The Pen

by Merve Oncu

She looks at me in the same way as she did ten years ago. Her smile has never changed, but is still the same insulting grin. She wasn’t talking, but all throughout Thanksgiving dinner, her eyes didn’t stop speaking. I want to have an argument with her but she doesn’t say anything to me. Her “success” is enough to her. As a 25-year-old young adult, I’m still losing something because of her. I never understand the relationship with my twin sister. She always acts as an enemy to me. She has never supported me. She has always been my competitor. I don’t understand how our personalities can be that much different when we have the same appearance. I have always been the imaginative one, and she has been the realistic one. I have always acted with my emotions and she has acted more with logic. I have always supported the truth and her truth depends on whom she is talking with at the time. If she is the ice, I am the fire and this time she was cold enough to extinguish me. She won. She got the pen.

She just looked at me and then she smiled at me. She thought I couldn’t be successful. Even though I may have had success, I could never be as successful as her. Her smile did not symbolize happiness. Her smile was insulting. She was trying to remind myself “who I am”. However, I was acting like I was too excited for Thanksgiving dinner. On the other hand, this time I was also angry at my father. He knows that she was always racing with me. Even though he knows that he still puts me inside of this competition. Everybody has different goals but my twin has the worst one. She has one goal and her goal is to be more successful than me. She always chooses to do what I want to do to compete with me. But this time I was really mad because I had one thing that I am better at than her: writing. I don’t want to see how she can be better than me in writing. She can be better than me at everything else but she won’t be better than me with this. This is just too much for me. As a 15 year old teenager, this is a promise for myself: I will win this time. I have to take the pen. I have to win this competition.

Everybody is trying to motivate me. I hate these kinds of conversations. I don’t need anybody’s supporting sentences. I am a young adult right now and facing the struggle of life. I have failed so far and I have to accept this. I lost the most important thing in my life. Never mind actually, I never had it to begin with. My father said to us, “Whoever gets accepted from The New York Times will get the pen.” That pen was most important thing in life for my father. Ten years ago, he wrote his first successful book and that book changed his life. That book was the beginning of his success. Hence, that pen was really important to him because he wrote with that pen. Now, I’m just looking at my sister and how happy she is. She is not happy because she has the pen, she is happy because she beat me one more time.

This Thanksgiving, the star was my dad. All night we just talked abut how our life changed in one year—how our life changed with my father’s book. We knew that he would be successful the rest of his life. His dreams would come true. Everybody was just so excited to see my dad’s new books. He was so stressed because until this age of 40, he couldn’t be successful; what he wanted to have all his life until this book came along. This book changed his and our lives. My twin and I were not able to read the book because he said, “ You have to read the book when you guys get older because this book is for adults” and my twin replied “Even though as a 15 year-old I know I can understand the book, but I don’t think she can understand as much as me.” When she replied to my father she was looking at me and again my father didn’t say anything to her. I was really mad at both of them. When I say something to her, my father always scolds me. However, he didn’t say anything to my twin. When I said to my father, “you don’t love me as much as you love her” he always says that this is not true. Even though he didn’t agree with this, this is the truth!

She is happy but she doesn’t deserve the pen. She doesn’t deserve the acceptance from The New York Times. She never deserves any of her success. She is always saying lies, cheating, and she always has some tricks up her sleeve. I don’t understand how she does these things. I don’t understand how she can continue her life without remorse. I don’t understand how she still can look at my face. She just has stolen my life; she has what I was supposed to have. During Thanksgiving dinner I didn’t act like I was happy. All night I didn’t talk, I didn’t join the conversations. She was also quiet at the beginning of the dinner but when time kept passing, she just started to take pleasure in the moment because she could tell I wasn’t feeling good. She was acting like she was trying to change my mood but actually she was trying to demoralize me further. She said to me, “I don’t even care I got accepted from The New York Times, I just wanted to see if I was able to get accepted or not. If you want the pen you can take it. It is not more important than your ‘happiness’.” If she didn’t care that much, if really cared about my happiness, why did she also apply for The New York Times? As always she was saying lies and as always I didn’t say anything to her. If I start to talk, my father will just warn me. I will just get angrier as always.

