Death at the Door:
an extremely drawn-out, over-worked
soliloquy & eulogy,
by rewired.
"Evolution is not a force but a process, not a cause but a law."
-- John Morley.
Death hung in the air like a foul mist, enveloping the moment in a dark and elusive shadow. It was a thick, choking and putrid mist that surrounded us, serving as an ominous reminder of what was soon to follow. It penetrated the deepest pits of my being.
Tightening your grip on my shirt, it seemed as if the emotional roller-coaster you had been riding had taken you on yet another one of those sudden, twisting turns. You were trying your very best to ignore all the chaos within you, and the stench of death outside you, and just sink into the comfort of my presence. You tried your damnest to use me as some type of warming light in this chilling, lurid moment; as some distraction from the pains of the unavoidable.
If it were my own death that we were awaiting, I could have easily sunk into the moment with powerful intensity. The monster was not coming for me, however -- it was coming for you. I knew damned well that if I were to hold you with my heart it would only mean greater pain when they ripped you from that battered organ’s grip. I could only find comfort in the fact that while we were both within this room, you were safe from them.
In the very least, it was comforting to think of it that way.
I wondered what was going on behind those eyes of yours, but you refused to let me. I could only catch what I believed to be evidence to support my suspicions through what came out of those eyes – for in the light of a coming death, the damn within you had finally broken. You shed the tears you’d sworn up and down for so long weren’t within you. I watched them closely as they ran down the bridge of your nose in thin streams, crossing your lips and coming to hang at the base of your chin. They drenched my shirt as you dug your face into my chest, grabbing the sides of my shirt tightly.
As much as I wanted to call the doubt in your chosen path – the doubt that you had denied having again and again, but which I had vaguely felt in you throughout all of this, and which I now sensed with utter assurance – I held back. As much as I wished I could take a mirror and place it before you so you could see more clearly the poster child of uncertainty that I saw weeping before me now, I knew it’s futility. Your decision had been made, and things were going to change after today. I saw it in you as clear as day in this dimly lit, smoke-filled room.
I’d often found it strange how each one of us members of this human race seem to be on this frantic (and, it often seems, futile) quest, forever striving to achieve a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in our existence. You had defined your purpose as helping others – namely, your parents. Like so many others, three of whom I knew, you chose to hitch a camouflage bus ride. So I lay there with you in my arms, on the bridge of what we might as well call the point of no return.
You let go of me for a moment, trying to catch a breath. You took a long, hard drag off that cigarette, and I took the opportunity to take a hit off of mine as well. There was such beauty in that image of you at that moment that I never had really taken the time to notice before. I guess it has the tendency to work that way; never truly seeing the life in someone until they’re on the brink of extinction, only seeing the value of life in the face of imminent death.
Your extinction was not something I particularly wanted to think about at the moment. I tried to ignore the future and focus on the Now; on the beauty of the present in the light the past shined upon in. I tried, too – I tried damned hard to focus on the wondrous beauties I found in the little things; those tiny points of light in the foreboding darkness that had taken over the world inside this room. I smiled at the way your eye squinted to block off the smoke as it rose, refusing to waste even a bit of the cigarette.
Unfortunately, that was precisely where I lost it. Watching you, I couldn’t look to the future, or remain in the present – I sunk into the past. I realized that these were the things that I was going to remember about you; the little things.
I would remember how you hated wearing shoes. I’d remember how you’d always rest your hand on the gear shift between the passenger seat and driver’s seat of your car while driving.
I’d remember the crazy expressions you’d make and the funny, almost accented voice you’d sometimes speak in, and how you ordered vegetarian `burgers’ from fast food restaurants.
I’d come to dwell on the way you’d fall asleep with the radio on, and how no one had better wake you before ten or you’d be liable to kill them when you finally arose.
