Deantastic!

[Editor's note: this was first published in one of my Wordpress-hosted blogs, "QWERTY Confessions", on April 4, 2008. I am republishing it here because school is taking up too much of my time I will try to write a new post every once in a while (hopefully, multiple times a week).]

In the darkness, the girl stands sobbing. Her immaculate face is drenched in her own tears. She looks haggard, like she hasn’t gotten rest in days. On her nightstand, three or four handkerchiefs lay dripping wet. The depression has taken its toll. She is tired and has nearly lost her will to live. Around her neck, a loosened rope is tied. She is standing on a stool, contemplating on everything that has happened to her.

She is, quite literally, standing in the threshold between life and death. She is on the edge of a precipice, and it is her decision to make.

All the pain, the hurt, the agony and anguish. She cannot take it anymore, she says to herself. Life is no longer worth living. Ending it right now will make no difference.

Even in these final moments, when she has convinced herself to kick the bucket, doubt exists in her conscience. She knows that in the young age of 14, a whole life is before her, and by doing what she is about to do, a whole life is wasted.

Her friends, her reliable refuge when she felt pain. She could always rely on them, no matter what the hour. How would they feel if they woke in the morning to hear the news of her death? A dear treasure lost. She felt guilty thinking about that.

Her parents, the hands that guided her all throughout. The everlasting support and encouragement they offered. The sometimes strict discipline they applied to her, which she knew was for the best. That smile, that hug, that little peck on the cheek when they realized she was having difficulty. All the pain they endured to raise her and put her through school. The clothes on her back, the food she ate–everything was from the sweat on her parents’ brows. And to equate that with suicide? She was feeling more remorseful by the second.

The Almighty. He gave her life. Only He could take it away. In her last moments, she raised her head to the heavens, and the teardrops began pouring. She could not muffle her sobbing anymore. “Dear Lord,” was all she could mutter. “Dear Lord,” she managed in between sobs.

Her enemies. They were the people who made the world a nasty place. “What did I ever do to them to deserve this?” She asks herself. All the things they said to her, and about her to other people. She did not think they would stop what they were doing, and to have to endure that for another day–she cringed at that thought.

The tears flowed down her cheeks even more now, as she contemplated finally whether to kick the stool and gruesomely end it all, or to remove this rope from her slender neck and live another painful day. The tears were drenching her clothes, and her face was even wetter now.

“What should I do?”

She closed her eyes, and in a surge of adrenaline, kicked the stool off her feet. The ensuing pain was quick. She kicked her feet wildly in the air, realizing how agonizing these last moments were. The physical agony of being unable to breathe, and the emotional agony of realizing just what she was leaving behind–all the while knowing that she’d passed the point of no return.

Her neck snapped, and she slowly lost her vision, and breathed her last. It was over.

Meanwhile, her frightened parents awoke in the next room after sensing something was wrong. They hurried over to their only child’s bedroom, kicked the locked door open, and were greeted by the painful sight of their daughter lifelessly hanging from a rope by her neck.

There is barely a more gruesome sight on Earth, and no more painful thought, than to think about this. Even as I write this, the pain feels real–a friend of mine had once attempted to take her own life by a razor blade, and the miracle of her being alive today cannot be anything else but the Lord’s work.

And I pray to the Lord to save more confused young lives, so that they can realize their predicament and know that the solution is not death.