Wings of Change

One in nine high schoolers die in a car accident every year. Even the most careful drivers get in crashes, we just never think it will be us.

But it was.

I am part of the one, not the nine.

In a way, I saved people. In a way, I am a sacrifice. I did my duty. Now I'm just another face on a wall, another name inscribed on a memorial, another life cut short. I am a statistic. In a way, I was disgraced by dying. No one will grow up and speak of the amazing girl who died because she got into a car with her parents and crashed. I will be held in a memory that no one wishes to relive. My story is horrible and doesn't teach a lesson. My parents were neither drunk nor reckless. We were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sometimes I go back and wonder what my life would be like if I hadn't died that day. What if I hadn't gotten into that car? What if the truck saw us? Would it make any difference? I would still have lost everything. My family, my cousin, my reason for living. It isn't truly living without those people that make it worth while.

Whenever I wonder about the endless other possibilities, I remember who I am. Who I was. And a phrase my grandmother told me once.

Shikata ga nai.