I’d grin at how you loved to read the novels of Ann Rice, and had always told me that the movie we’d seen together was of no comparison to the books. I’d reflect on how you slept in your tiny, heavy-curtained room with that old typewriter on your desk, and how you’d write beautiful poetry and short stories.
I’d reflect on when I’d first met you at that amusement park with my cousin, and I’d look back on this very night, think about this very moment – your final hour.
You rose to look up at me, and seemed to be gathering yourself to speak to me once again. It had certainly been a while since I’d heard anything but the chatter inside my head. The silence seemed to have lasted an eternity.
“What?” I asked you. Your brown eyes looked dead into mine with an objective to convince that I could see right through.
“I’m not scared,” you casually lied to me. It was strange, hearing your mouth utter fiction as your eyes told no lies. I wondered which one of us you were trying harder to convince.
I’d come to value your mind and your heart, as well as that mystical world behind your eyes – but I could never understand them. I think now that this inability I had to comprehend what you held within yourself may be one of the reasons why I valued you so much. All those times we sat in your car, never running out of interesting things to share with each other. We went on talking for hours at a time, exchanging words and favors. We had shared so much of our souls in that short time we had... I believed we truly got to know each other at a level rarely experienced. I'd never been so close to a woman, I'd never touched such forbidden and sacred areas of the body and mind.
If only it had been you that I loved.
The smoke rose from the glowing cherries of our cigarettes, bridging the space between us and the door. My eyes slammed shut, my head tilted back and I sighed. I was doing my very best to ensure that I did not let this erupt out of me. I was doing my damnest to pretend this was all part of some horrible dream, and all I had to do was awake. I tried convincing myself that I had the power to stop time, perhaps even turn it back – but the reality of the situation was all-too distinct. The odor of the impending reality was becoming more potent with each passing second: a cloud of horror that was choking, suffocating and fucking relentless.
My eyes opened to look at the ceiling. Posters preaching faith in a god were taped to the ceiling of your room – a god I don't believe in. You always told me it was inspirational, and the Christian aspects of the poetry never bothered you. You always made it seem as if the posters were a tool of inspiration for you and nothing more, but I saw a belief that you had in what it preached. The faith and blind certitude in ideals. Being a slave to a higher power. Sacrificing oneself for what one interpreted to be a greater good. Fighting against `evil' and striving toward `good'.
My head fell, and my eyes then jumped to the clock. I felt my heart sink deeper and deeper into me. I swear you heard it as it sank to my stomach and become that knot of fear, for you clutched me tighter.
I looked down upon you and saw the loose strands of your hair, dampened by tears, hanging across your blushed features. You looked up at me straight in the eyes, no longer trying to hide me from the feelings that were rushing through you. You let me in, you trusted me it seemed, and the heart that had sank into the pits of my stomach twisted even more. My whole body seemed to convulse. Suddenly I found my eyes watering as well – and then there was a downpour between both of us as we fed each other our sorrow.
My eyes drifted back towards the clock, and I froze in awe. Previously, time had always seemed to go slower when you watched the clock, but now I saw minutes passing like seconds. You quickly took your delicate hand and pulled my chin away from the clock and back to your eyes. We kissed, and as we did so I wondered why it felt so very much more real at that moment than any other I’d had with you before. Again, I decided the intensity of the coming death played a vital role in the heightened flavor of reality in these moments.
Then I heard them.
The steps of the merchants of death; the footsteps of the feared; the march of the brainwashed zombies of destruction. They were there at the door, and it rattled as they rapped upon it and called your name. They'd come for you. The knowledge that all this was over – I couldn't breath anymore. The grip tightened to kill me.
The death that had been lingering, and which had within the last two hours grown into a thick mist, now had come to dominate the moment. I could taste it, see it, breathe it, and feel it. It was a sadness, mixed with and anger, boiling over in a pot of fear.
