Hello again.

I just wanted to thank everyone. People have messaged me, left messages for me, gone out of their way to contact me, and I hear their words. I've said it to those people countless times but words are a gift to me, like no other could be. I cry every time, because somebody wants to talk to me, and sometimes I don't even have strength enough to answer them back because I'm afraid I won't be able to see those words the next morning. I don't want them to hope for me. 

I hope nobody minds if I use this as a place to tell my story.

[hider=My Two And Three Quarters Cents]I live in a small home with my older brother, my mother, and my father. In our town, the people are friendly, the lifestyle is well-balanced, and it's a great place to live. Lots of trees and sunshine, but not too much of a country place. Doesn't seem like much of a setting for someone like me. I was born with the inability to speak, something looked upon with much scorn. Ever since I could remember, my family wouldn't speak to me. I was considered more of a lost cause than anything. However, I still received food and shelter, so I was content. After all, I'd never known more. I heard my parent talk sometimes, an developed a rudimentary understanding of the English language. My brother was a bit nicer, teaching me sign language but never speaking afterwards. I assumed he'd been scolded. I remained at home, whiling away the hours with sketches and such (I had found the pencils and the paper, and never let them go) until my parents dumped me into school at the age of ten. 

In order to get me in, they lied that I'd been homeschooled up until then. I knew nothing of the topics of course, and people tried to talk to me a lot, but when I didn't answer them, they just muttered and gave up. Eventually it got around that I wouldn't talk to anybody, so I was straight-up ignored. It felt somehow more natural that way. One girl, (let's call her Rayna, to make her anonymous), finally came up to me. She spoke to me in clear words and a beautiful voice. She said four syllables which changed my view of the world: "Are you okay?" I looked at her strangely, of course, but signed something back. "Does it matter?" She looked at my hands and signed back to me, understanding me perfectly. "I see. Mute?" I nodded affirmatively. I heard her laugh, something I never thought could be applied to something involving me. "Good," she said in her lovely voice, "Because I don't know much sign language!" I smiled a little, which made her face turn serious.

She told me a few things about how I'd looked sort of sad, which I questioned. She said it was all in my eyes and my face. That I looked world-weary, tired, unfeeling. She said that she'd noticed my grades were bad, and that she'd help me. I don't remember exactly what she said, but I had learned something. People could be nice. We met in a little nature reserve near where she lived so she could teach me. She was a wonderful teacher, and taught me how to write and read, the light of my life, and how to do some basic mathematics, from which I learned everything else. Not only did reading and writing become the light of my life, SHE became the light of my life. She listened to me, learning sign language for me, laughed with me, and was my friend. She was the greatest person I ever grew to know.

Rayna died on January 25, 2012 in a car accident.

I kept all the pain bottled up so tightly, I thought I could explode with the weight of it. I felt that I couldn't do anything. I felt that the worst thing was that it seemed as though life went on. I wanted to scream. I wanted to yell at everyone "LOOK AT ME! I HAVE FEELINGS! WHOOP-DEE-FUCKING-DOO! SEE? JUST AS GOOD AS THR REST OF YOU! AND SO WAS SHE! IS ANYONE MOURNING? DID ANYONE CARE? WHY WOULD YOU LAUGH, WHY WOULD YOU SMILE, WHEN SHE'S DEAD?" But I couldn't. So I kept it all in. She had told me so many things, about how she wanted to go to the moon someday, about what it felt like to sing, about how she was going to be a scientist when she grew up and show the world how smart a girl could be. And she was. Smart and funny and beautiful. She sang for me sometimes, and I wondered how such a strong, powerful girl could sing so sweetly. I loved her. I never got to say that. I felt as though everything should have stopped, as though the world should have taken a little pause to simply comprehend that loss. The Rayna-shaped hole in the world. I felt guilt wash over me sometimes, for taking away all her time, for wasting hours every day of a life she could spent making her mark.

Preventing that crash.

Nobody ever told me again that my face looked sad. The world simply moved in as it had. But that Rayna-shaped hole was still there, the distant memory, imprint, of being paid attention to. Of friendship and happiness. I kept sketching bluebirds and putting them under a tree we used to sit in when she taught me. She'd loved the bluebirds, always. Those were the two years spent without human interaction or conversation. Trust me, I tried. They never responded to me. It was like a little private joke, for everyone but me. Maybe they didn't understand the symbols, maybe I creeped them out, maybe they were too busy for me. It was the same difference. Meanwhile, the rift between my parents was growing, and they began to fight more often. Mostly over the past few months, however. That's when it really got bad. Somewhere in between, I started going to the library and using the free computers there to, well, browse the Internet. I couldn't check books out because my parents couldn't care less about signing paperwork for a library card, but I just read them there. I came across the guild there, and, well...

The experience brought me closer to a lot of Raynas. I feel like this place is more my home than anything else, and I wish I hadn't had to have been away from it for so long as I have been on numerous occasions. When my parents started fighting under the influence, I knew I really couldn't go to the library anymore. I'd have to endure them, not risk the chance of undergoing worse when I came back. There are a lot of scars on my wrist I'm not proud of, and plenty elsewhere I'm not proud of either. [/hider]

I'm sorry for talking so long. I should probably cut this off now. Just felt like I needed to get that off my chest. It's why people talking to me makes me so emotional. It just seems wrong for a stranger to talk to me - encourage me, even - when my life has been so devoid of conversation. The life of a mute, hear so much noise it drowns you and not a single sound your way. A saltwater sea of needless noise for the perched throat of mine. Anyway, in conclusion. I just needed to put that out there so that people understood if I said something about words being a commodity or some weird shit like that.