Stars and Scars

I stare up at the stars, thinking, tired. My whole life, all twenty-three years of it, measured up to nothing compared to the stars'. It was hard to comprehend that they had been here billions of years before me and they would still be here billions of years after.

I examine my cracked, ruined nails. I am breathing heavily and my clothes were caked with blood. I am a mess. I am ruined. I am broken.

I have thought over and over how I could've done this day different. And I have come up with nothing. I have not thought of a single thing I could've done to stop the meeting of two hopeful souls, one looking for love, the other looking for satisfaction from something entirely so human it is inhuman.

I do not think that if I had the chance to start this day over again, I would have been able to stop the chain of events that have led up to me laying here, a knife wound in my side, and an inescapable future.

The stars are glittering more fiercely now, as if they know that soon I will join them up there.

Scars are not always visible on the outside. Sometimes they are held inside, waiting for one single slip to reveal them for what they are. Marks of pain, marks of hurt. I have lived through much, and yet I do not pretend I know the true sorrows of the world.

Scars turned inside out would reveal us to all be marked up. Fucked up. Screwed over. Whatever.

If we all had our scars showing to each other, what would we see? Would we see that the perfect girl next door is being raped every night by her perfect father. Would we see that that adorable, smiling little boy with the dimples in one cheek witnessed his mother cheating on his father multiple times?

Would we see the insecurities that cloud every confident-seeming jock's thoughts before a big game? Would we see guilt as they think about that morning when they shot steroids into their ass?

Would we see the hidden deception underneath the friendly faces that greet us every day in the supermarket? Faces that smiled at us while they secretly contemplate taking us into the back alley and killing us. Like I have already seen. Like I have already experienced.

I grip my tattered white tank top, the blood making it turn scarlet, my least favorite color. Mine has always been silver. Like the stars above me. Scarlet has always seemed too demanding, too angry. Violent. And I am a calm person, whose façade has finally crumbled, revealing me to be weak and desperate, so unlike the calm portrait I hang up around others.

My eyesight is turning fuzzy. I cannot see straight and I feel myself drifting off into the eternal abyss that awaits me.

Stars, I think stupidly.

But, no. I cannot go yet. I have to turn in the one who did this to me. I start to get up, crying out as the wound in my side protests. I scream at it, as if it is not a part of me, as if it is different. Separate.

"I hurt, too!" I howl. "But I have to do this."

I know I have lost the battle, though. I lay back down, the grass soft and feathery against my face. It is nice. Nice to have the last thing I feel be comforting. It was sweet really, the way I was going to die here and no one would ever be the wiser of how.

Or maybe they would. Forensics was getting better.

I am almost ready now, slowly drifting off. I beg my body to hurry, for this is excruciating. I cannot stand this.

When you are living a nightmare for so long, it becomes hard to remember what life was like before that began. It doesn't matter if you have been in the nightmare for two seconds and already thoughts of sunrises with loved ones, fuzzy puppies licking your face, and sweet, soft kisses stolen in the dead of night begin to blow away in the wind of the moment.

"I remember love," I whisper to the stars. "I remember sunshine and rainbows and butterflies and puppies and good things."

And somehow just saying that made the darkness lift just a little bit. The stars shone brighter. And I felt more at home.

I can't remember the simple things actually. Those memories have faded into the background compared to all the bigger things. Like how I used to drink my tea. I don't care anymore, I'd take it with three pounds of sugar and barely any tea flavoring right now, though, if I could.

Like how I used to eat steak. I'd eat it burnt right now if that would fill those empty memory slots.

I wonder if I went to the hospital right now, would they be able to save me? Would I want them to?

Or would I allow death to take me away? I don't know. I don't rightly know.

Does anyone? Given the chance to die, would you take it? Most people, I suppose, wouldn't. They'd have friends and family to stay around here for. But I'm not like that. My family is all dead and I am too shy to have friends.

Is that all it takes? Not having any friends or family to want to die? Really? Because I was certain it needed more.

But that's the thing. I don't HAVE more. I have nothing else left to think about or say that could make this whole process any less of what it is. I was done thinking or feeling or talking or anything.

Life is tiring, that's what it is. Life is harder, but death is longer. So which would you take?

I never got to try cheesecake. I always meant to, but I never have. Funny it's things like this that you mourn for when you're ready to go. How odd. I've never even tasted raspberries actually.

I stare up at the stars, feeling my last bit of breath drain out of my body. And in that moment, I know exactly where I'm headed.

And I'm not scared.