Avery Bell

After my father took us to that beach, he left. Less than 24 hours after I had the greatest day of my life, my father disappeared out of my life. Not because he wanted to, or because my mother kicked him out, but because someone decided it was a good idea to stab a knife through his stomach, and then just leave him on the pavement. I think I need to let not only my father, but also the man who did it go, so I can move on with my life and be happy again.

To me, happiness is… When you look into someone you love’s eyes while they’re passionately explaining something. If you try and do it, and really focus on how their eyes light up and how their pupils contract by their pure excitement, you’ll never have to imagine what happiness feels like, because you will have experienced it right in that moment.

This meant that my brother and I had an entire beach for us to run around on, and despite us being past the age of 13, we ran around playing tag with our father, as if we were children. To this day, I have yet to experience a more perfect day.

1st of January 2015. Prompt: Something seemingly out of reach. There’s still a long way to go, isn’t there? Going from this to that? Today isn’t the 1st of January, but I wanted there to be a piece of me in every day of 2015, so I’m writing it now. It seems so out of reach for me to write just a little bit every day this year. It just seems so… Surreal that in a year, I will be looking back at 365 little notes from myself.