Then it happened: everything changed. It was just like that – like the flip of a switch and you were done. The time for crying and doubt was over. You were now owned by them. You were no longer the girl who I’d known. You’d changed as you had warned you would, and I had expected that, but this was all too fast. The end had come for you, and something else was being born out of the ashes right before my eyes. It was something I didn't understand. Something I feared, and something I tried to hate. I could do nothing more but lay there feeling angry, hurt and confused; betrayed and stranded.
You were going to just leave me here alone with this, adding to my world of questions? Adding to my world of chaos and confusion?
You got up and began to wipe your face free of tears, as you yelled for them that it would just be a minute. I stood up. I saw myself in the mirror on the back of your door, my face red and wet. You kissed me one last time and handed me the tiny micro-cassette recorder we’d both talked on the previous evening. It was one of my ways of preserving the moment and, in at least this particular instance, of documenting the downfall.
“I left a message on here for you,” you told me. “Promise me you’ll listen to it later, and alone.”
“I will.” I promised you. And I did. I considered those your last real words to me; perhaps a suicide letter. We never got the chance to talk about what was on that tape, but I listened to it, behind it – and I saw through it.
You turned around with your back to me and opened the door. With a final, deep breath, you stepped outside your bedroom door and into the hallway of your parents’ house.
There they stood, all prim and proper in their arrogance. They smiled as they looked at you – and they looked at you like hawks fixating on their pray. They shook your hand; fisherman reeling in their line. They were the death at the door, awaiting to escort the beautiful, free and passionate to the land of the ugly, programmed and lifeless.
You motioned for me to stand by you, and I did. They asked if I was your boyfriend; I may have laughed at any other time, but not now. You did laugh, however, and explained that I was just a close friend. They asked if you had your things, and you motioned to your bags.
All throughout this time, I noticed their reaction to me. With the way they looked at me and held their posture, they seemed to say a million words. Somewhere in there was their belief that a person such as me was diseased, and that they had the cure. They had a slight empathy for me, yes, but only so much as a vet approaches a little boy about his sick puppy.
“We’ll take her away for awhile, and when she comes back she’ll be all better.” They seemed to say.
To this I wanted to return the scowl I felt creeping up on my face, which would’ve said, “she's fucking fine just the way she is, you assholes.”
You took a few of your bags, they took the rest.
“We’ll take good care of her,” one of them said to me, with that big, plastic mother-fucking smile on his face. I wanted to rip his fucking throat out. I tried my damnest to hold back my glare at the two men – not for your family, the country, your god or even myself, but for you.
They led you outside, and you climbed in the car. I slowly made my way to mine as well.
As you drove away that evening, I sat atop my car watching you go; watching them take you away from me. I heard them accelerate that car of there’s down your country road.
“Why don’t you come in and have dinner with the family?” Your mother asked me from the doorway.
“Thanks, but I can’t. I’ve got to get home here pretty soon,” I casually lied to her.
I did my best to hide my face from her as I got in my car and lit up another cigarette. I was so numb with anger and hate and confusion and whatever else that I couldn’t react. I needed to be left alone. I just wanted everyone to go away.
I started up the car and pulled out of your driveway.
I drove off down your road, and the wind that pushed in from the open window stung my face. That wasn’t enough, I decided, so I put the pedal to the metal. My face became so numb I couldn’t feel it. My body suddenly felt much more in resonance with my feelings. I looked in the mirror and saw the beady, red eyes poking out of a damp, blushed face and refused to believe it was my own.
I kept repeating to myself that I had no reason to feel hurt or betrayed or angry or any number of the seemingly infinite collage of brutal things I was feeling. My shirt was damp from your tears, and off from my flannel drifted your sweet odor, and with it the memory of you. My right hand went to touch the micro-cassette recorder in the passenger sear, and that action seemed to trigger a recording in my mind of the evenings I’d spent with you before I’d witnessed your death.
