Rude Faces Monologue

It is important to choose the right friends, good friends can take you wherever you want to go in life, and the wrong friends can be a disastrous decision. A quote from The Pact sums this up nicely, “Friendship can lift you up, strengthen and empower you, or break you down, weaken and defeat you.” (32) This is why it is so important to surround yourself with positive people, and

As I helplessly watch my fifteen year old roommate fall to pieces in front of me, I feel everything around me slow to a crawl. Blood pounds my ear drums, I feel the color drain from my cheeks, and my feet take me forward as if they have a mind of their own. I fall to my knees and suddenly everything speeds up again – the pounding in my ear drums intensifies, my hands are trembling but I manage to grasp the side of the bed in an attempt to bring myself close to her. Her face is buried into her sheet. Muffled screaming escapes her as I whisper gentle reassurances in her ear, hoping with everything I have that she can hear me. I know she doesn’t. Even if she does, she can’t make sense of it right now. She’s stuck somewhere else, somewhere she revisits every day of her life and every time she closes her eyes to sleep.

As I looked up, the sky was dark the sidewalk illuminated by the streetlights. The sound of crickets and cars echoing through my ears. I walked home that night, tears in my eyes. I was leaving, I couldn’t handle it anymore. The meds, doctors, psychiatrists nothing was working, our lives were in constant danger. By the time I got home the car was gone. By the time, I finished packing it was dawn. The sun creeping in through the shutters. For the next couple of days, I crashed at Jason’s before I headed South. I heard my cell ringing, it was mom… I let it go to voicemail.

As teenagers in high school are in their final year of school, a sinking feeling sets in that you have to make a decision about what the next steps in your life are. For myself, I chose to take the less expensive route and stay closer to home. But most of my closest confidants respectfully chose routes they saw fit for themselves. This would end up meaning that I would not be five lockers down from people that I have been friends with for six plus years, which was a hard realization to come to. By the start of college, I would have friends at MSU, Grand Valley, CMU, California, Florida and England. With friendships being a huge priority to me this was not an easy thing to go through at the time. Knowing that the people I spent every day with

Night, with mum and dad huddled on either side of the kitchen table, scribbling on pads of paper, and dad punching in sums on the calculator with his clumsy, blunt fingers. Night, with long discussions in low voices that stopped if we into the room. Night, dad with a fresh beer at his elbow and an empty on the floor beside him, holding onto a flake of chocolate like a cigar, twirling the thing between his thumb and forefinger, crunching onto it and shards flying everywhere. Night, when Mum and Dad had sank what was left of the insurance money and all their savings into a little old town house and a car franchise, signing all the leases, contracts, papers. Night, when Dad was his own boss, answering to no one. And overnight, when the journey abruptly turned its direction. Down in town, a high speed railway station had emerged. But dad couldn’t go anywhere, he was trapped by the crossroads. Juggled a few part time jobs, handy work around town limping in pain. No more notions of independence. All he could do was try his best to make it work. And he did. We even did some paper runs with

I haven’t been able to sleep for the past month. I hear my door creak and I look at the door. I see someone open the door very slowly before coming in. I look to see Maria tiptoeing into my room. “What are you doing?” I ask “You know your mom would kill me if she saw us.”

The worst night came after my mom left us. Why she didn’t take me, I’ll never understand. It was almost as if she’d left me for dead; the result of her absence had an obvious consequence. I wish I didn’t have to take her place, but I did, and now I know how his words feel, stabbing you repeatedly. I know how his hands feel, leaving imprints on my face. I know how her

You ever know that kind of fear? The ice in your veins. She did try to leave, a couple times. One time we made it as far as Phoenix but, we ran out of money and he was calling, begging, his voice thick as honey. I tried everything, I could to convince her, to keep going. I would get a job. We would have a fresh start. But she turned that car around, and drove straight through to daylight. I could feel the planet spinning that night. Did you know that the earth turns at 1,000 miles an hour? Most of the time you can’t tell. But you can always feel it when you are travelling in the wrong direction. That was only a month ago. And right away he started up again. Last night? Okay, you want to hear about last night? He was out as usual and I heard his truck sputter into the driveway. I could tell by the way the gravel crunched under his feet that he was drunk, outa of his mind. Pretty soon I heard voices in their room. Not loud at first, but then there was a slam against the wall and there was silence for a moment. Something was different this time, I could sense it. I rushed to their room and saw him hovering over her, hitting her over and over. She wasn’t even conscious. I

My mother was out of town, so I knew it was not her. I grew afraid of the strange woman in my house, the maroon-colored walls in my bedroom was giving me an ominous feeling, making my room look stained with blood. I went quietly out of my door and down the hallway, knowing that they were arguing in the kitchen by the volume of their voices. I paused in the middle of the hall, unsure whether to continue or to go back to my bedroom. I only decided on the former after I heard a muffled shout and the woman’s voice laughing. This decision was the biggest mistake of my life.

