She doesn't slow. Desperation is what keeps her going. Staying here would hurt so much worse than any death she could conjure up. She keeps going because she needs to. She turns off the road she wanted to stay on. It was becoming too busy, so she knows she needs to get outta there. She knows of a close road that's similar to the one she was just on. She doesn't like the fact that she has to go on a few neighborhood roads to get to it. Neighborhood roads mean people stop to say hi, and when people stop,not everyone behind them can or do.
It also reminds her of the community she never had and the family that never wanted her. She decides it'll only make her resolve to go on, stronger. It's not like she's ever been much of a quitter. She's told herself since she was younger that she was not going to be that type of person. She was going to stick with everything to the end. Unlike her dad did with their family.
She makes it through all the neighborhood roads, until there seems to be a traffic jam on the last one until the main road. She's back to a 15 mile per hour rate, when she's supposed to be at 95. She finally sees what the problem is as she's gotten slower and slower as it gets closer. There's an accident; a very bad one. There were people lying out unmoving on the street, and people holding on to their bodies as if there was no other joy in their life, there was no other reason they were alive. They looked hopeless, but life always goes on and keeps moving. Jade is stunned as she slowly drives by. She feels the emotion of the people holding on to their loved ones, trying to make them stay.
The people weren't masking any sadness; they looked broken. Jade knows what they feels like. She knows what it's like to be crying so hard that she can't imagine herself having a happy life. She's just looking in the mirror begging herself to hold on, but knowing she doesn't have the strength to hold on. Jade has been there, and that's why when Jade passes them, all she wants to do its cry, and cry, and cry. Some little part of her that she didn't know wasn't broken yet, broke when she felt their pain. Unable to do anything about it, Jane just kept going, ready to not exist anymore. She was tired of fighting and tired of existing. Dying is the only way she can stop it, the only way to fix the tiredness coming from deep within her, and becoming her biggest emotion. People ask how she's doing and she just says tired because then she doesn't have to smile and uses a lack of sleep to cover her desperate want to just stop, stop everything, living, breathing, exsisting. It's all just too much.
She lived her life feeling like she could, or should be doing more, living more, but she couldn't do it. She couldn't even get out of bed some days, because why keep living when all you want is to die? Where do you find it in you to keep living when all you want is to not be living? Most days Jade can't find it, like today, her last day. It's not like she's ever had a permanent person in her life who loved her. There was no one who loved her enough to stay. The only ones that stayed were the ones who would be relieved by her death. And there were only upsides to her death, right? She'd be with her mom, and she'd stop being such a deadweight in people's lives, everyone wins, especially Jade.
She can almost picture the reunion. Her angel mother in a white dress, opening her arms in a belated embrace. She'd finally know what it felt like for someone who loves her to hug her, and hold her. She'd know true love, which is all she's ever wanted. She'd be completely content if she could just have her mother. She doesn't even know what her mother looks like. Her father is where she gets her looks, so she has no idea what her mother would have looked like. She'd also never seen a picture of her mom, at least not one she remembers.
Most of her life she's had the same question running through her head. The question has always been "Why me?" Because for the love of God was she just put here to suffer? That's really all her life has ever been, suffering. Maybe she's smiled before but its never been too long before her frown just deepened. She was sure she was just born to suffer.
YOU ARE READING
105 Miles Per Hour
Short Story**TRIGGER WARING: CONTAINS DEATH** Jade had decided exactly what she was going to do. She decided that she was going to go through with it too. She even made rules so she wouldn't give up. She was going to make it to 105 miles per hour, but she was...
