Daily Horoscope: December 1, 2010

I was not the focus of my school – nobody knew my troubles over the past months (though there apparently was a buzz about me when I was “going out with that really hot skater”) or the daily insecurities I faced. That was a given, but sometimes it was hard to realize – the fact that while you’re walking down the halls thinking, “Everyone’s probably mocking me in their heads because of my bad hair day”, they have their own issues and aren’t worrying too much about you. Hell, they might not even see you, much less an uncooperative lock of curly hair.

So yeah, I wasn’t the focus of my school, but what was the focus of my school? The Semi-Formal Dance next month that I mentioned a couple of chapters back.

Everyone was so fussed about it: what they’d wear, who they’d bring, how much they’d paid, who had already bought tickets and what music they’d recommend to be played. This would technically be my first high school dance, since freshmen and sophomores don’t have dances, but after all that had gone on with me and parties, I didn’t think I’d want to go. If partying experience is something to be measured and regarded, then in just the span of a few months, I had progressed from birthday parties, to no parties, to house parties, and then to clubbing, on this scale of social evolution. Under the circumstances, though, I didn’t exactly feel as proud as mankind does when they look back upon the Neanderthal. I wouldn’t mind being back at the stage of birthday parties.

“What do you mean you’re not going?” Meredith asked me. “I’ve already bought my tickets and you’re ditching me?”

I shrugged as we walked to school. “I just can’t, you know. Besides, I’d just be awkward.”

“If it’s because you don’t have a date, you really don’t need one, you know?”

“It’s definitely not because I don’t have a date. I’d only be bored, anyways, and I’m not going to spend twenty dollars on spending a night bored and relatively alone.”

“I’ll be there, though! You’ll have me!” She was always a soprano in her church choir, so her voice sang whenever she got excited or defensive.

“Yeah, okay, but, no offense, I’d still be lonely.”

“Well, you’ve got a week to change your mind,” she said, but I shook my head.

“I’m not changing my mind.”

As the end of the school year rolled around, classes were a bit more intense. I had homework I actually was required to do, I had tests, quizzes and culminating tasks too frequently for me to catch up with. I had to block myself from the Internet for at least a week at a time, just to study. Both of the years before I had slacked off and gotten away with high marks just from what I’d remember, but I couldn’t just procrastinate and hope I’ll still have a future – these finals, and next year’s, would define my career and my options, and I needed to make sure I had good ones.

My parents were aware of my determination, so when they made plans to go away on a week-long vacation down into the US, they respected my decision to stay home and promised to pick up anything I wanted if I emailed it to them – ever the technological parents, they were well equipped with BlackBerry Smartphones and knew how to navigate them better than I ever could.

I worked like a machine, constantly making notes and review packages for all of my courses. I felt like a robot, I guess, consuming nothing but data (and meals, of course) while everyone else in my year was working themselves up frivolously with nothing but this single-night event on their minds. While I felt like Cinderella, uninvited to the ball and spending the time semi-oblivious and busy, the good thing about being a robot is the lack of an emotional inhibitor. I didn’t have time to think about feelings, people or anything that wasn’t related to my curriculum. I was like a computer, and I’ve never seen a computer cry, so I’d say I was pretty well off.

The day before the dance was a Thursday, so after a full day of people sending me sympathetic looks at my lack of social spirit and Meredith telling me she’d tell me all that happened, I went to work for three hours with Kenneth. I can never really remember what we talked about but we had conversations. Music, awkward situations, crazy frozen yogurt combinations -- the usual. He also vaguely asked me about Meredith, as it turned out they had mutual friends (not much of a surprise, since Mere had a really wide social circle and it seemed to almost be a trend among the Filipinos in our school).

I got my pay for the week and cashed it in on my way home, noting the balance I had overlooked so many times before and smiling to myself -- I had over six hundred dollars, just from not spending a dime. I felt a little proud for myself knowing that I wasn't in any sort of financial debt. It was a good thing to keep in mind; whenever I was in the lunch room, teens went around like beggars asking for a buck or taking some food. My generation could probably best be known for their silly spendings -- spending dozens on clothing and over-priced, and under-filling, cafeteria snacks when they could just get up a little early in the morning to pack a sandwich. Then again, I'd be a hypocrite to spite them, since I couldn't even bother to bring a lunch, most days.

