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┏━━━━━ CHAPTER EIGHT ━━━━━┓ ★゜・。。・゜゜・who's going to save us now? ──── Chicago Rhee
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❝ Nothin' but the dead and dyin' back in my little town ❞ — mean little town, howling diablos
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IF YOU LISTENED CLOSELY TO THE WHISPERS OF THE EARTH YOU'D HEAR THE RATTLING CRY OF MOURNING WHEN SOMETHING CHERISHED WAS DEAD. Human beings are made to believe that they are a sacred creation and that the universe suffers when one leaves the physical world. Death is a tragedy, a sadness that cannot be mended. When I was younger, I believed that when it rained just after burying a loved one it was the angels crying. When their precious creations were captured in a circle of sorrow, they had to tell us that they were grieving with us.
In areas of brutality, the pain can be felt far away. There's a disturbance in our energy that communicates with us all. When something happens the waves ripple and provoke a queasy chill. You know something is dreadfully wrong, if the flip of your stomach is anything to go by, but you cannot pinpoint the source of why you feel this way. Hours later you're flipping through the news and seeing a report of a murder or other criminal act. And you only sit there and wonder how could human beings be so cruel to their own kind? We all bleed the same way, and yet we act as if we are two different sets of the same species.
We cannot anticipate when tragedy befalls us, or what scars we are left branded by. How much we're affected is up to our choices as much as it is another uncontrollable force. When an event is spinning wildly out of control the first seconds and minutes—if you're lucky—are the most important moments. Once you pass that threshold of opportunity then that otherworldly force takes the wheel. You can attempt to forge the weapon of choice once more, but there's only so much that can be done at that point.
We're given choices every day of our life just through the minuscule moments. It's hard to imagine how choosing to stay in bed longer or getting up the moment your sleepy eyes pop open can affect us in the grand scheme of life, but to some people that choice means everything. Staying in bed longer can result in missing your transportation to work, school, or whatever task you need to accomplish. From there you get fired as it was your last strike of repeating the same mistake and somehow hoping the results wouldn't be that detrimental. On another hand, missing the bus can lead to you missing a nasty collision on the freeway and save you the cost of expiration before your natural time. One choice can not mean that much to you, but it could mean everything to another.
Because of this, I tried not to make choices so flippantly, perhaps that was both positive and negative. On one hand, it made me less spontaneous, made me afraid of making a decision on the fly when I received some last-minute plans. The ability to adapt was one of the most important life skills I believed a person could possess, as it came in so many forms. Yet, knowing that my choices mattered made me less inclined to hurt those around me. Some would say that was me being a people pleaser, too focused on not costing someone else the burden of being affected. While others, or even I, would declare that just made me kind. I tried to predict what my choices could cause in a ripple effect, rather than what I could gain for myself.