I remembered sitting on the floor of your room holding that very recorder, with you and some strange guy named Steve who you’d met that very day. We drank every mixture of the bottles of Coca-cola, 7up, Vodka and Peppermint Schnapps that rested close to your bed. We’d all talked on and off the recorder about everything, smoking our cigars and cigarettes. Hours later I would awaken on your bed, feeling cleansed and comfortable, with a vague recollection of looking down into white bucket – a universe I’d become entrapped in, a universe where I couldn’t escape the horrid smell of bile and peppermint. The only comfort then had been your hands on my shoulders, massaging me. All throughout being trapped in that vomit-mint bucket universe I had thought to myself over and over: `never again, never again…. I will never do this again…’
“It’s your life,” I said aloud in my car, over the roar of the wind. I wondered if I was talking to you or if I was merely trying to remind myself that it was your life; your choice.
I had believed in you. I had believed that the perfect model of the world I had in my head was, in fact, the world; that you were what I had thought you were and you would never change -- but I had mistaken the map for the territory. I had mistaken my idea for the reality. I had painted a portrait of you in my head, and thought I’d come to know you. Part of me revolved around that belief, feeling secure and comfortable. In my insipid, blind faith I’d thought that things would never change, that there could be such a thing as permanence. It had taken your end for me to realize that this was a delusion. It was a lesson I wouldn’t forget.
I will never do this again – never again.
I swore on and on in my car that day, watching as my speedometer’s needle went as far right as it could go. You had died to me – you had died in my arms. You, the girl I had known, had just been taken away by the merchants of death. Like so many other things, now all I had was the beautiful memory of what had once been, stained my the realization of what could never be again.
Death isn’t an end, it’s only a transition – but it’s one way. Your path ran contrary to my own – in the most direct manner possible. You had it all within you, a passion that went beyond words, feelings you could’ve spent your life passionately venting out on paper. You felt the need to leave and march off with the zombies, however; to dance with the mundane and live the lifeless. Why you chose to kill what you were I still don’t understand.
All I know is what I feel: it was the dreariest kind of suicide.
an extremely drawn-out, over-worked
soliloquy & eulogy,
by rewired.
"Evolution is not a force but a process, not a cause but a law."
-- John Morley.
Death hung in the air like a foul mist, enveloping the moment in a dark and elusive shadow. It was a thick, choking and putrid mist that surrounded us, serving as an ominous reminder of what was soon to follow. It penetrated the deepest pits of my being.
Tightening your grip on my shirt, it seemed as if the emotional roller-coaster you had been riding had taken you on yet another one of those sudden, twisting turns. You were trying your very best to ignore all the chaos within you, and the stench of death outside you, and just sink into the comfort of my presence. You tried your damnest to use me as some type of warming light in this chilling, lurid moment; as some distraction from the pains of the unavoidable.
If it were my own death that we were awaiting, I could have easily sunk into the moment with powerful intensity. The monster was not coming for me, however -- it was coming for you. I knew damned well that if I were to hold you with my heart it would only mean greater pain when they ripped you from that battered organ’s grip. I could only find comfort in the fact that while we were both within this room, you were safe from them.
In the very least, it was comforting to think of it that way.
I wondered what was going on behind those eyes of yours, but you refused to let me. I could only catch what I believed to be evidence to support my suspicions through what came out of those eyes – for in the light of a coming death, the damn within you had finally broken. You shed the tears you’d sworn up and down for so long weren’t within you. I watched them closely as they ran down the bridge of your nose in thin streams, crossing your lips and coming to hang at the base of your chin. They drenched my shirt as you dug your face into my chest, grabbing the sides of my shirt tightly.
As much as I wanted to call the doubt in your chosen path – the doubt that you had denied having again and again, but which I had vaguely felt in you throughout all of this, and which I now sensed with utter assurance – I held back. As much as I wished I could take a mirror and place it before you so you could see more clearly the poster child of uncertainty that I saw weeping before me now, I knew it’s futility. Your decision had been made, and things were going to change after today. I saw it in you as clear as day in this dimly lit, smoke-filled room.
