Chapter 3
The girl who had screamed at her penetrated Christinithia’s soul. She shattered her inner self, and had a different perspective now.
“She destroyed me once more. I feel nothing. It is like my soul has been taken out. It feels worse than death. No one can mediate between me and my inner soul, if I ever had one. This girl is a dementor from Azaban, and has sucked out my soul. What is the point of being alive? My life’s horrors have ensued, one after another. It is too belated to fix me. All hope is gone. My father was wrong. Nothing will become of me.”
March had come upon them. Far from being bitterly cold, it was sunny, and the flowers were blooming. But the weather did nothing to Christinithia; it mocked her.
While Christinithia was outside her backyard sitting in a corner, with her jacket hood over her head, her father came to her.
“I know you are still worried about what that girl said to you,” he said sadly.
Anger filled her entire body. What did he know? Every time he had not believed or believed in her, he was wrong. And “worried” was an understatement. “Go away, Dad.”
“I won’t until you hear what I have to say.”
“I do not care what you have to say!” Christinithia shouted.
Her dad appeared somber. “You will once you hear me out.”
She was frustrated; couldn’t her father see she just wanted to be depressed in peace?
“Please listen.” It was not an order, it was a request. She obliged.
“When I was your age, thirteen-years-old, my mother died of lung cancer. You cannot possibly imagine how I felt. I had had my mom for thirteen years, and suddenly, she was snatched away from me. I thought I would never be happy again. You know what a dementor is, right?” he asked. Christinithia nodded. “Well, death was the dementor, and it sucked out my soul. Your grandfather was almost as depressed as I was. But soon, I came to my senses, and realized my mother would have not wanted to see me act this way. So, I let it be. Was it easy? No. Will it be difficult for you? Probably. You have been depressed for a while. But it is because something sucked out your soul. You could feel, obviously, and be capable of all normal functions, except for one thing.”
“Being human,” she replied, as if she had heard this speech before.
He nodded. “And I know what took your soul. It was you.”
It took a while to register the abnormality of this statement. “What are you talking about?”
“You thought you were not good enough to live. You thought no one would think of you. You believed that even your own family did not love you. The truth is, you made that stuff up. The more you pondered it, the more depressed you became. When you started believing in yourself, you became happy and lighthearted. Ever since that girl shouted at you the things you believed were true before, you thought that she was right. But since when did you care what others thought? Was it for popularity? Recognition? Friends? A base for what to wear and what to think? You are your own person, and nothing and no one can take that away from you, except for yourself. All this riff raff about being ‘normal.’ Trouble is, what is ‘normal’? I believe that there is no such thing. Normal is being unique. Unique is being normal. That is a life mystery.”
Christinithia did not know what to say. But her father knew.
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