Gone With The Wind

In the last year of my life I rarely left my bedroom. My heart had been broken twice by then. Or should I say, my soul broke into thousands of pieces, twice. And also by then, I had learned too much about the nature of human beings, and that drove me to a despair from which there was no return. No I didn't commit suicide. But despite all the horror surrounding my departure from this world, I must say it was a merciful killing.

Timmy would visit me in my bedroom most nights. We would sit on the floor and light a candle, and he would tell me fanciful romantic stories about the outside world. Just before dawn he would go back home. Sometimes he would fall asleep on my round black shaggy rug. And I would sit still and stare at his long sad eyelashes and count the sweet risings of his chest as he floated in the comfort of sleep.

I would try and sleep through the days. The energy of the sun was too much for me. Mom and Daddy were worried sick, and tried their best to coax me back to life. But after six months they gave up and just made sure I ate and bathed every day. Mom would come into my room just before she went to bed and stroke my forehead and call me sweetheart. The torment in her eyes was killing me, but that guilt wasn't enough to snap me out of my despondence.

When I was eight years old, Timmy's Mom took us to to see Gone With The Wind at Clark's Cinema. Timmy was completely taken by Scarlett O'Hara, and wanted to be known thenceforth as Scarlett. I obliged, but when we were in public, I called him O'Hara so he wouldn't get bullied anymore than he already was. He would practice swooning, but after the twenty-seventh swoon, I was completely over it. Timmy was so repetitive and obsessive. But if you love your friends you have to love their neuroses too, so I kept quiet about my irritation. He'd swoon over beautiful things, loud noises and racy gossip.

I don't know why he identified with Scarlett, he didn't have a manipulative bone in his body. Timmy was Ashley Wilkes through and through. But I guess we are always attracted to the opposite of what we are. Or to what is buried so deep inside of us, that it never sees the light of day.

To Kill A Mockingbird

My life long best friend was Timmy. We were as thick as thieves. He was born a year after me and lived across the road and three doors down. Timmy was small and blonde and breakable. He was like a wisp of smoke and I loved him with all my heart. Even though he was a year older than me, I was bigger and wiser and stronger. I guess you could say, he was the girl-one and I was the boy-one.

Timmy was just like the ethereal Simon in 'Lord of the Flies', the delicate Dill in 'To Kill A Mockingbird'. He was one of those rare creatures who saw the world through a magical gossamer. The most mundane of things, like the postman delivering the mail, became lit with a light of awe. He saw things in people, I could never see.

Timmy never got over my death. He lived another 8 years past me and finally was lost in a cloud of pills and despair and unfinished poems in New York City. He was far too fragile for this world. One mean word from someone would crush his bones.

Nomenclature

My name is Annabelle Lee Kentucky. They called me Belle when I was a baby. When I was three, I pointed to the strawberry jelly and said: 'Belly'. So then they called me Belly. I was a precocious child and learned to read before I went to school. When I was 12, I read Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar'. From then on, until the day I died, I was known as Belle Jar. When people were feeling particularly affectionate towards me, they called me Jar.

I became totally obsessed with Sylvia Plath. When I grew up (ha! little did I know then that there was to be no growing up...), I wanted to go to London, where it was always overcast and gray, and they had free healthcare, called NHS. If I saw 'NHS' on a car's license plate, I knew I was going to have a good day.

After I Died

I know that dying at 18 years of age is dying young. And people see it as a terrible tragedy. But I'm glad I died then. It saved me a lot of heartache. Because even though I never even made it to the legal drinking age, I learned enough about humans to know that I really didn't want much to do with them.

I Died

I was born in Enterprise, Alabama. When I was 18 years old, I died there.