Metanoia: SHOW-OFF BATTLE

41.

t r i g g e r w a r n i n g

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In all my life, I have only attended three funerals. The first was my nana's. She died in her sleep. I was five. I can't remember her face.

The second was my dad's. I was twelve. It was cardiac arrest. We were excused from school.

The third one happens at present-time.
It's a closed-casket funeral - with only a couple of pictures from prom, graduation, and a filtered facebook profile picture as reminders of who she was.

Atop her casket were white flowers, and they're the kind of flowers that she hates the most, not because of their name or their scent but simply because of what they stand for.

They are carriers of words left unsaid.

They are the silent "I miss you's", "Why did you leave's", and "I love you's". She hated words of regret the most, because regret means there's no turning back.

They say she died by hanging herself. They say it was her sister who found her. They say she didn't leave a note.

Except she did leave a note. It was hidden in the pages of a journal her school published, with a story she penned under the pseudonym Unseen.

I wonder if they knew it was her.

I wonder if knowing would've mattered to them. I wonder if it would have, to her.

There is only so much that I can do, only so much that I can be, and only so much that I can take.

I have forgotten what it feels like to be alive - to feel the warmth of the sun against my skin, or the rush of cold water going down my throat, or even the air that fills my lungs... I have forgotten the joy of staring at star-stained skies, of marveling at the endless loud-filled horizon , and of enjoying a reflection of myself smiling in the mirror.

Everything has become dark and empty.

Being awake became my worst nightmare.

I became my worst enemy.

Nothing is the same anymore.

I have lost even life's simplest joys.

Help me remember.

Help me remember that there is more to this life than the things that I have forgotten.

Because I can take it no longer.

But I never thought that my life after death would begin with me seeing my sister desperate to save me. I never thought that I would watch her knees buckle beneath her, nor hear her voice turn into a loud shriek as she gained her senses, only failingly trying to set me free.

I never thought that people I barely knew would come to my funeral to cry for me.

I never thought that I would hear my best friends would cry so hard that each sob would feel like a knife to the heart.

I never thought that I can still hurt this bad.

I never thought that I would start to feel again the moment that I died.

I never thought that I'd want to take it all back again.