I’d often found it strange how each one of us members of this human race seem to be on this frantic (and, it often seems, futile) quest, forever striving to achieve a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in our existence. You had defined your purpose as helping others – namely, your parents. Like so many others, three of whom I knew, you chose to hitch a camouflage bus ride. So I lay there with you in my arms, on the bridge of what we might as well call the point of no return.
You let go of me for a moment, trying to catch a breath. You took a long, hard drag off that cigarette, and I took the opportunity to take a hit off of mine as well. There was such beauty in that image of you at that moment that I never had really taken the time to notice before. I guess it has the tendency to work that way; never truly seeing the life in someone until they’re on the brink of extinction, only seeing the value of life in the face of imminent death.
Your extinction was not something I particularly wanted to think about at the moment. I tried to ignore the future and focus on the Now; on the beauty of the present in the light the past shined upon in. I tried, too – I tried damned hard to focus on the wondrous beauties I found in the little things; those tiny points of light in the foreboding darkness that had taken over the world inside this room. I smiled at the way your eye squinted to block off the smoke as it rose, refusing to waste even a bit of the cigarette.
Unfortunately, that was precisely where I lost it. Watching you, I couldn’t look to the future, or remain in the present – I sunk into the past. I realized that these were the things that I was going to remember about you; the little things.
I would remember how you hated wearing shoes. I’d remember how you’d always rest your hand on the gear shift between the passenger seat and driver’s seat of your car while driving.
I’d remember the crazy expressions you’d make and the funny, almost accented voice you’d sometimes speak in, and how you ordered vegetarian `burgers’ from fast food restaurants.
I’d come to dwell on the way you’d fall asleep with the radio on, and how no one had better wake you before ten or you’d be liable to kill them when you finally arose.
I’d grin at how you loved to read the novels of Ann Rice, and had always told me that the movie we’d seen together was of no comparison to the books. I’d reflect on how you slept in your tiny, heavy-curtained room with that old typewriter on your desk, and how you’d write beautiful poetry and short stories.
I’d reflect on when I’d first met you at that amusement park with my cousin, and I’d look back on this very night, think about this very moment – your final hour.
You rose to look up at me, and seemed to be gathering yourself to speak to me once again. It had certainly been a while since I’d heard anything but the chatter inside my head. The silence seemed to have lasted an eternity.
“What?” I asked you. Your brown eyes looked dead into mine with an objective to convince that I could see right through.
“I’m not scared,” you casually lied to me. It was strange, hearing your mouth utter fiction as your eyes told no lies. I wondered which one of us you were trying harder to convince.
I’d come to value your mind and your heart, as well as that mystical world behind your eyes – but I could never understand them. I think now that this inability I had to comprehend what you held within yourself may be one of the reasons why I valued you so much. All those times we sat in your car, never running out of interesting things to share with each other. We went on talking for hours at a time, exchanging words and favors. We had shared so much of our souls in that short time we had... I believed we truly got to know each other at a level rarely experienced. I'd never been so close to a woman, I'd never touched such forbidden and sacred areas of the body and mind.
If only it had been you that I loved.
The smoke rose from the glowing cherries of our cigarettes, bridging the space between us and the door. My eyes slammed shut, my head tilted back and I sighed. I was doing my very best to ensure that I did not let this erupt out of me. I was doing my damnest to pretend this was all part of some horrible dream, and all I had to do was awake. I tried convincing myself that I had the power to stop time, perhaps even turn it back – but the reality of the situation was all-too distinct. The odor of the impending reality was becoming more potent with each passing second: a cloud of horror that was choking, suffocating and fucking relentless.
