It's All In Perspective

The people in the field gathered around in a circle. A young girl with brown hair, glasses, jeans, a black shirt, and braces cried as she looked down. She was the best friend. Next to her stood a girl with short red hair, a little heavier than the other, a black skirt and black shirt on, and braces as well. She was one of the other friends. She cried silently. On the other side of the best friend was a short boy with a black suit on. He had glasses. He took the green baseball cap off his head and laid in into the place everyone was looking at. He was another friend.1

On his other side stood two boys. They were tall and heavy. They looked the same age as the other three, about 13 or 14. One had black hair, the other brown. They looked down sadly, not believing what they saw. Next to them was a boy with black hair, a little shorter. He was expressionless. It was too much for him. The three of them were very close friends with the girl. The tall boy with the black hair had loved her. He now wished that he had told her so. 2

Next to the group of boys stood two girls. Both dressed in black with striking makeup. They tried not to look down. One of the girls with the brown hair said to the blonde “I never thought she would.” 3

Closest to the center of the gathering stood a boy, about 15. He had brown hair and glasses. He sobbed at he looked down at his girlfriend. He lived far away, and wondered if he was the reason she had done it. Did he pay enough attention to her? Should he have called her more? 4

Next to the boy stood the girl’s parents. They were sobbing. They had missed the signs. It may have been their fault as well. Next to them stood the three grandparents, and the rest of the family behind. Everyone was crying, some more than others. In the crowd you could see her teachers, family friends, acquaintances, and people from school that were not her friends. 5

In the back stood a man, about 20 years old. He looked very sad. He knew it would happen. This was the girl’s other boyfriend that she had never met. Tears fell from his eyes. 6

In the center of the commotion stood a Rabbi. He was saying some prayers, but nobody was paying attention. The best friend looked down into the coffin on the ground. She had known that the girl had not wanted to be buried, but what could she do? All the references to death she thought were a joke. Maybe all the pressure of school and friends was too much. 7

The girl lay there in a white dress. Her hair was down, the brown curls cascading. Her glasses had been taken off and her eyes closed. The doctors had tried their best to cover up the deep cuts on her neck and wrists. They cleaned up the vomit caused by the pills. She looked so peaceful, some of the people thought. But she was not. She was there, she could feel and hear. She would have seen if her eyes were open. The only thing was she could not move. She felt the warm satin lining of her coffin. She heard the Rabbi speaking, and the whispers and sobs coming from the people. She felt the hot tears of her closest friends and family on her skin. She could not move. She lay there, still, as she would for the rest of eternity. She could think. 8

She thought to herself, that it was her own fault. She had brought it upon herself. She had gotten home from school and first taken the pills. She took every pill she could find in her house. Painkillers, Vitamins, everything. Then she took a knife and cut her wrists. She collapsed on the floor, convulsing. In a last minute attempt, she cut her neck. She lay there unconscious for many hours until her mother got home. Her mother called the ambulance that took her away to the hospital. The doctors shook their heads as they watched her fade away. She was put into the dress and into the coffin. She listened to her own funeral. 9

She was sure there would be something. An afterlife, but no. She realized that death was much like life. She watched things happen around her but could not do anything to change them or get away from them. She heard the silence that came when the Rabbi stopped speaking. She heard the coffin door close. She felt herself being lifted down, down. She heard the dirt hitting the cover of her new home for all eternity. She smelled the musty smell of the satin, which she supposed she would be getting used to. She realized that she would not have any sense of time left. She would not see the stars or anything anymore, for that matter. The girl would not be there when her boyfriend opened the note he would find for him back at her house, right under her pillow. The note written in the very blood that had poured out of one of her fatal wounds on her wrist read:10

Dear Mike,11

When you get this, I will be dead. I don’t know what death is, but it is where I will be. Or I guess I can say I am. Everything is too much. School is too hard. I’m supposed to be perfect when I don’t understand anything. I have no self-confidence. I don’t see you enough. My friends are all so complicated. My parents are too strict. I think too much. Too much about life, and death, and birth. I can’t take it anymore. I have so much pain. I love you Mike. I always will. Maybe I will see you again someday. So please don’t be mad. I guess some people draw the short straws on life.12

*hugs*13

Sarah14

The girl did not know that she would not see him again. She did not know that she would have all the time in the world, until time ends itself, to think. Only now she knows about death. She knows all too well. She would never get away from her problems. Not in life not in death. She had cut herself many times in life. No one noticed. When she told people, they did not seem to care. She wanted to be dead to not be alive anymore. But death is life, just different. She couldn’t breathe anymore. She couldn’t see. She did not have a pulse. She just lay there. 15

Every second of afterlife could have been an hour, a year, a millennia. She did not know. A single tear dripped from her eye. It stung her cold skin like a drop of acid. She could still cry! She thought and cried. She cried about how her life had been, how it was wasted. She cried about people, hate, war, murder, her own suicide, drugs, alcohol, cancer, what would become of the people she had known, hoe she will never see them again. And the girl cried. Thought and cried. For years, until the satin had disintegrated in her coffin and she could feel maggots crawling in her skin. She could not move to stop them. Until the skin of her eyelids thinned so she could see the wooden lid of her casket. Until her eyes were so painful and dry she could not cry any longer. So she lay there and thought. She thought while she felt the dry cold air inside her tomb linger around her brittle bones. She thought about how her eyes had so quickly been lost and her sight gone. Her senses had deteriorated due to the loss of nerved. She was a skeleton. She thought in her dark hole in the ground. Where all the civilization above her was destroyed. She thought about nothing for all eternity, even past when the last star in the sky burned out.  16