Author: candyscribbles
Prompt: There's 'me' who wants to be creative and 'me' who wants to be lazy. There's 'me' who wants to socialise and 'me' who wants the silence. There's 'me' who loves myself and 'me' who feeds on self-insecurities. Every day, there's 'me' who wants to live and 'me' who wants to die. How can you ask me to hold on to life?
Prompter: HeyaLiann
Maine
Hold on.
You don't understand how much power these two words could mean to a person. You might think it's such an irrelevant phrase–'hold on,' you tell your sister as the roller coaster makes its way up the tracks, the steel tracks rattling underneath as the pistons release, the air rushing against your face in a whoosh. 'Hold on,' you say to your five-year old nephew as you ride down the escalator at the mall. 'Hold on,' you scream in your friend's ear as you both wait for the operators to let go, the trees rushing past you while you ride the zipline.
Hold on. Don't let go.
That's what I tell myself every morning when I wake up, always wanting to die.
Hold on.
This morning, I woke up with a different thought in my head. I don't know why–I mean, nothing special happened to me anyway. Last night, I came home from the coffee shop soaking wet because of the rain. I took a shower before bed and spent ten minutes staring up at the ceiling of my childhood bedroom, contemplating about why the coffee tasted sour instead of bitter this afternoon. I fell asleep with the lights still on and the window curtains drawn, just like how I fell asleep every night.
There wasn't anything special that happened last night. When I woke up this morning, there were two words inside my head. When I woke up this morning, my head and my heart told me that it was time.
Let go.
The rain pounds against the windows of the coffee shop, the drops sticking like crystals on the glass. The sky has turned into a sad, murky grey, the gloom seemingly penetrating every single soul inside this small place. It's a Saturday and the place is packed to the rafters with noisy pre-teens and aging grandmas, chit-chatting like there was nobody else in the room. I've been coming to this place since it opened so I was used to all this chaos. I'm used to being surrounded by all this hullaballoo and I've already learned to tune them out as white noise. Buzzing, lingering, never-ending.
Let go, my mind says, the voice getting stronger just like the buzzing of the noise around me.
When I woke up this morning, I seriously contemplated on dying. Not that I haven't thought of it before, but this morning, the urge was stronger than ever. I don't know why, but I suppose hearts and minds do get tired of fighting at some point. I've been holding on to life for so long, I never really knew the reason why.
The barista calls out for another regular's order, the coffee sounding like it's a messed up mix of everything liquid that could fit in a cup. Liann–the barista–calls out for a non-fat organic soy café latte with sugar-free syrup or something of that sort and I can't help but roll my eyes at whoever ordered that sort of crap. I close my eyes as I try to tune out the world, hoping that all this buzzing inside my head stops.
Don't die. Let go. Don't die. It's okay. Don't die. You can let go.
I open my eyes and find myself staring back at a pair of confused brown eyes, staring at me as if I was some sort of weirdo. Well okay, I was a sort of weirdo, but he doesn't need to add insult to the injury by staring at me like that.