I felt someone rubbing my arm softly. When I opened my eyes, I was on the couch with… Katy was snuggled up against me and held my arm in place as I tried to move it from cradling her. Oh, but the man’s deep harsh voice that now rattled my brain had me frozen in place and in pain. Katy covered most of my face being in front of me as we spooned, but I could see (who had to be her dad) on the wall size TV looking at the two of us huddled closely together.

I wake to a knock at my door. I open my eyes and startle. I'm in an unfamiliar room. Where am I? Suddenly, a million devastating memories flow through my mind at once. There's blood, and tears, and anger. I'm pulled from my mind by my Aunt Julia's voice, "It's happenin' again, ain't it dear?" she asked, her southern drawl more apparent than usual.

Ellie and I lay in our beds, neither one of us knew what to say. In the other room, our host parents were arguing. We didn’t know what about, but we knew it was serious. Then we heard a “THWACK” followed by silence. Ellie and I sat up in our beds and looked at each other, I could tell she was as scared as I was. “Was that? Did he just?” she asked me. Then the arguing started back up again. We calmed back down until we heard it again. “THWACK” We knew then, the noise we heard, was him beating her. We got up, our hearts racing; neither of us knew what to do. We got our nerves together to go get help. When we opened the door to our room we saw the children sitting on the couch crying out for their mother. I could see the fear in their face and I knew something needed to change.

When I was in kindergarten, I met my best friend. She was very shy at first and nothing about her seemed malicious. However, as the years went by, she became very imperious and unwilling to share anything, including friends. She wouldn’t allow me to befriend any other people without putting up a fight. However, she was allowed all the friends she pleased. Over the years she began to push everyone apart so that she was the common area between a bunch of enemies. Eventually, she and I began to argue over petty things and she would always make me feel as if I did something wrong. A massive argument then arose and I began to lose hope for our friendship because even though she was using me, I was oblivious at the time. The fight did separate us, and I was quite somber about the situation. However, this was when I realized all the things she had been doing wrong; all the things that I was better off without. The ending of our friendship for this period of time allowed me to reach this epiphany that I was my own person able to have my own friends, able to make my own decisions, able to be happy about my accomplishments. This sudden realization lifted the doleful weight from my shoulders, allowing me to become a much happier person with a new outlook on my life. Like I stated before, sometimes it takes us until we reach our lowest point to realize the journey that awaits, to regain the hope and strength that was lost

“Its prime time” I said to myself in the mirror. The last half of my plan was the most valuable, and the most malicious. Wednesday night I brought my boyfriend over for a “study date” and broke her bed that she just got fixed, and left her blankets to sleep on the couch. I also “accidentally” read her journal. My bed never felt more comfortable than it did that night. On Thursday I brought all my friends over and had a rowdy party so it was impossible for Cynthia to study-or get any sleep, it wouldn’t be that bad- except for the fact that she had exams the next day. On Friday I woke up smiling. By this time our apartment was trashed. My things were everywhere, except my room. The bathroom looked and smelled disgusting, none of the dishes were done, and when Cynthia came home she looked outraged. Don’t get mad; get even because seeing that look on her face was priceless- Sweet revenge. My plan had worked.

Through my experiences I have come to realize that there are basically three types of friends a person can have. There are friends that I call “sometimes” friends, these people appear to be your friend but only when you are face to face with them, and when you are not around them they act more like a foe. They are often referred to as two faced or a back stabber. These types of friends are not very reliable nor should they be trusted. Another type of friend a person can have, and the best kind, is a “true” friend. A true friend is someone you know you can always trust and rely on no matter what. The last type of friend is the “acquaintance”. These are the type of friends that you do not necessarily hate, but at the same time you do