Summer of My 18th Year, Elinor Skinner [books for 9th graders txt] 📗

What am I doing? Who am I?

I am a protector. Always there, and caring with a smile and open arms. Yet I let myself become fustrauted and turn for the worse. The fustraution is only anger toward myself, that sometimes I don't want to be me anymore. I try to restrain myself everyday, so I don't end up hurting the people I protect day and night.

Now things are different, I can set that uncontrolled fustraution to another side of me. I bring that other side out, only when I need it. The fustraution becomes a rage. Rage to the ones who have darkness in their eyes, that murder human souls.

The gaurdian self has what I can not have, because I am human. The ability to slay the monster within. To cut the strings of the puppet that has ruined lives.

When I am done, I am me again. Until I put on the mask to cloak my emotions. No one sees me. Only the mask, a protector, and hopefully never the gaurdian. Then there is me.

Simply, only me, myself, and I with someone of the past. 

Elinor.

I hate myself. I always have, because of unhealthy habits. I am lazy.

It is someone else to set the fire. I can not do it, I lack in the skill of matches. I care way too much that my stress breaks them. Sometimes I press too hard.

Even though I never start a fire; I always feel burnt out; only a useless pile of ashes.

When the hearth is finally lit from my own match, I have a lot of wood to burn with much paper. I find the fire dies before everything is in ashes, or I am too late to finish as I see the spring grass out the window realizing the winter had already passed.

Other times I put out the flame. The black steel of my burden transforms me into a rain cloud. The tears are icy, so when the flame dies, so does the warmth. My poor fire never had a chance. Here I am with an other box of matches.

Desprate to light a match and rekindle the flame in my heart.

Text: Elinor Skinner
Images: Elinor Skinner
Editing: Kayla Stiles
Publication Date: 10-21-2013

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