As the author, I would like to remind everyone that depression and can be very serious for some people. If you feel depressed, please seek a friend or some other professional help. Don't wait until it's to late.
Life Worth Living
I sat in my car looking at the fast moving current of the river. It was the snowmelt that gave rise to the river this time of the year. I knew that once I jumped off the bridge, there was no going back. Swimming would have been near impossible.
Getting out of my car, slowly walking to the bridge walkway, I started thinking why I was actually going to do this. When I entered high school, I believed that I was like any other kid. I really wasn't a raven beauty, but I did have my fair share of male seekers. My father wouldn't let me date until I was sixteen, so I had a year to wait.
My favorite sport was soccer, and I believed that the constant running up and down the field did a pretty good job of keeping my body in shape and toning my muscles. My thighs were not overly big, but firm and muscular. I felt all that running up and down the field also helped give me a nice rounded butt, sticking out just far enough to make it sexy.
Sometimes I wished that I had a bigger chest. I mean what boy doesn't like looking at big rack of boobs on a girl. Instead I was stuck with good solid B cup breasts, just like my mom. During the two years from sixteen to eighteen, I had my fair share of dates. I had learned early on, in most guys thinking I was a challenge, who could get into my pants first. I think word got around that if my date couldn't get into my pants, at least he was treated to a hand job.
Just before I turned eighteen, during the summer at a party down by the river, I let my date finally take my cherry. I was totally disappointed. I let him do it one more time, realizing that a lover he was not. After him I had three other lovers, and none were able to give me any kind of satisfaction. That's when I think I really stopped going on dates with guys. They were just not worth the effort.
My birthday was in November, and on my eighteenth birthday, I treated myself by buying a lotto ticket. I was now old enough, so why not. I dropped it into my purse, along with some gum I had just purchased.
I had forgotten all about the lotto ticket until the middle of January, I was searching for a pen in my purse when I came across the forgotten lotto ticket. I logged onto the Internet and went to the state lotto site to check out the ticket, thinking at least I might have won five dollars. I started checking off the numbers, realizing that so far I had them all and when I looked at the final number, I knew I had won the jackpot.
Not believing my luck, I had to double and triple check the numbers a few times, still having a hard time believing that I had actually won. According to the rules in tiny letters on the back of the ticket, I had just over a month to cash it in or lose out on the winnings.
Having seen a TV show about past lotto winners filing for bankruptcy, I searched through the phone book looking for a tax attorney. Having found one, I had made an appointment for Friday, three days from then.
The first thing I wanted to do was tell all my friends that I had won, but thought it might be better if I just kept it to myself until I actually had the money in hand. Over the next two and a half days, I was almost a nervous wreck by Friday morning. I decided to skip school, thinking no way was I going to be able to hold myself together until my scheduled appointment with the attorney.
Finally at one o'clock, I was sitting in the office waiting room of Mallard and Mallard, Attorneys At Law. The attorney I had made the appointment with was Henry Mallard. When I was shown into his office, meeting him for the first time, he was an older man, tall and very nice looking. He had just enough gray on the sides of his head to give him a very distinguished look.
After shaking his hand, he welcomed me to the firm and asked what he could do for me. Without saying a word, I took the lotto ticket and placed it on his desk in front of him. Looking at it for a moment, he turned to his computer, probably checking out the ticket against the state posted number. He kept looking from the computer screen and back to the ticket several times. Finally after a minute or two, he looked up and smiled.
"Looks like you hit the jackpot, and I see that you have one month left to claim the jackpot. Congratulations Miss Moore."
"Thank you." I said, feeling the stress of the last three days melt away, taking a heavy burden from my shoulders.
For the next hour and a half, we talked about all my options. I could take a lump sum with penalties, or take all the winnings over a twenty-five year period, minus taxes of course. After hearing all the options, and with his advice, I took the lump sum, putting what I needed in a trust fund so that I couldn't spend it all at once. I told him that I wanted to buy my mother a home and new car, and set her up on a trust fund also that would last the rest of her life. He said that at a later date he would recommend other options for the remainder of the money to ensure steady growth over the years.
Having signed and agreed to all of these things, he said he would meet me at the lotto office on Monday afternoon to submit the ticket and claim the jackpot. On the following Friday morning, I received a call from Henry, who told me that the monies had been transferred into the accounts he had established and I was now a multi-millionaire.
When classes let out at two that afternoon, I took a cab down to the Lexus dealership to buy my mother her new car. At first all the salesmen seemed reluctant to talk to me until a young lady approached me, asking me what I had in mind. I told her I wanted to buy a car for my mother and was willing to pay cash for it. At first she probably thought I was trying to play a joke on her set up by one of her associates, until I walked over to the model sitting on the showroom floor. It was a white LS four sixty L model with a sticker price in the nineties, but I knew for cash I would getting a discount
When I asked her what my price was going to be for the car, she did include a discount, not that big, but a few thousand off the sticker price. When I told her I would take it, she looked a little hesitant, but led me back to the dealer finance office and turned me over to them. After he had told me what the price was going to be with taxes and all, I pulled out a checkbook and began writing a check for the amount.
When he asked me about the check, I looked at him and said that I just won over a hundred million on the state lotto, and yes the check was good. After that, I was treated like royalty.
Later that night, after mom got home, she questioned me about the new car sitting in the driveway. I simply told her that it was her new car, and that I won the state lotto. She kind of scoffed about it until I pulled out the papers that I had signed, showing I was the lotto winner. If she hadn't sat down at that very moment, I think she would have fainted.
Within a matter of a few days, I had told all my friends about my winning and word was spreading. By Saturday morning, we had TV reporters and knocking on the front door wanting statements from the latest lotto winner. All my friends started asking for favors, asking me to buy them all kinds of gifts. Whenever I tried to talk to any of them, before I could finish a sentence, they would ask me to buy them something.
Over the next couple of months, I was treated very differently. All the people I thought were my friends seemed to only want something from me. Others would look from a distance, but stayed far away as if some evil was going to happen to them.
Graduation was nearing, and I began to feel terribly lonely, no one to really talk to. I finally had to change my phone number to stop all the harassing calls I got, either from my so-called friends, or others seeking handouts for some stupid charity. Being so bummed out, I didn't even go to my own graduation. It was supposed to be the highlight of a school career. I had spent the entire evening sitting on the fender of my car, I should say mom's old car now that I was driving it, watching the cars traveling up and down the expressway.
It was during that summer that I bought my mother her new home. It wasn't the biggest, but it was more practical for her, and for me as long I stayed there. Things began to quickly deteriorate between my mother and I when she found out that I wasn't going to give her half the money, but instead a trust fund I thought would last her a lifetime. She did accept the house, but completely ignored me and by the end of summer, she was not even talking to me. Packing my belongings, I moved out.
I wasn't the brightest in school, I could have possibly made it through college, but I knew that it would be a very difficult struggle to do so. Taking my next best option, I moved into an apartment that also had a garage to park my car. After setting everything up, I took a cab to the airport, and boarded a plane to start my worldwide journey. I left my phone in the glove compartment of the car; hell, there was no one to call, no one to tell I made it safely. Most of all, there was no one to ask to come and pick me up at the airport when I returned. For two years, I traveled the world. I kept in contact with Henry, my attorney. He assured me that everything was well and told me to enjoy myself.
Two years later, I was home. I was glad to know I didn't need to pack my suitcases for the next leg of my journey, but already getting bored looking at the same four walls. During my travels, I had bought a good camera and computer. I was able to take as many pictures as I wanted and save them all for viewing later.
