The Other Timeline

March 9, 2022

It was Wednesday and she was beyond stressed. She had not seen any of her friends in days and she had a million assignments to do for school. Mid-terms were quickly approaching. Her love life had decided to pull the world’s greatest disappearing act. She was constantly looking for a new job and she did not have her rent money this week. And to top, it all off her family was steadily asking her to make the long trip home. 

Tasha had reached her limit. Instantly her eyes began to itch with the need to cry, however she was in the campus library and she was raised to show all her feelings down. From the outside, she appeared very focused and in control of her life. She took a deep breath and promised that she would deal with her feelings later. Tasha even made an appointment in her overly-filled planner to have a good cry session. 

March 27, 2022

Tasha had just finished Spring Break. The busiest week in her life because professors did not understand that it was supposed to be a break for students as well. She was exhausted in every way possible. All she wanted to do was sleep and never move again. However, she had signed up to pull overtime at her new job. She was desperate to not ask her family for money because it always came with unreasonable conditions attached. Plus, Tasha was distraught every time life made her lean on other people. 

As she pulled on her work uniform which was soon to be covered in glitter, a single tear slid down her face. She hurriedly brushed it away. She did not have time for tears. She was in dire need of the cry session that she had to push back, due to a forgotten essay. As Tasha walked out of her room, she offhandedly tried to think about the last time she had eaten. It was two days ago, but that was okay because she need to lose some weight anyway. As she slid into the driver’s seat of her car, she told herself that everything would be fine as long as she graduated.

April 3, 2022

She had to quit her job because her car got totaled in a wreck. A wreck that had her sobbing on the side of the road, with cops and the entirety of the town watching (perks of a small college town). The only person who was injured was Tasha, mentally. The wreck had shaken her to her soul’s core. It had only been five months since she lost her high-school best friend in a car accident. So when she had gotten hit by the other car she could think that this was the last thing her best friend had seen as well. That thought had sent Tasha to a dark place that seemed to be endless.

Later, you could find Tasha underneath the covers in her room. She was laying in the dark room with tears flowing continuously from her eyes. However, no noise escaped from her. Tasha stayed like that for an hour until the tears had stopped. She then decided that she needed to distract herself from the events of the day. She turned on her favorite childhood movie and grabbed her phone. That is when she noticed that she had notifications from multiple social media apps, which was highly unusual. The only people who talked to Tasha were the same three people she lived with her. She clicked on the yellow icon only to soon be flooded with images of herself on the side of the road. She instantly turned off her phone and went back into her cocoon.

April 11, 2022

Tasha stared at the screen. The stare was intense and she was trying her hardest to change the words and numbers with sheer willpower. It was not working. She had failed one of her midterms. Her world spiraled how was she going to pass now? That one question demanded an answer, one that she could not produce no matter how hard she tried. As she tried to calm herself down, she felt as if a pair of hands had clamped around her lungs. It was so hard to breathe and it was only getting harder.

After she snapped out of her daze, she fumbled for her phone. She was moving on autopilot. After calling the people closest to her in life, she was expecting comfort and advice. What Tasha did not need was a lecture which added disappointment to her life at the moment. After talking to her family, she decided to turn to her friends to get comfort and advice there. What she found were jokes about comments about how she took everything so seriously. With nowhere to turn, she decided to try to email the famous jerk of a professor for a second chance. 

April 29, 2022

Tasha did not understand. She could not comprehend why she felt the need to throw away the last four years of her life. Her emails were full of attempts to talk by her advisor. She did not care though. She had spent exactly two hours crafting the email saying she was going to drop out. It was the toughest thing she had ever done in her life. It was most likely the biggest decision of her life and Tasha felt nothing as she hit send. She had jokingly and non-jokingly talked about this moment; had even planned it out before. However, she never thought that she would feel numb, she was expecting feelings of relief or regret. 

She had no idea how she was going to explain this to her family. She had no idea what to do about her paying off the now unnecessary amount of debt she had collected over the years. She did not know if she now would have to move out of her campus-affiliated apartment. She had spent years worrying about her GPA and any minute detail that was school-related. Tasha often thought that every time she got a 70 on a test she would shudder with disappointment. Now she had nothing to worry about and she felt empty. 

May 5, 2022

The entire campus was getting ready for graduation the next week, yet it was now surrounded by a somber mood. This is when the entire campus was notified, Tasha had taken her own life. Her family and friends were devastated. They could not understand why she would do such a thing. The world was puzzled; she had so much to live for. She was close to graduating college with honors and her sister had just given her a niece. She was always smiling and laughing. Tasha was the friend you could count on to brighten the mood. Tasha was happy until the bitter end; at least that was the image Tasha showed to the world. 

Those closest to Tasha were plunged into grief, to their horror that Tasha had meticulously planned her death to make it more convenient for them. Tasha had left them all apology notes, even her newborn niece received one. For her family, she told them she had found a way for them to have her school debt forgiven and assured them that there was nothing they could have done to help. For her friends, she instructed them to forget about her completely so they did not have to live in grief and even left graduation presents for them. 

May 6, 2022

Tasha’s mom was staring at a young Tasha. The photo that was tightly grasped in her hands showed a young smiling Tasha outside of school. Tasha’s mom remembered the day well. She went to the school because Tasha had been a part of an assembly celebrating the top students at the school. Tasha had just won an award for writing an essay about what she wanted to be in the future. Tasha had written about how in the future she wanted to help misunderstood people in the future. The irony stung in a way that Tasha’s mom could not explain. Tasha use to be so excited for school, for life. There were so many times when Tasha would ramble on and on about all the places she wanted to visit. After growing up in the black in the south, she also had dreams of helping anyone who was perceived as different. Tasha’s mom clutched the photo to her chest as sobs forced their way out into the world. She did not know how to deal with this pain. She wondered if this is how Tasha felt in the last moments of her life. 

The truth was that is exactly how Tasha felt, except she had been feeling like that for months. The pain had become unbearable. It was so hard to live that Tasha just wanted to rest. She did not know to become the person her younger self had envisioned when she was young. She lost the passion that she had when she was just a child. All her childlike hopes and dreams seemed to be constantly crushed the longer she lived. It was so hard to wake up every day hoping for a change that would never come. Tasha was constantly fighting the world and only sinking deeper into despair. Exhausted Tasha wrote letters to everyone she knew she was disappointing, including a letter to her younger self.