I live for her

Chapter 21: Time Travel

In some parallel universe, I finish this story with me committing suicide... but firstly, that would just be too predictable - and secondly, I didn't. (Because as you can tell, I'm alive.).

I lost my diary after that. So I lie with my back reclined on one of those chairs with wheels on them. On the computer before my eyes is this - this book. I'm in a library while I work on this with a bunch of songs by the killers (the band) hitting my ear drum. This book I titled "I live for her". My first obsession. Poetic, isn't it? The whole book. It was real, I mean I had to fabricate Emily's point of view - and Emily wasn't really her name her name was actually Jackie. But it all goes downhill from here. And the point of me telling you what's happening in my life is to give rationality to the ending. I didn't die. Fifteen year old me was wrong! I survived my suicidal thoughts, I survived my mother (as in... she's dead) and my dad is still a murderer according to the law. But like I said, it was the teenage hormones.

***

That night, my uncle called and reported that my dad was drinking and driving - which was nothing new. But this time, he rammed the car and managed to kill a family of three. I felt every emotion a human being could feel the moment I woke up and wondered why I wasn't dead like my dad's victims. I Inhaled. And acknowledged how I lost my dad and mum in less than a day. I watched as my life started to crumble, for real, this time. And I watched my tears kiss the floor. I watched everything happen. Time... he's so cruel - he doesn't give you enough seconds, minutes, hours, days to rationalize and think and understand and accept. So I did the only thing depressed people are expected to do. I walked to the kitchen with no consciousness of my actions. I watched myself cut at my wrist. They were all horizontal lines that spewed red. Vertical, meant... death. I knew. I'm not sure if I did. I wanted to cut them vertical. But I fainted and found myself back at that damned hospital.

***

Emily smiles. "I knew there was something wrong when you skipped school."

My head was hurting, my eyes could barely make out the contours of her face. I force a smile.

She places her hand over my head. It was warm - her hand. I inhale the smell of her perfume. She utters, "Your temperature is still up - you'll get better.". She was closer now, so I could see more detail: I saw eyes that had been crying for someone to not leave a world they so dearly wished they... could leave. I saw rings around green eyes from staying up for someone who really wished to never wake up into this reality. I saw frail hands that looked unattractive - but even more unattractive due to the crinkle cuts her nails were gifted by frantic-anxious-apprehensive nail biting.

That was a Wednesday. The day I spent a day in the hospital. She never commented on the marks I incised into my skin so I was sure I dreamed it all. I lifted my arm and... saw the remnants of wounds taking their time to heal. Another reason I hate Time, he chooses to go slowly when he should go fast. Her head was turned to her phone when I examine my left hand. I think a lot while she sleeps in my hospital room: I don't visit my mum.

Things happen very quickly after I leave the white building. Time doesn't have a slow-mo button but apparently he has a fast-forward one. So it all just happened in a flash when my mum died from a pulmonary complication, when Emily and I broke up, when my dad was given the life sentence and my uncle became my new father. And I know it seems like I am the most unluckiest person known to man - but I'm not; my uncle was the greatest thing that ever happened and that was certainly more than the luck that twin four-leafed clovers could bestow. My mum's departure was a blessing and my dad's imprisonment was the final burden being lifted off my back. I finally stood up straight after always having my back hunched over. I saw the world differently and I evolved like an ape-man creature to a homo sapien sapien. It all happened quickly when the lightness on my shoulders enabled me to become fully bipedal, but that's what Eldredge and Gould said: punctuated equilibrium.

He became a mentor. My own prototype for who I wanted to be. He was my own paramedic: a constant reminder that I had a destination - self-confidence and self-love and courage. And somehow, I slipped out of Depression's cocoon. I didn't become another teenage suicide statistic. I saw life from a new perspective. And decided to keep holding on to the feet of the Angel of Life.

And there's only one reason why thirty year old men write a short story about their suicidal teenage days. They're tired of being a doctor day in and day out and want to be something else for a brief day at a lonely library. But also because Jackie committed suicide. (I swallowed my saliva after typing that.). It's because he's a doctor. A successful doctor. A perfect adopted son of his uncle. The perfect son achieving all his mum would have wanted for him. He had the... perfect fiancée buoyant enough to swim in his deep philosophical seas. And he's the only son his dad is content with having had. Because old men, in orange, behind bars are more... vulnerable - his one wish: "Don't repeat... my mistakes.". It's very difficult to forget your own father crying. It's also difficult to not cry when recalling it. I wipe my tears off the cream-white keyboard keys.

I'll continue this tomorrow. I'll end this book because it also turns out that it takes the thirty year old men fifteen years for that wound to heal. The one of the first green-eyed girl they've ever fallen for committing suicide and leaving them with the words in a text message, "I love you, I want you to know I love you. And I've always loved you. It's just too much for me - and I'm sorry. If you're finding this out too late and I was successful...".

A/N: How's that for a plot twist?

And why do you think she committed suicide?

🚉 The destination is near :)

Thanks for boarding the train fellow reader.

Choo-choo!