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You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Until It’s Gone… |
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Explosion Down Under |
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You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Until It’s Gone…
Tragedy
 Created on 4-9-07
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 Story Rating G
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You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Until It’s Gone… My name is Amelia, I’m fourteen and I have already lost everything. Everything I held dear, everything I loved and cherished. I took it all for granted and now I find myself with nothing. Even hope has left me and I am just a pit of despair. Now death is coming to take my last possession, god’s greatest gift; my life. I took a shallow breath, another, sterile air rushed into my lungs. I had finally awoken from my death-like-sleep. For the first time in what felt like eternity I could hear my heart thumping; I felt alive, and glad to be so. I could just distinguish, scarcely evident, a glisten of light at the end of this black tunnel of tenderness and grief, this hopeless daily murk. Before that night death had lingered on my mind. It was stalking me and would snatch me away without pity. I was frightened. I was cold. My life had no meaning. I wasn’t dead, but might as well have been. The days were all alike; desperate, useless and filled with suffering. My disease was eating away at me. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had run out of tears, and strength; I had nothing left. Everything had turned out to be in vain. Ultimately, my existence had been reduced to nothing, and I didn’t even have enough strength left to see the unfairness of my own despair. It would be just another night ahead, faithfully identical to those that had preceded it and those that would follow. At least I had thought so as I drifted off to sleep. Generally, I never dreamt. I slept very little and poorly but that night something unexpected occurred. I had an implausible dream- about a mind-boggling reality. So how did I know that my dreams weren’t actually messages from some other true subsistence, while my meaningless life was in fact the fantasy reflection of that mysterious world? A fit of coughing woke me, I clutched the dream as firm as I could but it was fading fast. The girls in my dream… Michelle, Ingrid and Anastasia… bizarre… the initials of their names formed my nickname, Mia. Before, everyone had always called me that even thought my real name was Amelia. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. I thought I was over the time when tears of desire and regret would well up in my eyes without warning. That belonged to what went before. Over and done with. I had no name anymore, because no one bothered to talk to me. I was nothing, just a body, almost motionless. On a bed in a room. Nothing. I closed my burning eyes. Hope was a blessing that had left me a long time before and it would get me nowhere now. Even so, I would have liked to continue my dream. I was terrified by the opaque, monotonous silence. All I could hear was the steady buzz of the apparatus to which I was connected, to which my flickering life was connected. I had always been fearful of the dark. Why pretend otherwise? And to me, that’s what death was; absolute darkness, everlasting and immeasurable. I pictured myself falling into a chasm with nothing to hold on to. I saw myself swallowed up by nothingness, in a world without emotions, thoughts, colours, lost forever in a void. There would be no more pain… I would dissolve in this blankness, forget everything, lose everything, every hint of my being. If that’s what death was, then maybe I had already left this life. But no, I was still laying here, motionless, pallid, trembling convulsively, awaiting the end. I was afraid, so afraid that my fear might triumph and kill me before my illness could. I had more or less accepted the pain, understood that it would linger until the end, cunningly gnawing away at me, but I had never been able to forget this fear always lurking inside me, persistent devouring, haunting and overpowering me. I was terrified of silence, darkness, time, unconsciousness, perpetuity. Death. If only I could impede time, order it to halt in its tracks. I begged it to go backwards, to give me back my life, my future. I had nothing left that could help or soothe me. There was only torment, growing ever worse. Then the dream had come. It had disturbed my waiting, flung me outside time, outside the life I had been leading, or the deficiency of life that was my world. I wanted the dream to go on eternally, to make me forget everything else, to wipe it all from the face of the earth… I thought I could live in my dream, making it my reality and turning my depressing reality into a distant and unattainable dream. Without knowing it, I had apprehensively begun to hope again. But in the end, it was only a dream, and this forbidding understanding shattered my illusions. Even my dream wouldn’t stay with me. I had to face facts, it was just a chimera. So I took a deep breath and I faced the truth, the one I could see in the cautious glances of the nurses, the desperate truth that hid deep inside me. I could not continue to believe that I could ever have my old life back again; I had neither the right, nor the might to hope for that. Mia, always spoilt by her parents, the flourishing, consummate girl with so many friends- Mia had ceased to exist. And so I said out loud, so I could hear, the truth I was trying to escape from; “I’m fourteen years old. And I’m going to die.” Despite the silent protests of reality, hope had crept back into