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Ameliorate

A Short Story

(2016)

The girl sat down on her bed. Her eyes were puffy and swollen. Tightly gripped in her hand was an orange pill bottle; Sitting there, mocking her.

All she could think about was how alone and unwanted she felt, and the words which reflected the content of the bottle. In high enough doses, consumption may be fatal.

Death. Why was this such a comforting thought? To most people it’s their greatest fear to lose their life; Here she was willingly about to make the choice.

It was her happy thought. Any time the girl was sad, it gave her comfort to remember that she always held the power to end everything.

No more suffering.

No more pain.

No more.

The girl felt her eyes swell up with tears, the first time in a long time she’s felt such a pure joy, and let the contents of the bottle absorb into her still circulating blood. She laid down on her bed until her eyelids could no longer bear the weight of 16 years and drifted into a calm wave of nothingness.

A few hours had passed.

“Sweetheart? Are you okay?”

The woman slowly climbed up the girls bedroom stairs, clutching to the hope that her daughter simply was asleep. However, in a single moment, she could see that her last bit of hope was gone.

“Baby? Wake up.” She shook the girl by her shoulders. “Please. Dear God. WAKE UP.”

Her mother struggled, violently shaking her unresponsive body, wailing as if her volume was the one thing which separated her daughters body from consciousness. But no amount of screaming or movement could bring the girl back from where she was; there was no waking up.

As she jolted the corpse, she saw the empty orange bottle roll to her side, and screamed for her husband to call for help. They tried to purge the death out of her body. A paramedic would arrive, and after a few minutes of a trying effort, they would slow down then stop, realizing their efforts were futile.

No Pulse.

And that would be the girls life.

The parents were left with the weight of being the first to know, feeling so close to being able to avoid it. Vicious and guilt ridding thoughts would attack their minds.

If I had just checked on her earlier…

If I had just spoken up…

Why didn’t she talk to me?

Was she afraid to?

Though everyone around would tell them it was not their fault that she was gone, they will never understand how it wasn’t.

They would have the responsibility of making all the arrangements.

Telling the family.

Calling family friends.

Calling her school.

Arranging a funeral. My God? How are we going to pay for this funeral? The medical bills?

They will hide their need to confront their own feelings and to give time for grief and acceptance. They will be so consumed in helping those around them cope that they will forget the need to help themselves.

And slowly they will go numb. They will never understand how it could’ve happened. How they could’ve possibly outlived their own physically healthy child, and how her mental health determined her physical state of being. They will always believe that each of them had a part they could have played to prevent it.

The stress, frustration, anguish and sense of responsibility would begin to consume them, slowing making them just as dead as their daughter; The only difference being that they had a pulse.

All the while, the girl will never know or see this. She will never be able to tell them how it wasn’t their fault. She won’t be able to let them know that there was nothing they could’ve done; that death was all she craved.

No. All she would have is darkness. Pure nothingness.

The light in her parents heart faded almost as quickly as her life had.

It would break them to lose another child.

They had already lost two children at birth before;

The birth of a beautiful girl was followed by the loss of their beautiful son.

The birth of a beautiful girl was again followed by the loss of their beautiful son.

Later on, they had their final son, a healthy beautiful boy.

And 2 years later, they learned they were to have one more child.

This pattern of casualty brought her parents to absolute terror for 9 months, being almost ensured that fate would have one final needless invasion in their life and take hers.

Yet, she was born without complication. They called her their bonus baby.

What would that be like? To have experienced and overcome a loss that time can ever so slightly dull the heartache from, but surely never heal, only to feel it happen again in a whole new way? To have been able to have known the child before losing it? To raise them, hear their first words, to see them develop into a young adult with dreams and aspirations, into a person who they thought was so happy, only to see them take their own life?

There’s only so much a person can endure in their lifetime; this would be too much.

And to think of her living siblings, all of which had personally overcome the same desire at some point in their lives. Would this be the final driving force to make them feel that It really was the only answer? Would this make them feel the need to do the same?

And her friends. Their faces will sink as they learn that they girl they had experienced years of late night talks about their future with, would never be around for it.

She will never see the resolution to her temporary problem. She will never know that she will experience exorbitant amounts of genuine happiness. She will never have the opportunity to see her own strength in escaping from the darkest aspects of her mind. She will never be able to see herself grow into a woman. She will never see how much others care for her and want her to be alive and happy.

She will never see the day that she will find love again.

She will never see the day that she will learn to love herself.

She will never see the day where she was able to happily give love to others.

She will never see the day that the love she gave will be immensely returned.

Instead, she will see nothingness.

She won’t come to understand that her yearning for death was only partly shaped by her situation; that things would improve with time. She knew she was depressed, she took a pill every day to help, so when she felt the compulsion to leave, it felt all too real.

She didn’t understand that heartbreak and loss influenced her thought process in such an elaborate way. She couldn’t see that her situation was only part of the reason she felt worthless. She didn’t understand how to control these feelings of self loathing without resorting to her idea of a solution.

She wanted to be happy, or at least she always tried to be. Some days were all too pleasing to her to ever feel the need to go. Some days she wondered why she’d ever think to resort to such a thing.

And other days, she was essentially dead already. Wanting to give to those around her, but never feeling satisfaction or wholeness from within.

All she wanted was to no longer feel such immense and constant sadness; she didn’t intend to pass it on.

She knew it would just take time to be okay, but time had its opportunity on countless occasions and failed to show her what it intended to. Instead, time had shown her that regardless of how happy she may feel some days, it will always come back to this desire.

So why continue? Why move forward if this is what her life will be?

Sitting there, all she could think about is how alone and unwanted she was in the world of her mind.

She looked down a the orange bottle.

This isn’t it for me.

She set the bottle aside and took a deep breath. She felt herself swell with a familiar pain that comes with the realization of her current state, and began to sob once again.

Her problem was not fixed, she had to face that; but she understood that death was not a solution either.

She didn’t want to face it. She didn’t want to continue a life that appeared to be so pointless.

But to end everything? This would solve nothing. Truthfully, it would only turn over her pain to others.

There are some things that only the passing of time would come to show her.

She wasn’t as alone as she thought she was.

She won’t be unwanted because she will desire to see the person she becomes with each day.

She will find herself crying as she thinks back to the very moment where she considered leaving such an marvelous world.

She will feel sick at the thought that she would have left before the author of her story was able to move on to Chapter 2.

She will feel agony, heartbreak and loss again many times.

But she will also feel an inexplicable bliss that comes from within.

It will be a grand expedition to find happiness and to love herself.

And she smiled from ear to ear just knowing that she had the chance to try.

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