My eyes opened to look at the ceiling. Posters preaching faith in a god were taped to the ceiling of your room – a god I don't believe in. You always told me it was inspirational, and the Christian aspects of the poetry never bothered you. You always made it seem as if the posters were a tool of inspiration for you and nothing more, but I saw a belief that you had in what it preached. The faith and blind certitude in ideals. Being a slave to a higher power. Sacrificing oneself for what one interpreted to be a greater good. Fighting against `evil' and striving toward `good'.
My head fell, and my eyes then jumped to the clock. I felt my heart sink deeper and deeper into me. I swear you heard it as it sank to my stomach and become that knot of fear, for you clutched me tighter.
I looked down upon you and saw the loose strands of your hair, dampened by tears, hanging across your blushed features. You looked up at me straight in the eyes, no longer trying to hide me from the feelings that were rushing through you. You let me in, you trusted me it seemed, and the heart that had sank into the pits of my stomach twisted even more. My whole body seemed to convulse. Suddenly I found my eyes watering as well – and then there was a downpour between both of us as we fed each other our sorrow.
My eyes drifted back towards the clock, and I froze in awe. Previously, time had always seemed to go slower when you watched the clock, but now I saw minutes passing like seconds. You quickly took your delicate hand and pulled my chin away from the clock and back to your eyes. We kissed, and as we did so I wondered why it felt so very much more real at that moment than any other I’d had with you before. Again, I decided the intensity of the coming death played a vital role in the heightened flavor of reality in these moments.
Then I heard them.
The steps of the merchants of death; the footsteps of the feared; the march of the brainwashed zombies of destruction. They were there at the door, and it rattled as they rapped upon it and called your name. They'd come for you. The knowledge that all this was over – I couldn't breath anymore. The grip tightened to kill me.
The death that had been lingering, and which had within the last two hours grown into a thick mist, now had come to dominate the moment. I could taste it, see it, breathe it, and feel it. It was a sadness, mixed with and anger, boiling over in a pot of fear.
Then it happened: everything changed. It was just like that – like the flip of a switch and you were done. The time for crying and doubt was over. You were now owned by them. You were no longer the girl who I’d known. You’d changed as you had warned you would, and I had expected that, but this was all too fast. The end had come for you, and something else was being born out of the ashes right before my eyes. It was something I didn't understand. Something I feared, and something I tried to hate. I could do nothing more but lay there feeling angry, hurt and confused; betrayed and stranded.
You were going to just leave me here alone with this, adding to my world of questions? Adding to my world of chaos and confusion?
You got up and began to wipe your face free of tears, as you yelled for them that it would just be a minute. I stood up. I saw myself in the mirror on the back of your door, my face red and wet. You kissed me one last time and handed me the tiny micro-cassette recorder we’d both talked on the previous evening. It was one of my ways of preserving the moment and, in at least this particular instance, of documenting the downfall.
“I left a message on here for you,” you told me. “Promise me you’ll listen to it later, and alone.”
“I will.” I promised you. And I did. I considered those your last real words to me; perhaps a suicide letter. We never got the chance to talk about what was on that tape, but I listened to it, behind it – and I saw through it.
You turned around with your back to me and opened the door. With a final, deep breath, you stepped outside your bedroom door and into the hallway of your parents’ house.
There they stood, all prim and proper in their arrogance. They smiled as they looked at you – and they looked at you like hawks fixating on their pray. They shook your hand; fisherman reeling in their line. They were the death at the door, awaiting to escort the beautiful, free and passionate to the land of the ugly, programmed and lifeless.
You motioned for me to stand by you, and I did. They asked if I was your boyfriend; I may have laughed at any other time, but not now. You did laugh, however, and explained that I was just a close friend. They asked if you had your things, and you motioned to your bags.
All throughout this time, I noticed their reaction to me. With the way they looked at me and held their posture, they seemed to say a million words. Somewhere in there was their belief that a person such as me was diseased, and that they had the cure. They had a slight empathy for me, yes, but only so much as a vet approaches a little boy about his sick puppy.