my mind. I’d begun telling myself that I could live, that I had the right to live. I knew that I could not possibly instruct Death to back off and leave me alone, but I enjoyed believing that I could. My reality fused with dream even were dream had no place. Naively, I thought that if I begged her to spare me, Death would listen to me and go on her way. Why wouldn’t she allow herself to be moved by my anguish? But then I would let my tears pour freely, and when I wasn’t asleep, I would cry- from anger, desolation, misery and trepidation. I tried to persuade myself that one day I would not arouse any more, that I would have moved into my dream, that I would live there and be blissful. If I really sought this, if I believed it with all my power, maybe it was possible that this insane wish would come true- and I would cross over into a fairy tale? Every night, I would plunge once more into the supernatural world of my dream. I lived it in my own way. The images, the emotions belonged just as much to me as to the characters living in this illusory world. I spent my days hoping that the dream would come back while I was asleep. A shrill disagreeable voice kept suggesting hastily that I was fooling myself with illusions. I knew this and yet I couldn’t help but let myself think this dream was real. And I did feel hope. Again. As I’d never allowed myself to hope before. Memories bubbled from the pits of my past. I’d worked so hard to try and secrete them deep down, but now here they were, egotistical, as cutting and splendid as ever. First the images rushed in. I tried in vain to drive them off, to return them to the void where I thought I’d locked them away. But they stayed right there, lively, dancing, vibrantly coloured, spinning before me. I understood then that the only way for me to get rid of them was to face up to them. slowly the tears began to roll off my face, I looked at the images, those ghosts from the past. The first to return were my parents. Tears trickled down my flushed cheeks. My parents were dead and I couldn’t change a thing. Their image kept nudging me despite my mind’s protests; smiling, affectionate, deceitful. They were so real, too real, and I sobbed. My parents were there before me, laughing, teasing me, cherishing me. I was Mia again. I remember screaming to chase away those images and they left, troubled, frightened, but I knew that they’d be back, that they’d continue to torment me… I woke up gasping, awfully distressed after a wretched, disturbed night. Once again, my dream had been interrupted, returning me regretfully to my icy, sombre world. I remember that I cried, dismayed by the unfairness of it; why was my reality so staggeringly different from my dream? Then memories chose to rush in, bleak and deceiving behind their golden radiance. This time I was too troubled to defy them, all my strength was gone and they came rushing in. They invaded me, sparkling with a sour merriment. I saw myself; Mia. I remembered how much everyone had admired the exuberant girl I had been. I was wealthy, ostentatious; every girl I met went pale with desire over my clothes. People put up with my whims, treated them as orders I gave to others. Mia’s character was mean and cruel, but I knew that she was also more sensitive than she allowed herself to appear. I remembered distinctly how others were fascinated by my slightest casual gesture, but also those people who took pleasure in mocking me. When things got tough I would make the trees my home and the leaves padding for my agony. Deep down I was delicate, even though I hid this vigilantly. I liked to have fun, to laugh at the expense of others, and it’s true that I was far from thoughtful and mature. But sometimes in the midst of my superficiality, I did show myself to be thoughtful and serious-minded. I was more than just a capricious girl; on the contrary, I had a tender heart. I exposed my feelings only when I was far from prying eyes, far from the effervescence I left sparkling in my wake. I had believed in undying happiness that the girlfriends who surrounded me were genuine and fond of me, but their smiles were only honeyed facade. When my disease took its place in my perfect life, I’d expected to be bolstered by support only to see everybody vanish like cowards. What did I have to give, lying in my hospital bed, my poor face ravaged by illness? Only my parents still took care of me, but life decided that even this solace was superfluous, and an accident obliterated them, too, from my world. I had slowly understood and accepted that my friends had abandoned me. I wake up. This time, it’s over. Death is coming for me. Hope… I kept it for myself; I let my illness defeat me. I’m going to die, and my hope will die with me. I close my eyes. It’s much too hard to leave. This is it. I hear Death’s footsteps, her icy breath drifts past my cheek. I feel like crying. The tears don’t come. I feel like screaming, but I no longer have the strength. I would have liked to leave without fear, without regrets, but it’s impossible. I’m suffocating. Everything around me is fading away. Only Death and I are left. She holds out her hand to me. The pain is gone and I am peaceful now, it’s over…
Comments
Please Login to post comments| On April 12th 2007 sarahroxagain Said : | |
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oi..isnt this becs????? lol |
| On April 9th 2007 deepthinker Said : | |
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again with this bitch. she must just be in a bad mood or something. she wrote a very rude comment on someone else's story as well. |
| On April 9th 2007 jchvshvks Said : | |
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sry but thats wayyy to long and depressing i stopped reading on the second indention! sry |