It was my first night without my parents and I felt responsible, for once. I came home from work after checking in at the bank, I had a house to myself, and I'd probably just go to sleep early after a bit of studying. My mum knew that I wouldn't be up to throwing a party like Damian would, and didn't even have to remind me not to. When I wasn't studying, I went back to my old habits of retro video gaming and Internet surfing. I don't know why people pitied hermits: kicking back alone wasn't too bad.

The next day, I went to school, turned in some assignments, hung out with Meredith, paid attention in class and went home, while everyone flitted around in the atrium of our school like they always did, except this time locating friends to get ready for this party together. This meant I walked home alone, since Meredith had piano lessons after school to rush to before getting ready and leaving her house at nine, when the promenade began. I wasn't bitter about it, though, because I was able to take my time on my way home -- something I didn't usually do. I just figured that if everyone's going to spend their Friday without any stress, I wouldn't go straight home and study. That seemed boring, and for once I felt like I was inflicting a punishment on myself. I'd just take it easy today, and maybe the rest of the weekend; I was ahead as far as cramming went, anyways.

I took the long way home, passing the skatepark that had a couple of skaters. I couldn't tell if Connor and his friends were among them, since I was far across the street so they couldn't see me if they were my ex-gang of friends. A kilometre from there was Damian's house, which was closer to the school than I had ever realized, since I walked there often in the night and never trekked from there to the educational establishment. The large home stood cold and alone on its large property, instead of holding up the image of solidarity and power it used to. It was a monument of loneliness and shame; like the ribcage of a carcass, holding nothing living within it. After the few weeks that Simon lived there, he had to return back to his university. It was now a place of reminiscing, and I couldn't help but linger by the property and imagine it like the proud estate it had always been to me before such ill fortune took place.

I kept on my way, passing Sebastian's house as I neared my own. I felt wrong to look up at it -- disturbed, vulnerable and ashamed. It was a house I used to be welcome at, but surely his family don't think so high of me, if Seb told them how I'd ruined us. I almost expected to be caught and shooed off the property, or to find Sebastian looking back at me... Life doesn't work out like it does in books and films and nothing happened. I went straight home after that and curled up on the couch, absent-mindedly watching the recorded television shows that I never had a chance to. After I was caught up, I went back to my room and looked for a site to watch an old film or something, and ended up having an 80s movie marathon.

Midway through The Breakfast Club, I heard the buzz of my phone and was sucked back into reality with a start. I looked around and noticed it was night outside and I was alone in a house just as dark and empty. The interruption gave me a chance to realize my growing appetite and I slipped downstairs for a quick dinner, which I grabbed back with me upstairs to finish the film I was watching. Just before I hit the play button, I remembered the reason for my intermission and hunted for my phone. Upon looking at the screen, I saw I had an unread text message. I opened it up and was a little surprised when I read it. I mean, the sender name was enough to stun me.

From: Oliver <3

Right, I forgot that I had never changed his name to match our much less affectionate acquaintanceship.

From: Oliver <3

Where are you?

I was a little confused, so I replied a little slowly. "I think you meant to send that to someone else -- I'm at home." The response was quick, though: "No, I meant to send that to you, but okay." And he never replied again. Did I come off as cold? I was much more confused than I was before, but went back to my dinner and a movie anyways.

Ten minutes later, I finished my food and the rest of TBC and went down to wash my plate. As I dried my hands and pondered what I'd watch next -- Ferris Bueller's Day Off, perhaps? -- my doorbell rang. I froze like a deer in headlights; a glance to the stovetop (and the digital clock with the flickering, green digits) told me it was around half-past nine. What if I was in a horror film and answering that door would kill me? Hesitantly, I decided to take the risk, anyways -- there was a baseball bat by the door and I doubted a killer would be so obvious, either. The silhouette that was outlined in the glass of my door wasn't so ominous, but I could never be sure. I clicked open the lock and opened the door, nearly dying (but not of murderous intent).

He had a leather jacket over a dress shirt and vest, with a pair of nice slacks. There stood the boy I had chased all summer, suddenly standing on my doorstep with his face red. I stared blankly at him and he said no more to me, until he cleared his throat. "I kinda walked all the way here from the school, can I at least come in?"

I felt like I was in a country music video -- things like this weren't common at all. The boy I've fancied for so long decides to contact me after months and sort of invites himself in my house? My head was light and I felt a little awkward, but I brought him up to my room anyways and quickly cleaned up my mess of papers, notes, and video games. It was surreal how good looking he was, and how he just happened to be in my room. He ran a hand over all of my games and smiled, but didn't provide me an explanation.

