New Beginnings

• Natalie Scrivener, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2013

Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to be free?



Have you ever wondered what it would be outside of the life that you're used to? Outside of the only way you knew how to live? How it would feel to finally leave the constricting lifestyle that belonged to you?



Have you ever wanted to know how it would be to start a brand new life? One where no one knows your past?



Maybe you’ve wanted to run away.



What would it feel like to leave the life you had?



Would you be able to leave your family? Your friends? The life you know oh-so well? What about the caring brother and the loving sister? The uncle who was like your father when your father never had the time to talk to you, and the mother who loved you like you were the only star in the sky?



Have you ever loved someone? Would you be able to leave them too? What of the job that you wanted so bad? Your education that you were doing so well at? Can you leave those too?



Everything and everyone you ever knew? Could you leave them behind with your room empty with you and your belongings? Nothing remaining inside but an unmade bed, a desk with nothing on top and empty drawers? Would you leave that behind with just a note on the bed, with two simple sentences, ‘I’m sorry. Don’t look for me.’?



Could you let that go easily?



Probably not.



Could you welcome the new life with open arms? Where you’re known by a different name by people who have become so important to you, but yet you still keep secrets from them?



Would you accept the new life with open arms?



Would you embrace it?



Could you handle the change of not having to hide anymore? Or being someone you could like? The drastic changes of not being you anymore? Would it be easy to be someone different to who you were raised to be?



Could you handle not being you anymore?



Probably not.