Gone (Ianthony)

After

Ian:     

I read somewhere a long time ago that suicide was considered a sin, and if you ever killed yourself you'd be on the fast track to Hell.

I thought about that a lot in the days before my death. When I imagined Hell, I imagined a red nothingness where everything was on fire and you were constantly tortured by Satan himself. 

Which sounded like it would suck. A lot.

But so did life.

And in life, I was a sad person surrounded by happy people who tried to force happiness upon me. In Hell, I would be a sad person surrounded by other sad people, and therefore, I would be happy. Maybe they even had a certain section just for people who commited suicide, a place where Satan would think he would be torturing us by showing us our miserable lives on Earth that were supposed to seem great compared to Hell, but they would really seem as horrible as they were then. So maybe Hell wouldn't be so bad. 

Well, I didn't go to Hell.

I don't think I went to Heaven, either. I don't really know where I went, or my soul went or whatever, after I drowned myself in Lake Michigan late that night. It was like I was just some spirit that could now watch over my loved ones. I couldn't touch anything, or do anything, wasn't tortured. I just watched the lives of everyone I cared about play out in front of me.

And maybe that was real torture. At least at first, because watching the people I loved cope with me dying was the worst. Because they shouldn't have been sad. They should have been happy they didn't have to deal with me anymore. If I were any of them, and I had to deal with me, I would be wishing for me to drown myself every day.

I watched Anthony the most.

I had to. I was dead, and I still couldn't take my eyes off of him. I was just there all day, watching especially close for the first month when he did absolutely nothing but wallow in self-pity.

He just sat around the house, often in my room or watching my favorite show or reading my favorite book. And the weird part was, he didn't really even cry that often. He just seemed completely empty. Like part of him had vanished, and he knew he couldn't get it back, so he knew there was no use trying to find it.

The worst part was that he took the damn fake crysanthemums with him. He set them up right in the living room with a picture of the two of us next to it. And he never moved them. He stared at them all day, sometimes for hours on end.

That part was the hardest to watch. Every second, I wanted to yell at him to get up and do something and forget about me. Because he completly wasted a month of his life. And it was just so frustrating, because I couldn't do anything. I was forced to just watch as he wasted away his time.

It was strange - after death, I learned how important it was to cherish life. Not that I missed it. God, no. I was so happy to be dead. I was so much better off knowing I had no responsibilities, no problems, nothing to worry about. All I had to do was watch. I just wished I could go back and relive the times I was truly happy. Which meant just about every time I was around Anthony.

But after the first month, things got better.

Anthony finally started leaving the house. He began eating normally again, and sleeping, and taking showers every once and a while. He seemed almost scared of water for a while. And I knew why: he wanted to kill himself too. He actually missed me so much, he wanted to die to be with me. Which was without a doubt flattering, but it infuriated me to no end. 

But, luckily, he eventually came to his senses. He began seeing friends again, and spent time with his family, and took Sadie for walks often. He smiled more and more frequently, and spent less time in my room. That time was the best, because I knew it wasn't just some sort of Rise. I knew he was actually getting his life back together.