I stood there staring at the blank canvas. Who, or what, was the love of my life? I must've sat there for thirty minutes thinking about what I would create, how I would paint the love of my life.

I sat down and thought about all the happiest moments in my life. I thought about my first few Christmas parties with my family, playing in the rain, waking up at five a.m. on Christmas morning and ripping through presents, my first day of school, making my first friends, holding my first dog I got for my birthday, summer trips we took to Florida every summer during the last week of July. Then my mind wandered to the seasonal things that brought happiness. Like the blooming flowers in the spring that brought on runny noses and itchy eyes, seeing butterflies, the smell of rain, sitting outside to read a book. Barbecues in the summer, the long hot days spent outside, the late nights spent with friends and family, spending as much time in pools or at the beach, the smell of suncreen and bug spray. Fall is my favorite, though. The cool weather, sweaters, booties, the beautiful leaves that make the roads in my small town look like a painting, the gorgeous fall colors, campfires, preparing for Halloween and Thanksgiving. Winter. The weather finally getting cold where I live, warm clothes and hot chocolate, Christmas time, that one good snow fall that we get if we're lucky, the end of the semester, and all the time spent with friends and family.

I could think of tons and tons of happy memories. But in between all those wonderful memories that brought me love and happiness, I remembered the bad ones. The people that made me doubt myself, the things that made me hate my body, the moments I wanted to change myself and my life. The nights I cried myself to sleep. The times I cried so hard I threw up. The words and thoughts that made me feel worthless. The days I wondered if anyone loved me, if my life was worth living. The days I thought about ending it all.

That's when I realized that there wasn't one thing that could be the love of my life, and there wasn't one thing that I could paint to represent the love of my life. So I just started painting, not trying to paint one thing, using all the colors I had.

I stepped back to look at it. In one corner it reminded me of winter, with silvers, blues and golds. The next corner reminded me of spring, with bright pastel colors, almost looking like flowers. Below that, the corner had bright blues, greens, yellows, and reds. It was summer. The corner next to summer was obviously fall, with marroons, dark yellow, oranges, and browns, perfectly blended. Almost looking like fall leaves. Each season connected, the colors coming together. Like winter turning into spring, spring into summer, summer into fall, and fall into winter. They drifted into the middle looking like a beautiful cloud of colors representing all the love and happiness in my life. But if you look close enough within this rainbow of colors, you can see patches that are black or grey. Which represented all the dark moments in my life.

This was because the love of my life wasn't one thing or person. It was all the people that have helped build me up, all the people I love, the memories that I've had with them and the memories I've made alone. The love of my life is my life.

Fear was a weird feeling, different from the others. You see, happiness was a feeling. Everyone has felt happiness, some more then others, but everyone feels it. Then, you have depression. Depression is a bit closer to fear, but not exactly. You see everyone has felt depression, some people experience it more then they would like to say. Others are hardly ever depressed, but those are the lucky ones. Anger. Oh, most people can't hide the fact that they feel anger. Everyone feels anger, probably everyday, whether it's for thirty seconds or 30 minutes.

Then you have fear. Fear has always been an interesting feeling. Some live in the feeling, they deal with it everyday. Other's however, may forget how fear feels because they rarely experience it. Some people can face things head on without an ounce of fear. Then there are the people who scream when they see a mouse and get dizzy when the thunder is too loud.

It's weird how fear affects us so differently. How some people get excited when think about jumping out of a plane with a parachute on their back. For other people, that's their worst nightmare, the thing that would make them wake up in a cold sweat at 2:15 a.m. Some people love going to the circus to see those hilarious clowns, others scoot away and cover their face in the sight of those rainbow haired monsters.

You have some people, like myself, who hate being scared, so they want to face their fears head on. They know that heights are one of their worst fears so they want to jump out of a plane. Then you have some, like my sister, who also hate being scared, so they've decided that life is lived best in their comfort zone, if you don't have to face your fear, then you won't be scared as much, right?

And this. my friends, is why fear is a weird, but interesting feeling.

There's something different about December. It's more than the cold weather and the bare trees. Friends and families come together, whether it's to decorate, buy a gift, or enjoy a nice meal together. It's a sweet, almost innocent month. Everyone remembers that it's okay to have fun. We become like children again.

December seems to be a great month to give back. It's when most people donate to a good cause or volunteer to help the less fortunate. Everyone spends so much time getting gifts for the ones they love. It seems like a great time to let your loved ones know how much they mean to you.

I know a good bit of people might despise December. They might have a hell of a gppd reason for Decmember to be their least favorite month and that's just fine. These are just a few things I've noticed about the month.