"Why are you here?" I asked him, throwing on a zip-up hoodie to cover my tank top. I was dressed in comfortable sleeping clothes, not expecting any company.

Olly looked up at me and tilted his head to the side, parting his lips to say something, but refraining and walking over to sit on my bed, instead. "Uh, well, there's no easy way to really answer your question but..." I let him take a second to sort his thoughts. "When I saw you weren't at the dance, I went and looked for you..." He crossed his sock-clad feet in front of him and kept going with a bit more confidence in his speech. "I wasn't actually going to go to that stupid dance, but I thought it would sort of be an opportunity to... Uh, get you back?" He smiled at me sheepishly, and a wave of comfort washed over me. I edged away from the spinning chair at my desk and sat cross-legged on the bed, facing him.

"What do you mean 'get me back'?" I asked him. "Aren't you with Victoria?"

He grimaced, then laughed a little embarrassed chuckle. "No, no I'm not. I really like you, Char -- that girl just likes to bug me, I think."

I eyed him sceptically, but my butterflies were fluttering. "You told people you didn't like me at all."

He shook his head. "No, I told them I wasn't going to answer to them, but yeah, I didn't know how I felt --" 'Déjà vu,' I thought. "But I was scared of how much I thought about you, but then you ignored me in the halls and I realized you were done with me. It was a shame, though, because I finally knew how I felt and I thought it was too late." Well, this was going better than I had expected. "So I tried to get over you and started talking to Vickie." I scowled and looked away from him but he went on. "That girl is a prick, it's not even funny. As soon as I started speaking with her, she practically told everyone she was friends with that we had a 'thing' going on." He sighed. "I don't even know what 'a thing' is!"

I couldn't help but laugh at his foreign tendencies. I could feel the icy feeling I felt towards him slowly melting as he warmed up to me.

"So, yeah, I realized I couldn't get over you pretty quickly, so the day after, I realized would just stop trying to bring myself to talk to you again -- at lunch, I saw you, but you were talking to some guy and I didn't think much of it; you talk to plenty of people," he ruffled his hair, recollecting his thoughts. "But whenever I saw you again, you were with him... Were you dating that guy?"

"No, it turns out he was more of a jerk than I initially thought he was," I told him.

"How so?"

I explained everything to him, and the more I talked and the more he commented, the more I realized that I missed this: all the chatting late at night with Oliver. Except, this time he was right beside me, close enough that I could smell the clean smell of him, beneath the odour that walking outside late at night gave you. I told him about how I had lost my friendship with Sebastian and Meredith, but got Mere back; how I tried pot and ended up making out with Connor; even the appearance of ecstasy in my life. When I got to mentioning Damian, and his death, I teared up, but Olly didn't freak out, he just pretended I wasn't – which was probably the best thing anyone could do, because I learned that recognizing I was crying made me cry even more.

As I went on, filling in the little bits I forgot to mention -- I was a mess, chronologically -- we grew closer. I felt better around him than I had been, alone, and it made me feel so stupid for antagonizing Oliver. I spent so much time looking for the good in Connor that I didn't see the bad, and the opposite for the boy with his hand on mine, gently wiping away my tears when they fell onto my cheek. My heart was beating at a fast pace and after I reached the end of my spiel, he laughed softly in a benevolent and certainly not spiteful way.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, after he stopped.

"It's not your fault," I replied.

"No, it is. It really is. I was a coward -- I was so full of myself that I dreaded the idea of being with someone but..." He smiled and looked down at my fingers, comfortably between his. "Charizard, you're amazing. You're the most unique person I know, and it kills me when you don't see that. Other girls are at that stupid prom, smuggling alcohol in and getting wasted, while you were sitting here alone, watching retro films and playing video games." I blushed and he just laughed more. "You're great, Charlotte," he added, making eye contact with me. And when his lips met mine, the only thing going through my head were the lyrics to "Died in Your Arms Tonight" by Cutting Crew.

Labels: nanowrimo

As hard as I tried to antagonize Connor to the point where I never wanted to hold contact with him – and prepare yourself for me contradicting myself – he wasn’t a person, a friend, a possible lover, and removing him from my life would never be as simple as pulling a hair from my head. Despite the fact that I didn’t readily believe it most times, when he interacted with me, I was as much a part of his life as he was mine – at least, as far as friendship goes.

