going behind the door and closing it behind them.

"That's lucky I've found you lying on the bathroom floor", he says while arranging my pillow. "I think you broke the mirror on the door when you fell. There was a lot of blood..."

He's speaking with a voice he might try to make sound soft, but I just think it sounds sinister. This, as always, without looking into my eyes. Or even at my face. Seeing my hair, the only part of me which has his attention, he's probably thinking about his own, which I inherited of, and how pity such a flaw of nature shares the same DNA than him.

I hate his sudden manner of acting like a devoted dad. Come on, there's no need to pretend. Not with me. In fact, I'm tired of seeing everyone around me pretending. I want a bit of honesty for a once. I want someone to tell me things as they are, even if it f*cking hurts. It's not as if it could get any worse...

"There's nothing I could do for your mother. She's always been too reckless, I accepted it. I knew when I married her, and even loved her for her foul temper. I knew she would become who she was, there are things you can't never escape. But I wanted my daughter to be different. I know what you're thinking, Rainbow Dash... You can judge me. And I know you're in pain, I know you can no longer understand how to go on and where you belong, but I won't let you turn into a wreck who won't fight."

I don't dare saying a single word. I don't know who the man in front of me is. I don't know him, I only know his wallet and his lectures about the fact that I act to much like a boy for him... I only know what faces he decides to show me.

This isn't normal. This isn't how things are supposed to be in a family. And he's here today but for how long? When, in two or three days, he'll go back to his business trips all around the world, what difference will it make? He can't stop me from falling deeper...

"You have... no idea what I'm going through", I tell him with a hint of bitterness in the words.

"You're right. But I know You have a problem... So, I've made up my mind. I've called a friend, named Dr. Horse. You're going to rest at an institute called Green Haven, where they'll heal your depression, or whatever it is they call it."

"What?!"

I can't believe what I've just heard. Is this his solution? To send me far away from him? He might be the one who's deranged!

My mother was my everything. The sun on my skin when the clouds parted. The breeze blowing softly when the heat was too unbearable. The ground which always caught my fall. Water when I was thirsty.

And she's dead. In a horrible, dreadful, nightmarish way. Knowing we all were here, right under, seeing everything. While doing one of the thing she loved the most, one of her reasons to live. With all those witnesses, and me among them, and nothing who could help them, not even me.

This is what has shattered hope inside of me, what scares me so much that I'm in ruins, here, ugly and weak, letting weariness winning the game, the prey of the worst tortures, bleeding and marking my skin.

"I don't want to go to a loony bin! I want to stay home... If you're scared I'll do it again, I'll go at Applejack's for some time. Her grandmother proposed it."

"Rainbow Dash, this isn't a negotiation. At Applejack's? With her both parents dead? Let's be serious... You got a problem. And we're going to settle it before it gets even bigger and you try to kill yourself again."

"I don't want to go to an institute! I don't want to go to an institute!"

"I know you hate me right now... But it's for your own good. You're going to get better, and you need to be surrounded by specialists."

Yes, that's what I need. To be surrounded, but by my family. And I don't even have a family, because my mother's parents have died and my father's parents don't want to see me and my father hates me and chooses to throw me to the mercy of lunatics rather than trying to support me. We could have helped each other, like a real family. Instead of this, we're going to die separetely, like two strangers.