My Bleach Heaven

I drank the clear liquid like it was holy water. In a way it was. It would be the last thing I ever consumed. I wouldn't fail this time. It burned my tongue and throat as I swallowed determindly. I gasped for air. I could feel it burning my insides, gnawing away at my organs like a snake. But I would not cry. I hadn't cried for years. So I drank without a single complaint or whimper. And then I died.

There is something swift and clean and maticulessly practised about death. One second you are and one second you aren't. Its not pretty or without pain. In some ways its like waking up. Your life flashes before your eyes and then you're standing next to your body. You realise that you don't have a soul. You are a soul, and your body is merely a puppet. That night, I lost my puppet.

A boy from school cried for me. The one who'd been too afraid to send me a valentine. The boy who'd held me in silent reverence half my life. The boy who'd walk the long way home just to go the same route as me. I thought of what could have been.

Its no fun being dead. I'd hoped it would be peaceful, quiet, like a permanent sleep. But it wasn't. For years I watched as my friends and family moved on. I saw them change into different people. I felt all their emotions and pain. I was with them as they grew older, invisible and inaudible. I thought I'd been alone while I was alive. I'd been wrong. Loneliness is not when most people don't notice you, but when you notice everyone, hear everything, but cannot be heard or seen.

People had always romanticized death. It always happens. It is the irrivocable constant in this world. Everything dies. Even stars. But people had turned it into something desirable. Which was stupid and unnatural. You don't see Flamingoes commiting suicide. Or any other mammal species for that. And so it was with a mixture of frustration and anger as I watched my own sister fall into societies greatest trap. The belief that death was better than life. But you see, I realised something when I died. Death is not about the ending, it is about the whole story. The love and the loss and the happiness and the pain and the beauty and the shame. your feelings are your life. and your death is as important, yet ignorable as a full stop.

I watched my sister grow stronger than the depression. She found a man, married him and bore his children. A normal life. She looked beautiful in her wedding dress. I was proud as she said her vows and I was with her. I held her hand as she stumbled up the stairs to the altar. I chased her children through parks with her. I held her as she sat by my mothers dead body. I caught her when she slipped and fell as an old woman. I guided her to bed each night as she grew to old to function properly. Never feeling a thing. Never truely touching her.

And then there came the night that I led her to her death bed. I never saw her die. But I heard me end. she didn't know it but she ended me. She spoke my name. I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday. She was the last to utter my name. The last to think of me. And so it was, that with the mere whisper of a dieing lady, that my soul ceased to exist. Everything faded slowly to black and I ended, the way I'd wanted to all those years ago. But this time I didn't want to. And I regretted giving up. I regretted being "strong" and not letting myself cry. not letting myself feel. Because as I'd realised all those years ago, you are not living when you are not feeling. If I could have gone back and redone everything, married that sweet young man, had children of my own, found happiness, I would have. And then everything went dark. I ended hoping that nobody else ever had to feel such regret.