A ticking ran along my nose as it dripped from spring allergies. I put the flower down, mushing it's roots into the earth and encasing it with the muddy soil, making sure that it was tightly packed in. Dirt was one of my favorite things, though I've always had a difficult time trying to pinpoint exactly why. I loved the way it felt against my fingers, they way it painted my skin and the flowers.
Although I was planting, at that moment, with top soil. Well, close enough.
I loved the way it smelled in the summer heat and the fall rain. While some children played in swimming pools or wood chips of playgrounds, I swathed myself in dirt, simply because I loved it. I lived each day because I knew I could awake in the morning and feel the earth breathing beneath my feet, I could feel the life against my face and my hands in the form of wind, and work, and earth. It was almost a bit eerie, a bit pathetic, the way I would lie on my back in the grass, tearing up handfuls of roots and simply rolling them beneath my palms. It comforted me when not much else did. I'll be the first to admit that it is unnatural and 100% hedonistic, but everyone has odd obsessions and quirks, and I will not be made to feel guilty for loving dirt.
I heard cars speeding past my house, and I turned around for a moment, watching the normal, busy people carry on with their normal, busy lives. I wondered if they also found beauty in dirt, wondered if they cherish the sunrise against their cheekbones or the wind chilling into their skin. I wondered if they believed in the earth as an organism, alive and breathing, both a despicable and amicable force that carried on with disregard to every other organism within it. I wondered if they found it beautiful. I used to do quite a lot of wondering, contemplating, when I was young and my heart was pure.
I don't remember exactly what time it was, but the sun was bearing down with exhausting heat and causing me to sweat vigorously. I smelled of teenage sweat, pollen, and dirt, and I'm sure I looked worse than all of those combined. The regular people tended to keep from me, but I couldn't blame them, as I also kept my way. It was often my fault, I was too content with my existence and the world to see responsibility or obligation. I was too naive and innocent to see the way that I thought as ludicrous. I was a small town girl with an optimism that could destroy any sense of rationality, and a certain slowness that kept me from connecting to any other forms of thought.
I heard my mother calling me inside, probably for lunch. She sounded adamant and hurried, so I cleaned myself up with vigor. I threw off my gardening gloves from my calloused fingers, wiped the sweat off of my forehead, and brushed the soil off from every crevice of my clothing. I entered my house, all but slamming the door behind me and running to the kitchen, where I was surprised to not find my mother. I had just heard her a second ago, and though she was not the kind of person to play jokes, my own dullness and optimism kept me from noticing several red flags. The mess of food and ransacked drawers in front of me, the water of the tap still running, the gentle stillness of the house.
It was abnormal, but not extraordinarily so. I walked to the center of the kitchen, and turned the faucet off, beginning to tidy up a slight bit. I assumed that my mother had gone into one of her fits, as she tended to forget things sometimes. My mother was growing old, as she had had me at age 37, and it was showing in her memory. So, although the eeriness of her sudden lack of presence troubled me, it did not trouble me enough to call anyone for help. Of course, I never would have called anyone for help. I had few friends and thought of myself too highly to call for help from the ordinary, as I saw them. My pride and innocence ruined me.
I felt the rhythms of heavy feet behind me on the floorboards long before I could hear the footsteps or see the approaching person. I smiled, turning to place the bread on the table.
"Ma, you really should see a psychiatrist about your head. You had me shaken up something good, ma..."
I turned to find myself staring up at a tall, bearded man with the most unflattering smile I have ever seen. She approached slowly, backing me into the wall, all the while smiling. It was the smile that ruined the beauty of a smile for me, it was the face that caused my misery and my transformation.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
The smiling man had taken me. Ruth Warren, age 11, taken from her home on May 23rd, 2015.
I would not be released from his captivity for 14 years. Everyone had assumed I was dead. I was praised as a strong social martyr on every news site I had ever known upon my liberation. It all meant nothing to me. Nothing meant anything to me, not then.
Nothing meant anything to me, I was completely broken inside and out, a shell of the person I used to be. I couldn't find solace in anything. I could not find comfort, and the times grew darker and darker. I had come to accept the fact that I would probably have died in his control, a fact in which every fiber of my unwavering dedication had fully accepted and prepared for.
What I was not prepared for, however, was a new life filled with prescriptions and reality TV personalities. What I was not prepared for, was the real world, the rational world, that I would be forced back into without an ounce of understanding. I was enveloped in confusion and fear, and a long list of disorders that would scare away good people that I had once pushed away out of prideful ignorance myself.
Nothing mattered to me. Not even dirt.
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