I am really excited to get accepted from The New York Times. I am really excited to get the pen and just for one time I am really excited to win against my twin. I will also write a really good book like my father. I will also write with that pen. This time I will win the competition. I will be the happiest one. I won’t be happy because I am more successful compared to my twin. I won’t be like her. I will be happy because my goal will be achieved. My biggest happiness will be from getting accepted from The New York Times and getting the pen. I am so excited for my future. It will be the beginning of my happy life.

After our “happy” Thanksgiving dinner, I went to my room. My father followed me and said, “ I didn’t know that you felt that upset. I am really sorry for that. Take this pen for just tonight. I know that if you can write what you are feeling right now you will have a really good piece of writing.”

So I wrote this piece for my twin and my father…

Ten years ago today, I had different expectations for my life. When I was dreaming for today, I never expected life would be the way it is. Today should be the beginning of my happiest days. Today I am supposed to write something happy, something about a rosy future. I should feel peaceful and happy. But I am not. I never expected these things, even though I am a pessimistic person. This time I wasn’t! You all couldn’t understand how important the pen was to me. You all didn’t understand how much writing means to my life. I just wanted to win for one time. Dad, I just wanted you to see that I also can be successful. I also can make you happy. But I couldn’t… I lost for one more time. Maybe this piece can help you understand how important writing is to me, how much I cared about this competition. I wrote everything as I feel it. I wrote for what I feel for today, I wrote about the ten years ago when I also felt this way. I never expected that this work would be my first and last work with this pen.

Goodbye

***

This piece in remembrance of my angel,

First of all, I never thought that one day I would have to write all of the truth about my books and our life. I never thought that it would be this bad. Maybe you won’t believe me, but if I knew that this was how it was going to be, I would never have written any of my books. Right now, it is too late for everything.

I am a murderer. I am a murderer of my daughter. My daughter committed suicide because of me. Greed makes people do strange things but it should never get to this point. It should not make the person a murderer. Did you ever read your own daughter’s suicide letter? Did you ever look at the life from your own child’s perspective? I did it, but not because I truly wanted to help her. I did it for my own benefit. My child had schizophrenia. She thought that she had a twin sister. What I wrote for my book was not an imaginary character. All the memories in the book were actually her life. When I became successful with this story, I just continued to manipulate her life. Even though she didn’t have a twin sister, I acted like a she had twin sister. I played with my daughter’s twin. I always put her inside of the competition. I always let her believe something unreal.

I played with her dreams. I couldn’t see how much she was hurting. I couldn’t see how much she was depressed. She wanted to get success because it made me happy. She wanted to prove herself to me. My greed makes me blind. My daughter was dying in front of me and I didn’t help her. I killed my character. I killed my own daughter because of being successful. I couldn’t help with her disease. In fact, I just played along with her disease. I made her twin sister out to be a devil and they were always put inside of the competition. She never won any of the competitions. I always made her feel useless, as I wrote in my books. I was not changing my character‘s life in my books; I was changing my daughter’s life. At the end, actually I changed our life.

I never realized that this pen would be her end. I never realized this pen would be our end.

I am going to where I deserve.

“Famous writer commits suicide in house after his daughter’s suicide” – The New York Times.

(Bio: Merve Öncü is a recent graduate from Emmanuel College. She studied Writing, Editing, & Publishing as well as Business & Management. She is originally from Istanbul, Turkey. In addition to writing, she enjoys taking pictures, hiking, and reading books. She loves traveling and exploring new cities and cultures. Currently, she is working as a Digital Marketing Specialist at Inan Group. She also freelancer for several companies as a social media coordinator. Merve one day hopes to write and publish a novel.)