Hence, when he called me one night in May, I felt obliged to speak with him, and I could tell he’d listen.

“So,” he started, to break from a prolonged silence after our greetings. “Why do I have the feeling you’re avoiding me?”

Now that I had spent time looking to see him as the bad guy, I felt that this wording made it obvious that I was supposed to deny him and tell him I wasn’t avoiding him, just busy with school or something. But that wasn’t true, and I was tired of being a liar. I clicked my tongue as I sorted my thoughts, just to let him know I was still there, and that I hadn’t hung up.

“You’re destructive, Connor,” I whispered into the phone.

There was another pause, on his part, and he continued. “I’m not sure how to interpret that...”

I sighed. “Trouble follows you wherever you go, but it’s never you that gets in trouble – it’s whoever’s with you. Since I met you, a lot of bad stuff has happened – good stuff too, maybe – but I can’t handle any more. I really don’t want to get hurt anymore.”

“So you’re just going to ignore me and see if that makes things better?” If his tone was a drink, it would have been equal parts sceptical and curious, with a twist of shame served on ice.

“I’m not just experimenting – I don’t want to sound lame, but you’re a really bad influence. My absolute best friend, who knows me like the back of his hand, won’t speak to me since I met you. I feel like I’ve sacrificed my friendship with him for you – and I don’t even know what we are!”

“What do you mean you don’t know what we are?”

I took a deep breath and could feel my insides flip. “Connor, do you like me? Do you have feelings for me?”

It was probably a question I had always wondered as I lay awake in the minutes before sleep, asking myself after making superficial wishes on the patterns in the time. Right now, though, I didn’t have the same feeling – I wasn’t asking for the sake of hoping he said yes, I was asking because I wanted to truth, to put an end to the confusion of the past few months.

“Uh... Charlotte, you’re my friend –” he started.

“Jesus Christ, Connor – friends don’t make out whenever they can.”

“Yeah, okay but –”

“Did we have something when we kissed?”

“I guess so – I didn’t know how I felt, Char. I just – it was all in the moment.”

“So I guess that means I threw away the longest lasting friendship with the greatest guy I know for something just ‘in the moment’, right?” I whispered at him ferociously. “You just used me as a girl to hang from your arms and to lend you some money to pay for your drugs.”

“That’s not fucking true, Char! You were really awesome and a good friend of mine –”

“Oh, you mean like how Damian was a good friend of yours? The good friend that you neglected the entire time you knew him? The one you probably still don’t know shit about?” I took a staggering breath and continued with my voice at a more level, calm tone. “I guess what Damian said the night he was hit was true, yeah? If I had met him before you, I probably could’ve been a better friend to him that you were. I wouldn’t have treated him like a little pet. If I liked him instead of you – which wouldn’t have been a hard thing for me to do, fall in love with him – all of this probably wouldn’t have happened, and I’d probably still have a good life, like the one I started out with before I met you.”

There was an awkward silence and I heard deep exhales on the other end. When Connor spoke again, his voice cracked – he was crying, or at least tearing up.

“You don’t think I treated Damian well? I loved him like my own brother; I was one of the only people he could talk to about his parents’ car crash. It used to be him, Matt and me – and we were really close. So don’t you fucking tell me that I wasn’t a good friend, because you don’t know the whole story. Don’t make judgements when you don’t know any facts, okay? I cared about him, and I care about you, always have. Did I love you? I didn’t know! I don’t just meet someone and suddenly think, ‘yeah, this is the girl I love; this is the one I want to marry one day.’ It’s a lot more complex than that!”

Maybe this was what I wanted to hear, and maybe I wanted to spend my days with him again, but I had to take decisions into my own hands, rather than let other people make them for me. I guess I felt like shit for blaming him for mistreating Damian, but I wasn’t going to take that back. I’m a stubborn girl who never likes to admit she’d lost a fight, and I’ve always been that way.

“Connor... I think we should just stay friends – actually, that’s not hard to say since we haven’t been dating this entire time. The kind of friends who don’t show public displays of affection.” I said in the calm way I’d seen my mother do it when I’d have to watch her coax a potential manic for “Take Your Kids to Work Day”. “And I guess you can take time to think if I really actually meant something for you, but if not, I really do hope you find someone who does. When you do, though, don’t lead her on unless you’re actually sure.”

