Thoughts and Things

Blessed are those who know exactly what to say

She was joking, only joking,

when she complained about her amount of homework 

and cried out, 

"Someone shoot me now. I wish I could just keel over and die."

She was joking, 

but when I chimed in,

"Yeah, I know the feeling,"

I was not joking, 

and somehow, she noticed.

She looked at me hard and said,

"You're not going to do anything crazy, are you?"

I know what she meant,

it's a secret code,

what she meant by that was

"Are you thinking about killing yourself?"

I shook my head, and I meant it.

She looked at me again.

"Are you sure?"

I nodded.

See, that's the thing,

I've thought about it,

sometimes wished for it,

even prayed for it,

but I haven't got the guts to do it.

Of course, it's not cowardly to go on living, I know that,

but the few times I was closest to doing it, 

I chickened out,

mostly out of fear of doing something wrong

and then having to explain myself.

But now, when I think back to it,

I'm very glad I didn't go through with it.

"The way I see it, the world's either better off or worse off with me.

I don't know which, but I know I want to make an impact,

so I might as well raise hell while I'm here."

She smiled and nodded in agreement, and the conversation ended.

We went back to talking about school work,

all the assignments we both had,

each trying to outdo each other with the amounts of work we had to do in the next week,

when suddenly there was a lull in the conversation and she said quietly,

"It would be worse off."

"What?"

"The world would be worse off without you."