How do you feel about December?

Until that day, fear had been an idea, a concept. Now it was real: a feeling I would carry inside me for the rest of my life. The day began innocently enought, with my usual early morning coffee. I got ready, wearing the same clothes as usual, the same makeup as usual, and doing my hair as usual. There was only one thing I had planned to do that wasn't the usual for me. I had decided to walk to school. I mean it seemed alright. It wasn't like I had never done it before. I had even gotten up a bit earlier this morning so I would have plenty of time for this easy fifteen minute walk. It was simple and safe. After all, who would try anything at 7:15 in the morning.

But that was before I had met him. Actually, when I had first met him, I thought he was nice and quite funny. He seemed like a good guy. When he asked me if I wanted to go to that cute little coffee shop on the corner, I said yes. After grabbing coffee and talking for a bit, he asked me if I wanted to go see a movie. Once again I said yes. To be honest, I think most people would have. He was nice, funny and easy to talk to. Plus, we had a lot in common. We liked the same movies, same TV shows, same food, same music, and even the same books. But trust me when I say that the guy I met then, the guy I liked, was not him. Not truly.

He arrived at my house at exactly 7:00. That just happened to make me like him more because I hated people being late almost as much as I hated being late. But I had never told him that. He was a gentleman. He handed me the prettiest bouquet of flowers I had ever seen. I noticed that it had a range of flowers and colors with red roses on the outside. It was absolutely beautiful. Then, he opened the door for me.

Five minutes passed without a sound. Then he broke the silence.

"You have no idea how long I've waited to see this movie." I laughed a bit. Only because I had said the same exact thing to my mom this morning. He talked for about ten more minutes before playing my favorite song.

"Don't you love this song? I thought you told me about it earlier at the coffee shop."

" I do love this song, but I've never actually told anyone about it."

" Oh lucky guess then," that all he said before laughing it off. Maybe it was a lucky guess, but it seemed a little too lucky. Earlier in the afternoon we'd talked about music, but the music we'd talked about didn't correlate with this song. I didn't think too much of it, though, it was prbably just a lucky guess after all. The little voice in my head thought different, it was telling me that somethinf was off. I ignored it, I just wanted to have a good time with this genuinely nice guy.

Twenty more minutes passed. Maybe I should've listened to that voice when it first started. Around thirty-five minutes had passed and we had already passed the movie theater I thought we were going to.

" I thought we were going to see a movie. Where are we?"

"Shh you'll see," he said, a little grin on his face but his eyes didn't change. They stayed glued on the road and showed no hint of emotion.

The voice in my head was going crazy now. It was telling me I was stupid. I was so damn stupid for getting in the car with a guy I had just met today. I barely knew him. Was he really as nice as he seemed? Or was he really some psychopath? Was he faking everything?

Once again I ignored it. I was being ridiculous. He was probably just taking me to a nicer, bigger, movie theater. Maybe he was even going to take to a nice restaurant and buy me dinner. He had been great and I didn't neet to repay him by being overly paranoid.

I had a hard time believing everything I was telling my self when he pulled off to the side of the road. I looked around but the only thing I saw was an old road and trees. We were in the middle of nowhere. There were no cars driving by, no houses or stores anywhere around. Not even one of those crappy gas staions. Nothing. That's when the fear truly started to set in. What was he planning to do? Was the little voice in my heads right? Was he going to kill me? Was he going to kidnap me? Or was he going to rape me?

My mind was almost racing as fast as my heart was, but I tried my best to relax.

"So, what are we doing here?" I was trying my best to keep my voice clear and steady, to not let the fear show through. He leaned over and put his arm over my shoulders. He seemed so relaxed. Maybe I was just being paranoid.

"Whatever you want to do," he said smiling at me. My heart as pounding.

"Well I didn't have anything planned. I have no idea," I said, trying my best to fake a smile.

"You know what? I have somehtinf in mind," he pulled me closer to him. My heart was pounding so hard and fast that I could barely hear myself think.

"What is it?"

The next moment happened to fast, but when I look back on it, it seemed like I was watching it in slow motion. He wrapped his arm tightly around my waist, pulled a rag out of nowhere and covering my nose and mouth with it. As much as I struggled to get away, I couldn't esape his grip and I couldn't even get an inch away from the chloroform soaked rag. I struggled and struggled, kicking, punching.and screaming until my struggle was no longer against him. I was trying my best to stay concious. As much as I tried, I could feel myself drifting. Everytime I tried to crawl back to consciousness, I would just drift farther away, and farther until everything was black.

#fear #aspiringauthor #14yearsold