i find myself searching for this mysterious answer to a question twenty-two years deep. granted, twenty-two years is nothing to the majority of people on this earth, but for me, it’s my life, and it’s been a long time. but i wonder, as i grow older, and continue to breathe this oxygen and not the dirt six feet beneath the ground, why i have not found the ending to my story.

you know, the point in my life where everything makes sense. where i wind up with the questions answered, the point of my life understood, the love of my life discovered. i want that. i want to be content. to find contentment. but like most people, i get caught in the struggle of not settling for contentment until my life brings me something that i can be glad about, that i know will stay with me forever.

why can’t i find that thing? that one thing. the climax in my story. the point in the book of alyssa. because i am so fucking pointless. and in my mind, contentment never shows up. i remember the two best days of my life.

the first day, i was seven years old, my mom told me that if i cleaned my room i could hang out with my best friend, erica. so i cleaned that room spotless and was allowed to go out. erica, my brother, some neighbor kids and i rode around the filthy town of springfield, il on our bikes until the sun went down. we discovered alleyways, untouched by the rubber tires of our huffys, schwinns, and murrays until this day. we found parks miles from home filled with exotic flowers, and old married couples, walking their golden retrievers and black labs, holding hands, smiling. i never knew old people could be in love. i never knew there was such thing as love- my parents never loved each other. we ran into bums and rode away from them as quickly as we had frightened them. we got yelled at for trespassing, and laughed it off. when we landed back home, my mom had pizza hut waiting for us on the dining room table. to this day, my mom has never had food waiting for me when i got home. this was the best day i knew. this was when i saw what it meant to be happy for the first time. and i was content.

the second best day, i was nineteen. i was at church. i looked pretty. the love of my life was on speaking terms with me, and i basically had the job i wanted, promised to me and delivered. i can’t tell you in detail what it was about this day, but i knew i was content. i was content because i finally got off my ass and worked for the things that i wanted. and i was about to be rewarded.

i never asked for the world-these simple things meant so much to me. i didn’t win the lottery, or find love, or even have anything about my future set in stone, but i was happy. because i had hope that the rest of my days could be good like the one i just lived. but it’s never that way.

soon after the pizza was eaten, my parents fought about money, and my dad slept on the couch. my mom punched a hole in a glass window and lied to me about how her hand was cut. as if i couldn’t see the glass shattered on the ground outside. a week later someone found a way into our house through the cardboard ducktaped to the window frame and stole the little cash that we had left. there was no more pizza for a while.

the day i was nineteen, was also my mom’s fourty-first birthday. it was also the day a friend of mine went missing. she was found three days later, in lake michigan with her hands and feet ducktaped. she drowned herself. a week later i was told that the job that was promised to me, was taken away, because the employer decided that she couldn’t trust me, for reasons that were not valid. and then the love of my life, basically had to tell me he didn’t want anything to do with me.

and i wondered why i was allowed to feel content, when it would be taken from me so quickly. how things that were so good, could actually be what leads into those things that are so bad. and my humor couldn’t save me from this, it just got me in trouble.

the twelve years between my two best days, little went well in my life. my mom had an affair, and my dad consumed himself with self-doubt, and his work. i lived alone in a basement and thought up all the ways someone could come and kill me, so that i didn’t have to do it myself. i ran away from home three times, and got nowhere. i wanted to be normal, and found myself unable to fill that role, because i am just not that way. i wanted to be pretty and loved, but i was never asked out on a date, i was never asked for my number, i was never talked about as pretty by anyone other than my mother.

and then the day came, march 2nd, when i found that God was right and good people are rewarded. i saw that i was pretty. i saw that i was needed. i saw that i deserved to be alive. then all that was taken away from me. between my mom’s birthday and today, i’ve been raped, hated, jobless, homeless and alone. and i ask myself why? why am i not content? if i’m not happy now, i will never be happy, ever, i know this, so why? why can’t i learn to just deal with the shit thrown my way, and not freak out? why can’t i be strong?

i work in a resturant. why do i find myself taking the things that customer’s say so personally, when there is no reason to? it’s not even my way to care about such trivial bullshit. why do i care that some fat bitch with an annoying voice hates me, when i’m so nice to her? who cares? honestly. i shouldn’t care. i should be happy that my parents want me to live with them, that it’s been two years to this day that i’ve been raped, and i am fine. more then fine. i should be happy that i have more friends that i can count on my fingers, and that they love me. i should be content in the fact that after four years off from school, i now know what i want to do with my life.

i own two black coats, a pink coat, a green coat, a brown coat and a grey coat. i bought them myself. i have money to burn on things that keep me warm. i should be content in that. but here i am, having ten panic attacks a day, going through the worst identity crisis of my life, and taking advil pm to sleep. why am i not bloody happy? why not?

and i stop. and i know why. i know why i am not happy. because i am searching for a fucking ending. i am wondering how much longer i have to wait for my life to make sense. how much longer until everything i’ve lived through comes back to life and i say “yes, this is why i am on earth. my whole life was meant for this.” i want to know when it is my turn to be allowed to give someone my heart, and get one back in return. i want to be able to wake up and see a woman in the mirror, instead of a little girl that so desperately wants to be told that she’s pretty.

and you ask, why does this chick keeping talking about being pretty? who cares about that? i do. honestly i do. it’s insane, but that might be the one thing i can control in this life. and maybe in the back of my mind i think that if i can be pretty enough, someone will love me. and to be loved would make me happy. and if i was happy for an instant, maybe i could have another best day of my life, and maybe this time i could make it last.