And with that, I hung up the phone.

Now that I was officially out of leagues with Connor, the worries he had generally suppressed were surfacing again. I had to avoid Sebastian in the halls, Victoria probably wouldn’t mind to make my life hell if she ran into me, Oliver would remind me how I’m always alone, and I also had Connor to ignore for a while, too. He’d probably have a new muse in a couple of days, and I wouldn’t want to see that. Constant reminders of my past, and everything I’ve ever done wrong, those four were.

At work, Kenneth told me I’d changed, for the better. I had to agree, I guess, and I told him I was done with Con – he was happy to hear it. Overall, I had made better changes to myself, rather than to everything else. I still had other ties to mend, because I wasn’t going to let go of Sebastian without a fight, but it was good that I cut the addiction. Isn’t that how it usually worked in those Anonymous Help centres – admit to the problem to get over it, then they help you mend your families, debts and mental issues? If so, I was on the right track – if not, I didn’t have much to lose. I wouldn’t lose Meredith again; we were safe now that she knew everything. My parents were more supportive of me, since I explained to my mum, in one of our private therapy sessions, that Connor was the stem of these problems and I got rid of him. So I was basically ready to take on anything to get him back. Sebastian was my only friend for a few years, and now he was the only person in the world I was honestly afraid of.

Labels: nanowrimo

The worst part about losing someone is when you see them in everything you do. Well, not necessarily what you do, but when you start to remember them randomly.

Once Damian was gone, I realized how little I paid attention to him. For instance, I’d hear someone talking about their favourite genre of films and I’d think, “I wonder what Dam’s favourite film is,” but I’ve missed any chance I’ve had to ask him. I’ll never know the little things about him, or the big things; if he tied his shoelaces or if he believed in God. It was a wasted effort to try and get to know him now that he was gone. I enjoyed him when he was around, and I didn’t need his death to tell me that.

Sometimes, when someone dies, people start paying attention to them out of pity – sort of like when I talked to Damian and he told me that he was in a few of my classes, but was lying to see how truthful I was. When a relatively-famous musician dies, the world goes insane: they start writing stories about how they’ve listened to that musician enough to find encouragement and deep meaning, how they’ve always supported that person, and even how they’re thankful for that single musician to bring so much improvement to their lives. When an actor dies, people suddenly go out to watch all of their films again and again. The same goes for everyday people – once you’re acquainted with them and they pass, it’s like you need to share how they’ve influenced you. Some people have real experiences they need to put out, and others are just jumping onto the bandwagon, toasting a toast for an occasion they’re unaware of.

Damian was my friend, I know that now. He took care of me without it being a responsibility trusted upon him by someone else. He didn’t cause trouble, he wasn’t selfish, he didn’t draw attention to the fact that nobody paid any attention to him at all. I think he was humble, but humility is a difficult virtue to place – it’s the sincerest of all. He didn’t need to worry anyone else with his own problems; perhaps he knew what I had learned too late – that everyone is fighting their own battles.

If I knew he would be robbed of me so harshly – like a cruel punishment to discourage the repetition of bad actions in the future – I would have made more of an effort to talk to him. I mean, yeah, that’s a given – anyone would try to make the best of something they knew wouldn’t last long. I thought I’d have time to get to know him, though. A few months weren’t enough for me to feel better about the fact I had only stepped a toe into his life. His friends, though, they were the luckiest. They knew him longer than I did – but I was disappointed they didn’t treat him well. This isn’t just an observation I’m making now that Damian’s at ease, their interaction with him always made me ill-at-ease. Compassion could only draw me so close to attempting to feel how they did (guilty, no less). I just hoped they were guilty because they honestly felt that way – not just because it was deemed as “right” now that he was gone.

Hanging out with Connor, Jeff and Matt wasn’t the same. They were sombre for a week, but accepted his death easier than I did. They were stronger than I was and that made me jealous and selfish. I didn’t want to be the sad one in the group, and I didn’t want them to mock me for being sad, so I stopped hanging out with them for a little while. I went back to studying, since it took my mind off of everything. I spend hours staring blindly at television or computer screens, playing games or surfing the net; and although I was rather good at whatever I was doing whenever I did it, I was too absent. Now, I wasn’t so sure I was depressed over Damian leaving, but just sad in general. Whenever the guys asked me if I wanted to hang at a party, I told them I was grounded. Somewhat true, but my parents didn’t mind if I went out – they hadn’t restricted me to the house, I restricted myself. When something bad happens and puts you into a shock, you never want to do it again. If you nearly drowned in the ocean, you’d probably be no sooner to become an Olympic diver than to sail the seven seas. Damian and I started talking at a party, he would take care of me after parties and he died at a party. I most certainly did not want to return to a party. Our paths also aligned under the clauses of mutual friendship with Connor Aiden Parker, so naturally that meant I was suddenly more wary of the boy.

