What Follows 41 Distraction

Like, why is it that I chose to bleed myself to death and not just jump off my balcony? Why did I slit my wrist instead of my femoral vein? What would've been the least painful? Taking a beautiful fall, with abundant air rus.h.i.+ng through my lungs (would it have felt like breathing in three hundred breaths at once?) and blurry lights in my peripheral vision, before my head gets smashed into a beefy mush, or just watching myself tick-tock my way to death as my blood leaves my body till I'm drained clean of it?

Which is faster, which is more beautiful?

And I wonder that because I worry that one day, in this h.e.l.l of mine, I'd have to repeat my death over and over again. I worry if the way I chose to kill myself wasn't the least painful.

And then I try to remember how dying felt like and I really can't.

Listen I'm trying to tell you all this to distract you from the fact that I find it weird that the last day of my first cycle was at William's place. I'm telling you this because I don't know how else to start explaining how is it that I know that this was the last day.

I'm talk-talking because I can't find a way to sugarcoat the fact that I'm writing this from my second cycle. And I thought it'd be unfair if I went into the memories I have of that last day without explaining a thing or two about myself.

I don't know how to help you take this slow, but I'll try.

Roseline isn't my real name, which means that whether or not I existed will always remain a mystery. And I did this on purpose, so whether you choose to believe in my anonymous 'existence' or not is completely your choice. But now you know the risk it takes to try messing around with something beyond our mental capacity. Death.

Actually, almost all the names here are just false labels I gave to very real people.

Which brings us to Tobias, the only not real person, because he's dead and has been dead for several generations. Tobias, the name of my book crush. Divergent. When I revisited my memories of him, I imagined him as a tall, hazel-eyed redhead because those are features I find attractive that, in my opinion, suited him.

Tobias never quite existed as you know him. He could've been an Aaron or a Mark. He could've been short and bald. He could've been anything, anything at all and I know that if I ever brushed past him I wouldn't know him for the life of me, because all I have are stories of this person. Just stories without context, without emotion.

I sometimes wonder if there are memories we had together that I completely forgot because I feel like my story was less than thirty days. I sometimes wonder if the feelings I imagined 'I-must-have-felt' in the remaining memories are even close to real.

I sometimes think that maybe I'm a hopeless romantic and just added a lot of feeling than there ever was.

It's maddening, you know. To not really understand the depth of something that you only remember as 'profound'. It's maddening to try to fill in huge empty gaps with things that might've never existed to reach the level of profoundness that matches your memories' 'expectations'.

You might ask yourself; how the h.e.l.l am I reading this if it's coming from another dimension? From a ghost?

Good question, but does it matter? Does it matter if I've managed to sit on Jacob's laptop and typed it in, or scribbled it down on paper and left it on your table, or just enchanted a few selected ones to be able to read my message?

Does it really matter how you got this?

So before typing in/ writing/ enchanting you into reading about my very last day in my first cycle, I thought it was important to orient you into what is really happening behind the scenes.

I've been thinking/hoping lately. And by lately I mean the time it took you to read this.

I hope that you find meaning in your life, even in the most ordinary things. I hope you love yourself enough to stand up for it and walk away from anything that could bring you down.

I hope you would learn from your mistakes/ disappointments/ heartbreaks and not kill yourself because of them.

I hope you everything I couldn't have. Life is already short and I should've realized this earlier. I should've also realized that while I couldn't solve my problems alive, I should've helped people solve theirs.

I should've realized that there's salvation in helping others control their problems.

Maybe this all doesn't make sense- I wasn't known to make sense alive or dead. But listen, this universe wants you alive. It wants your heart to beat. And you just have to look for the littlest of signs and the smallest of smiles.

You being you for you is the greatest gift you can grant yourself. It was a gift I never allowed myself to have.

This might sound like sappy bulls.h.i.+t, and well, it is. It is bulls.h.i.+t that is important. It is important bulls.h.i.+t. So please, go easy on your soul.

Go easy, go soft. Take your bad days, one at a time. Sleep through them if you must. Do whatever it takes, whatever it takes, to stay alive. Your heart is beating/rooting for you. Your every cell thanks you for being alive every day. They keep pus.h.i.+ng and pus.h.i.+ng through. So push through, love.

If I could, I'd mend every broken heart with my hands of dust and whisper in everyone's ears words I wanted to hear when I was alive. I should've realized that I should've been my own ghost. I should've been the one telling me all those things to get me through it all.

There's a tonne of broken hearts everywhere. Australian, Spanish, Egyptian and Pakistanian hearts are breaking left and right. Even penguins get heartbroken. You're not special in your pain and thank G.o.d you're not. You're fighting a fight of billions. You aren't an ordinary thing. You are extraordinary on a cell level.

And if that isn't enough, I don't know what is.

And before someone can find you important in their lives, remember, that someone has to be you first. So live. Live as long as your lungs can heave in all that air. Live and have counted countless sunsets.

It's never too late to start somewhere.

Okay, now, let me tell you how it was like to finally part with Tobias and Benji.