Tell Me a Story | ✓

Coke or Pepsi

coke or pepsi

suicide note.

with a shaky breath, he reads on.

i've never exactly written one of these before. it's not really something you practice repeatedly just to get it right - unless you're someone who's mental... even more than me. there's no combination of 26 letters that can come to mind that can make me write the right words to you or the person beside you who's reading over your shoulder and make you realize why, exactly, i had decided to leave this world. but i can try.

you see, there's not any good or bad in the world - there's just human. you call a dog bad when it bites you, but you applaud it when it bites a bad person. you call your son good when he hits the ball in the yard, but yell that he's terrible when he hits you in the balls. the world is an odd place, indeed.

i try constantly to write down my emotions, but it never seems to work out for me. i try time and time again to do so - to write the right words that come to mind - but every second i put pen to paper or fingers to a keyboard, i end up joking by adding comic relief or offering bad examples of everything. i don't think there's any right way to say goodbye.

and i think that's what's wrong with the world. there's good and bad and right and wrong, and you think you can label everything just about anything, but what about emotions? what emotions are good or bad or right or wrong? lust? is lust really all that bad? is it really a sin? is there any love without lust, or lust without love?

yes, i think. yes there is.

is there a world where there are no labels at all?

my sigh is shaky again when i softly trace the outline of the smeared word "labels" where a teardrop of hers had fallen. the world in my arms where I could've engulfed her in would have been free of any labels or name-calling or good or bad or wrong or right, and i woud've always been there for her but she never came. she never knew.

and that's the everlasting question, isn't it? the rhetorical one to which can never be answered? it's not as simple as coke or pepsi, or else everyone would scream out their opinion in unison and then you're left to your own devices to choose which you believe is better.

so reader, please tell me.

would you rather live in a world where there is good and bad and right and wrong and love and lust, or a world where you're just yourself and you do what you want to do and not be labeled for it?

coke, or pepsi?

staring at the last three words, i comb my fingers back through my hair and try to think what had been going through her mind when she wrote them. was she alone in her room? was she sobbing heavy sobs and wishing someone would come rescue her from her mind? was she holding the pills in her right hand as she was writing with her left?

gulping, i fold the note back up and look up from my stiff hands to the hospital bed where she lies. i reach out and pet her hand - cold and ever-so frail. her heartbeat is low - so, so low - and her body seems small despite her 5'8 figure.

dropping the note onto the arm of the uncomfortable chair, i stand up and carefully slide into the empty space beside her in the bed. it's thin and uncomfortable, and the sheets are so weightless it's like i'm pulling up a piece of paper over our bodies and up to our chins.

i watch her face as she breathes ever-so slowly, her skin so flawless and fragile it's ridiculous. her lips are a light purple, matching her eyelids, and her hair's greasy from tears and sleep. matching my heartbeat to hers, i pretend that we're dying together like we're in a tragic love story that Shakespeare had written. that after i had realized she'd died, i went and killed myself too.

but she's not dead.

she's breathing.

and so am I.

but after her note, it's obvious that breathing wasn't her goal after taking that large dose of sleeping pills. i know that waking up is the last thing she wants. i know that going back to school where the labeling and name-calling assholes are is what made her come to this conclusion - that not existing at all is better than living in a world where she's known as a slut. where no one took the time to know the real her, but instead jumped to conclusions when they heard the ugly rumors about her and the first-baseman of our rival school.

but i didn't believe them. not a second. i knew that the first baseman was an asshole; i knew that he spread the rumors that she had sex with him after she broke up with him. i knew that she was innocent, because that's all she can ever be. a tragic, beaten-up, innocent soul.

"pepsi," i whisper, my voice hoarse from the night's awful adventures.

a small tap sounds on the pillow we're sharing, and i lift my head to see the movement. but all i see is a wet trail down her cheek, and a small, sodden dot on the pillow next to her head.

and, right then, i knew she knew she wasn't alone in this coke-filled world. that, together, we would get through the labels and gossip.

"pepsi," i whisper again.

and her eyes flutter open.