He was gorgeous, clever, funny and suave – but after the misfortunes, describing him felt like I was describing a stick of nicotine. He took stress away, made me feel better, had multiple options from a single, clean package, but on the downside, destruction seemed to follow him shortly wherever he went. After I met Connor, drugs became an occasional thing, rather than a forbidden fruit; I betrayed my closest friends, lost a new friend to death and caused my parents to second-guess my wellbeing. I could slowly bring myself to right these wrongs, but eventually, the problems would accumulate like cracks in a windshield and come crashing down on me – these tiny little issues could become more than I could bear, in just a few weeks, months or years.

Another thing about nicotine is that aside from causing cancer, yellow teeth and respiratory issues, it’s extremely addictive and you can’t exactly “drop it like it’s hot”. The same goes for gorgeous, blue-eyed, raven-haired skaters.

Late at night, before bed, your mind speaks itself the most, like the quiet kid in the class who suddenly has the strongest voice in a controversial debate. At night, all of these reasonable thoughts and decisions would come to me – Connor was bad, stay away from Connor – but then, as soon as I’d see him, receive a text from him, or feel him hug me, I through that all down the drain. He had me “whipped”, which was the slang dictionary’s urban jargon for “when a person is completely controlled by a person they fancy”, and a term left as a fraction of anonymous hate that I received once. I was infatuated with him, but he was probably better as a concept than as an actual person.

“From now on, you are going to say no to everything involving him until it becomes a habit,” Meredith told me, completely and totally for my sudden, ambitious goal. “So, for at least twenty-one days – that’s how long until a habit is broken.”

I was at her house, after an unsuccessful day of school attempting to ward off all the evils he possessed over me.

“Wow, thanks, Miss Obvious!” I hissed, my sarcasm fuelled by my own stress, like a cornered serpent who means no harm. “It’s a lot harder than that. If cutting off addictions were that easy, there wouldn’t be the need for an Alcoholics Anonymous.”

She thought for a second and then shook her head. “Actually, it is that simple.”

I looked at her in anticipation, but she wasn’t prompted by my silence to go on. “Elaborate, please.”

“Hm? Oh, well,” she began, catching back onto her train of thought like a late commuter. “You’re basically inclined to say yes to whatever he asks of you, but the problem with saying no and letting go of him is the fact that you don’t want to. You keep telling yourself you’re better off without him, but you find him so incredibly gorgeous and all that you almost want to show off the fact that you have him.” She paused and went on. “You already got into the habit of declining his informal party invitations, you don’t do drugs, and you haven’t had a bottle of beer in ages, so I’m pretty sure getting rid of an addiction isn’t going to be as difficult for you as it would be for an old smoker with lung cancer.”

I was almost defiant enough to deny her, but she was right. I needed to stop being his doormat and just pull myself from under him. So I did that. Or, well, I tried to. I didn’t go out of my way to see him, and tried to see the flaws in him whenever he ran into me. He had tired bags beneath his eyes, I didn’t like the colour of his sweater, his hair was really lame, and his skateboarding wasn’t that great. And the less I took notice of him, and the more I ignored the allure of his eyes as if they were Medusa’s very own, his significance in my life shrank like the brilliance of a star as the sun came up – and I really hoped that the sun would come up.

Labels: nanowrimo

When I was eleven, my godmother died. I didn’t know her that well, so I wasn’t too hurt by the news. We attended her funeral and I didn’t shed a single tear – but once her body was lowered into the ground and the final eulogies were being given, I was bawling. It’s something that I couldn’t handle: someone I knew was dead. It was probably the fact that I never got a chance to get to know her at all that hurt me the most. I never got a chance to establish any memories with her, and now I never will.

