Spring 2008 High School Edition
Life's Waiting to Begin
Chelsey Tait
Creative Essay (11th-12th)
First Place
Snow Canyon High School
Teacher: Lenore Madden
Mary Catherine Bateson once said, “The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.” Isn’t this true with all lost things? For example, your pen will never be as valuable to you until after you’ve lost it, right? This is the story of my lost thing.
Once upon a time there was a boy and a girl. The boy was very important to the girl and taught her so much in life and eventually in death. I was this girl, and the boy? Well the boy’s name was Tyler.
Tyler and I had a short history together. We both worked in a movie theater and that’s how we met. He was a projectionist, and I was a snack girl. At first, I tried to keep my distance from him because all of the girls we worked with would warn me that he was no good. It was their little joke to call him the “player of Stadium 8” behind his back. I really didn’t want anything to do with him, but eventually his charm would win me over.
It all really started when he and I were standing in the manager’s office. I was waiting for a key, and he was just goofing off like he always did. Tyler was leaning against the wall holding his cup of Mountain Dew, and he was staring at me. I was trying to keep my eyes glued to the floor or the ceiling, anything to keep myself from looking at this boy.
He finally broke the silence, “You’re Chelsey right?” I didn’t answer. “You have really pretty eyes.” He said. I know it sounds cheesy, but just like that he had me wrapped around his finger. I was no longer staring at the ceiling or the floor, my eyes were on him. A million different things were going through my mind, but I didn’t say a word. I just turned around and walked out, kicking myself the whole way for being so stupid. I only knew Tyler for six months, but I knew from that moment that I needed him to be in my life.
A couple of weeks went by of harmless flirting between Tyler and me. He would come downstairs in between movies and lean over the counter as I swept to talk to me. One day as I was cleaning he peered at me seriously.
“Chels, you have a crush on me, don’t you?” He asked.
I looked at him and my face turned bright red, after a couple of minutes I said, “Ya, Tyler, I do.” He started laughing and turned around to go back upstairs.
“Whatever kid, you are so jailbait for me,” he said over his shoulder.
“What do you mean jailbait?” I called after him. He turned around, holding open the door as he continued to laugh.
“You are fifteen, and I am eighteen, therefore you are jailbait,” he chuckled some more and then he disappeared.
“I turn sixteen in a week!” I yelled. I was furious, well I tried to be. The truth is that I was laughing along with him. I wasn’t embarrassed or worried that he knew. I trusted him with everything.
After this, we became very good friends, and I found myself spending most of my time with Tyler. One night we were laying on the floor in the projection room listening to music when he said, “I’ve got to get out of here, Chels.” The room started to spin but I laughed it off.
“We all do, Tyler,” was my answer to him.
“No, I’m really leaving,” He smiled, “It’ll just be for six months, I’ll come home in October. I got a really good paying job in Wichita, Kansas.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I stood up. I was dizzy; I wasn’t sure if it’s because I got up too fast or because I was in shock. “First of all,” I started, “You’re moving somewhere that’s named Wichita?” He chuckled at this. “And second of all. You can’t do this Tyler. What will everyone here do without you?” By everyone I really meant me. He stood up and grabbed me giving me one of those big hugs that I’ll never forget. He held me close and whispered reassurances in my ear. But regardless of what he tried to tell me I drove home crying that night. I feared that I would lose Tyler.
The last time I saw Tyler he wouldn’t let me say goodbye; he insisted that it was completely inappropriate since he knew he’d see me again. So instead I burned him a CD to show him how I felt. Music was one of the most important factors of our friendship. We learned more about each other through music than we did through the long talks that we had. One of his many nicknames for me was his “Distraction;” it was the name for the song that he played for me on Valentine’s Day. Tyler was my very first Valentine, and I was his last. When he played the song for me, he told me, “You haven’t lived Chelsey, until you’ve lived through music.” We spent most of the night driving around in his old piece of crap car and listening to music.
From that night on I’d remain to be his “Distraction.” Mainly because he was always dropping things around me, like sodas and the big rolls of film that he was in charge of. I learned later on that Tyler’s favorite music was one of the greatest gifts that he ever gave me. Through it I eventually learned to grow and heal wounds.
On April 17, 2007 I woke up with a sick feeling. I knew that Tyler had left for Kansas the night before, and I was already missing his smiling face. I drove to school listening to the same CD that I had given him for the trip. And I was met at school by an old friend of his and mine. She wouldn’t let me go inside and she insisted that we talked. My stomach rose to my throat because I could just see by the look in her tired eyes that something had gone terribly wrong.
“He fell asleep,” she tried to choke out, “a semi hit him.” She looked down to the ground.
“What are you talking about,” I said shaking her. “What do you mean? Please just tell me what you mean.”
“He’s not coming home, Chelsey,” She said, more to the sidewalk than to me. My books fell to the ground and my world went crashing with them. Tyler was dead.
I shook my head over and over as the tears streamed down my face. This couldn’t be happening, I was telling myself. Things don’t end like this, right? You don’t just lose someone. Everyone is supposed to live happily ever after.
But it doesn’t always work that way. People move on, move away, or die. It’s all pain, and it’s all hard. Happily ever afters are not always in black and white, but it doesn’t mean that they are unachievable completely. Sometimes you just have to go through things to grow. The adventure of life takes you through so many twists and turns that you just have to make the best of it and realize that you’re meeting amazing people along the way, even if you lose them before you’re ready to.
Helen Keller said, “What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love becomes a part of us.” It’s the little things that help me to realize that you can never truly lose someone. I’ve grown so much from Tyler. He was my best friend and always will be. Just because he’s not here doesn’t mean that I don’t think about him and even feel him with me everyday.
Death is inevitable and it hurts. However, anyone that loses someone still has that person there; they just can’t be with them in the same way.
There’s a quote by Pam Brown that says, “Loss leaves us empty-but learn not to close your mind and heart in grief. Allow life to replenish you. When sorrow comes it seems impossible-but new joys wait to fill the void.”
I’ve found my joys, mainly in music and just in the memory of Tyler. If it hadn’t been for Tyler’s music I would have never made it. It says the words that he can’t tell me anymore.
Thomas Carlyle put it best when he made the comment that, “Music is well said to be the speech of angels.”
And in my fairy tale, the girl still lives happily ever after, and it’s all because of the boy she once knew, that turned out to be her Angel.
In closing I’d like to share some lyrics from Tyler’s favorite song called “The Adventure” by a band named Angels and Airwaves,
“I want to have the same last dream again,
The one where I wake up and I'm alive.
Just as the four walls close me within
My eyes are opened up with pure sunlight.
I'm the first to know,
My dearest friends,
Even if your hope has burned with time.
Anything that is dead shall be re-grown,
And your vicious pain, your warning sign,
You will be fine.
Any type of love, it will be shown
Like every single tree reached for the sky,
If you're going to fall
I'll let you know
That I will pick you up
Like you for I.
Life’s waiting to begin”
| English Department | College of Humanities & Social Sciences |