Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
MAYBE WE CAN'T all have happy endings lying in the horizon.
And maybe, that's okay. Maybe we learn to contend ourselves with the shards of happiness that we do get instead – contend ourselves with the happy beginnings and happy mediums and to hell with the shitty endings because, in the long run, they won't matter as much.
The reality was – not everybody could hop onto that freight train and learn to be alright with it so quickly. It was a hard pill to swallow to find out that ultimately, we were all pawns in fate's twisted game and we had no say and in our endgames.
Or at least, I couldn't swallow it at first. In the early days of my re-admission back to the hospital it was difficult not to submit back into the impending panic that this was really it. The endgame – my endgame. It's incredible how much the process of realisation is akin to the one of drowning. You see, when you're drowning you're not entirely aware that you're essentially dying until you can't breath.
The instinct to not let any water in is so dominating that your mouth is slammed shut until you feel like your brain's imploding. But when you do finally let it in, that's when the pain comes to a halt. Everything - drowning – isn't so frightening anymore. So really, drowning and realising were two sides of the same coin. Because when I learned to accept death and finally let all that information in, it was only then that it wasn't so frightening anymore.
Of course that was something only the dying could ever understand.
And though I completely understood my twisted analogy, I couldn't for the life of me comprehend the mass of jumbled words and hushed tones that the living would do once they deemed me asleep.
Albeit, I could make out a few words here and there but the only sound that truly resonated with me were the high pitch sobs racking all my loved ones' bodies. All heart throbbing and ear-achingly painful to hear and it was moments like these that I wished there was a way to take the hurt away even though I was the one in unfathomable pain.
"I think we should wake her soon, you know, say our goodbyes." That was the unmistakeable broken voice of my father travelling down the hall and into the shell of my ears. "Maybe we could each go one by one. Because it could get overwhelming – "
"You're kidding me right?" That was Dove. I could recognise her low voice anywhere but the coldness tangled with it was enough to make someone's blood run cold. "How could you even propose that?"
"It's the right thing to do." He told her, calmly. "You don't want to carry this around for the rest of your life regretting that you couldn't — that you didn't say what you needed to say."