Same thing when a classmate passed away from a heart failure when I was in the eighth grade. I knew him even less than I knew my godmother, but knowing he was gone was terrible to deal with. He was just that guy who’d play basketball with his friends, went out with a girl a year younger than him, and was probably a really good dancer. Everything I knew about him, though, I found out after he had passed away and the memorials came up on Facebook. Notes were here and there, dedications and promises to never forget him. I never knew what happened to Facebook accounts when you died, but I guess I learned when his profile became a memorial for people to pay their respects and grant wishes for the wellbeing of the family.

On Tuesday, Connor and I went back to visit Damian after receiving a text from his brother. My stomach was in knots when we walked in and saw Simon sitting there with his head in his hands. I could only imagine what he felt right then: his parents were taken from him; his only brother was walking a tightrope between life and death. He’d be alone without any family. It made me grateful to have the two parents I had back home, who had recently given me a lecture on drug usage. I felt guilty to admit that I felt better about my life while looking upon him, in the slums of his. It’s terrible, it’s inconsiderate and it’s inappropriate – but I’m only human and I can’t help it if I’m automatically set to recall the benefits to living when things get rough. It wasn’t like I was going to him and talking about my easier life; it was just in that moment that I realized how totally insignificant the issues I had before were.

I remembered how I’d wake up on those uniform-free days just a few minutes earlier to sort out my outfit, and once I spilled some milk or hot cereal on it, my day would be ruined. Or when, in the eighth grade, I told a guy I liked him and I found out he liked someone else, so I spent the night sad and teary, wishing I were her. All the drama, all the emotions – they all felt wasted now that I was in a real, heart-pounding predicament. The fact that other people have such hard lives – like the homeless in winter and the lonely old woman who rocks on her porch – while others just don’t see – that hit me. If the average life expectancy was seventy-five years, I’d only lived a little more than twenty-one percent of that; that wasn’t nearly enough time to actually have problems significant enough to be pitied or sympathized with. I was constantly replaying that moment over in my head, when Sebastian gave me that long talk about love and fate, and I had even started to refer to it as Sebastian’s Principle, which was overly dramatic, but it was a quick way to give reference to it.

Simon couldn’t speak to us about what he had called us over for, so we couldn’t ask, but when he woke us up after a nap in the waiting room and red rings engulfed his eyes, I knew something was happening. After a few minutes, another doctor came by and pulled him aside. Upon hearing whatever the doctor had told him, he broke down completely. Whenever you first meet someone, you can never imagine them crying; they always appear to be this imperturbable wall of force. I had seen evidence of Simon’s tears, but never had I witnessed the action in the moment, and when I did, I felt such a rush of emotion within my confusion and dread that I felt as if a brick or two of that wall was broken down. I felt like I knew him more now that I was seeing him at his worst.

A few minutes after he had stopped and wiped away his face, he looked up at us from his hands. “They’ve taken him off life support.”

After Damian died, nothing felt right. Everything went on in a daze. It was the time I tried the ecstasy, or at least the minutes leading up until it took effect: I knew something was going to happen all this time (he’d either recover or not) and my mind had so many thoughts flitting around like angry wasps that when they finally stopped to let me get some rest, I was stuck in a null void waiting for something new to happen. I prayed for the best, and tried to tell myself I was expecting the worst, but in truth I knew he’d get better – I felt it in me. People don’t just die so unfairly, right? Surely, he’d get better. Then, when Simon told me that one, simple statement, it made sense in some part of my brain, but at the same time, it was like I was numb. I didn’t seem to understand that he was dead – it didn’t really affect me because I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it.

As I stood before his coffin, at the very front of the church, I saw his lifeless body and it took its toll on me. It was like the moment I saw his body after the accident – suddenly my knees were weak and met the ground as I buried my face in my hands and sobbed, for lack of a better word. He was gone, in a most unfair way. A sacrifice of innocence for all the sins we had done. It was a mockery towards us, to scorn the one who had the most genuine of intentions. Was there no mercy? Couldn’t he have been given a much easier rest, rather than a week-long pain and struggle.

It made me realize that life’s too short to just dwell on insignificant issues and trends. Life’s not fair, and it doesn’t matter if you’re good or bad --- there isn’t a naughty or nice list like Santa’s got. There’s no such thing as good or bad, in fact – it was just important to live your life, I guess, and make the most out of things because you never know if you’ll be given a second chance.

You aren’t promised a tomorrow, so you should just stop saving things for then.

Labels: nanowrimo