Cameron Penner

At age thirteen, I once lived on the hardwood floor.

In seventh grade, I believed that I would not exist at thirteen. This was not a suicidal ideation; I just believed once you reached thirteen, life did not continue. On the night of my thirteenth birthday, I cried from inside the box that was my bedroom, barely sleeping, barely moving, barely living. The next morning, I fainted coming down the stairs after being wide awake for 30 hours.

I was falling.

My eyes opened, and my body lay prone on the hardwood floor. Nothing made sense, nor was anything real. I had no interests. I was no one, and I didn’t matter. I was thirteen and boring.

I thought about how I would beg my parents to put me in soccer in elementary school while curled up in a ball, unmoving on the hardwood floor. I dreamed of movement, but my feet were sinking into the mud, and it was getting hard to breathe.

I thought about gliding along the bars with the girl I once knew, back when the playground was our stage, and we believed in our act. But my hands began to sweat, and I slipped. I fell into the wood chips, scraping my forearms.

I thought about Spider-Man and how he helped me push my bike up the hill. But the lactic acid built up in my legs, and I fell back and rolled down to the start. I was not a fighter.

I thought about the alligators, plants, neighbors, twins, and cards that used to link arms with me. They taught me all I knew in life, and bridged the gap between each age. But the chain had broken, and I descended to the hardwood floor below. My fate lay within the floor, and I accepted that fact.

Not once did I think about fourteen.

Waking up on the floor showed me where I was as a human being. I spoke to the wood, begging it to push me up. The hardwood floor disgusted me, with cobwebs in the corners and dirt beginning to cake onto my hands.

I wasted each day of thirteen on the comfort of the hardwood floor, telling myself that nothing was worth anything. The floor was all I knew; I would run my fingers through the planks, hoping for a splinter, because I would feel something other than the cold wood on my face. In some ways, life did not exist at thirteen.

I befriended it, trusted it, confided in it, believed in it. It told me that life with my feet planted and my head upright is a life that I do not need. So there I lay, unmoving, not understanding exactly what I just gave up.

I was forever destined to glare into the cracks in the wood and debate my life. At least, in whispers, that’s what the wood told me.

How I got up off the floor is a memory I do not recall—one day, the cold wood on my face just peeled off, and soon my limbs pushed my body up. As I stood upright, I began to float towards the top of the stairwell, towards the people.

I am now seventeen, and the hardwood floor is a distant memory. It is rare for me to dwell on the old friend, but sometimes, I do look down the stairwell. As I stare, I think about how it felt to open up fully to the floor. When I pass the floor, I walk with confidence and no intention to lie down again.

I am not bitter anymore. My personality lies within the hardwood floor no longer. I am seventeen with a dream, a purpose, and a reason, keeping my feet planted and my head upright.