What Once Was Three, Now is Two
Looking at the car I could tell I was in so much trouble. It was totaled. I thought my mom would kill me. My body was sitting motionless, head hanging low against my chest, bruises that wanted to discolor my skin hiding beneath the surface. A horn was going off, loudly; it wouldn’t stop. I was having trouble processing the images coming into my eyes. I saw myself, outside myself, outside my eyes, with my eyes. There I was, lifeless, in the front seat of my car.
I was speeding, weaving in and out of traffic. I did that sometimes, not all the time, only when I was mad or depressed, when life seemed a little less worth living. It's not like I was looking to die or anything. It was an unconscious pushing of the proverbial envelope.
To be honest, dying in a car accident was something I thought of daily. The fear had propelled me into becoming, what I thought was, an overly safe driver. I slowed down at intersections to look both ways, I always checked my blind spot, always used my blinker, always kept my eye on all the other cars around me. Well, that is until the day I died.
That scenario ran through my mind countless times with countless outcomes. How would I handle a car accident? Would I be calm? Would I freak out? If I was disfigured in any way how would I react? Amputation? Paralyzation? Vegetative state?
My family, that's what always tore me up. My mom, my sister, they are the center of my life, were the center of my life. My post-mortem guilt consumes this life, this thing between really living and really dying. The feeling is as if I want to die again. To somehow balance the cosmic scales to take away their pain just as I caused their pain.
We moved to Michigan as three, and I left them as two. A three that was emotionally expressive and wildly sarcastic. And a two that will always feel incomplete and blackly empty. I came out of the closet at 18, they supported me. I was diagnosed with depression at 20, they supported me. I started getting my life together at 24; seeing a shrink and losing weight, they supported me. At 25 I was progressing in therapy and had lost fifty-five pounds, feeling their support at every struggling moment.
And now I'm left with nothing but questions. What have I done to them? How could I? What was I thinking? What will their lives be without me? As if I think I was the center of their existence, and a life without me is incomprehensible. But I imagine they will eventually come to terms with my death. One day they'll get out of bed and I won't be their first thought. They'll be able to look at a picture of me without a tear, and recount a story without hesitation. It's difficult to imagine, them going about their lives not knowing me anymore.
However long forever turns out to be, that's how long I will blame myself. The guilt is my prison, forever is my sentence.