“We’ll take her away for awhile, and when she comes back she’ll be all better.” They seemed to say.
To this I wanted to return the scowl I felt creeping up on my face, which would’ve said, “she's fucking fine just the way she is, you assholes.”
You took a few of your bags, they took the rest.
“We’ll take good care of her,” one of them said to me, with that big, plastic mother-fucking smile on his face. I wanted to rip his fucking throat out. I tried my damnest to hold back my glare at the two men – not for your family, the country, your god or even myself, but for you.
They led you outside, and you climbed in the car. I slowly made my way to mine as well.
As you drove away that evening, I sat atop my car watching you go; watching them take you away from me. I heard them accelerate that car of there’s down your country road.
“Why don’t you come in and have dinner with the family?” Your mother asked me from the doorway.
“Thanks, but I can’t. I’ve got to get home here pretty soon,” I casually lied to her.
I did my best to hide my face from her as I got in my car and lit up another cigarette. I was so numb with anger and hate and confusion and whatever else that I couldn’t react. I needed to be left alone. I just wanted everyone to go away.
I started up the car and pulled out of your driveway.
I drove off down your road, and the wind that pushed in from the open window stung my face. That wasn’t enough, I decided, so I put the pedal to the metal. My face became so numb I couldn’t feel it. My body suddenly felt much more in resonance with my feelings. I looked in the mirror and saw the beady, red eyes poking out of a damp, blushed face and refused to believe it was my own.
I kept repeating to myself that I had no reason to feel hurt or betrayed or angry or any number of the seemingly infinite collage of brutal things I was feeling. My shirt was damp from your tears, and off from my flannel drifted your sweet odor, and with it the memory of you. My right hand went to touch the micro-cassette recorder in the passenger sear, and that action seemed to trigger a recording in my mind of the evenings I’d spent with you before I’d witnessed your death.
I remembered sitting on the floor of your room holding that very recorder, with you and some strange guy named Steve who you’d met that very day. We drank every mixture of the bottles of Coca-cola, 7up, Vodka and Peppermint Schnapps that rested close to your bed. We’d all talked on and off the recorder about everything, smoking our cigars and cigarettes. Hours later I would awaken on your bed, feeling cleansed and comfortable, with a vague recollection of looking down into white bucket – a universe I’d become entrapped in, a universe where I couldn’t escape the horrid smell of bile and peppermint. The only comfort then had been your hands on my shoulders, massaging me. All throughout being trapped in that vomit-mint bucket universe I had thought to myself over and over: `never again, never again…. I will never do this again…’
“It’s your life,” I said aloud in my car, over the roar of the wind. I wondered if I was talking to you or if I was merely trying to remind myself that it was your life; your choice.
I had believed in you. I had believed that the perfect model of the world I had in my head was, in fact, the world; that you were what I had thought you were and you would never change -- but I had mistaken the map for the territory. I had mistaken my idea for the reality. I had painted a portrait of you in my head, and thought I’d come to know you. Part of me revolved around that belief, feeling secure and comfortable. In my insipid, blind faith I’d thought that things would never change, that there could be such a thing as permanence. It had taken your end for me to realize that this was a delusion. It was a lesson I wouldn’t forget.
I will never do this again – never again.
I swore on and on in my car that day, watching as my speedometer’s needle went as far right as it could go. You had died to me – you had died in my arms. You, the girl I had known, had just been taken away by the merchants of death. Like so many other things, now all I had was the beautiful memory of what had once been, stained my the realization of what could never be again.
Death isn’t an end, it’s only a transition – but it’s one way. Your path ran contrary to my own – in the most direct manner possible. You had it all within you, a passion that went beyond words, feelings you could’ve spent your life passionately venting out on paper. You felt the need to leave and march off with the zombies, however; to dance with the mundane and live the lifeless. Why you chose to kill what you were I still don’t understand.
All I know is what I feel: it was the dreariest kind of suicide.
