Bitter Sweet Emotions

We're All Puppets

I've always thought a lot about the meaning of death. Why people are so fascinated by it? The afterlife, what's so special about it? Was it all it was made out to be. Would we be given the choice of going to heaven or hell? Did we get the happy ever after we all envisioned after death? Do we get to choose after it all ends? While, our corpses cover the ground and tombs line the fields. Like soldiers to war, all even, in single file line, ready to serve another being mighter than ourselves. Do we have a choice in our own living lives before death? Grow up, get good grades, be happy, make good life choices, don't fall off the path set in stone for you since birth. If you do you're a disappointment, a sheep that's lost its way. "Graduate Highschool". You'll never amount to anything in life anymore. "Go to College". You've lost your way. "Get a Job". People scold you for leaving the stone they carved and laid out before you. "Make Money". Every rock and brick the expectations they set for you. "Sacrifice Everything For Others". The life they chose for you that their parents choose for them. "Find Yourself a Family". Like a record player on repeat; the same cycle, but a different person. We all say we dictate our own lives, but is it true? We follow the trends, obey the rules to a degree, critique ourselves to fit others standards. Always in the back of our minds the 'what if' lingers. "What if someone makes fun of me? What if they think it looks ugly; tastes gross; boring; lame; stupid." What if What if WHAT IF? We never truly live our own lives; the concept of death; that fairy tail we make up to escape reality. The reality that nothing in this life is our choice, something or someone is pulling the strings behind the curtain. Like a puppet, we must obey those strings even if we don't want to. It's subconscious, ingrained into all our lives. Like the sheep that blindly follow the shepherd. We never make our own decisions. Even death is decided by others, by your organs failing you. By the hands of another, by your own hands. Pushed to the edge by others. Death is when people hope they get to write their own story, decide their own fate, cut the strings holding them, their own path to follow. But do we truly get that even after death?
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The wailing of a newborn baby taking its first breath; as the last breath of another passes through their lips happens, simultaneously; in sync as if they were one and the same person. Is death the end of puppets? Is the afterlife really so grand?

-Kirsten