It’s not anything like I expected. Death, that is. You don’t lie on fluffy white clouds looking down on the world, or pass through some huge golden gates or anything. And I definitely haven’t met Jesus yet. When I first appeared here, I didn’t know where I was. I was terrified. So I tried to shout for someone, anyone. But no noise came out. It’s like I’m not really here, but my mind is. I still haven’t quite worked out what here is. In a way, it’s nowhere. It’s just empty, completely blank. There isn’t a floor, or walls or anything. I’m part of the nothing. I don’t have a body anymore. Only a mind, or a soul, or whatever it’s called. It’s lonely, when I’m on my own. Sometimes I see glimpses of my family, and the others that loved me. The ones who cared for me, and tried to help me. They all blame themselves, all of them. Especially Danny.

I hate what I’ve done to Danny. To think that I thought this was an escape, the easy way out. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. To watch him grieve and hurt. To see him emotionally clutching at his heart, begging for it to stop burning form the inside out. Before it’s all just a pile of black ash. He did love me; it may not have been in the way that I loved him. But it was love all the same. I wish I could tell him now that it’s ok, that he wasn’t the reason I did it.

Then there’s Aunty Lee. She gave everything to me I ever could have needed. When my mum took the shortcut, she took me in. She knew that I would grow to have my mum’s seaweed green eyes and slim figure. And not her brown chocolate cake eyes and naturally curvy figure. But she loved me like a daughter all the same, and treated me like her daughter. What she didn’t know, was that even with her I could never have what I wanted. I’m so stubborn. I couldn’t have everything so I did what I hated my own mother for doing. I left everything. Gave it all up. She sobs; she hardly stops for five minutes at a time. Some days, she doesn’t even bother getting out of bed. She just cries herself in and out of sleep. I want to hold her close, breathe her in, and assure her that I didn’t do it because of her.

But out of everyone, Karen is disturbed the most. She doesn’t cry, she doesn’t mope. But she certainly isn’t herself, not even slightly. Instead of her nice, well put together image and clothing, she just throws on whatever she can find. She’s started smoking, and hanging around with new, dodgy friends. Plus, she drinks. Drinks a lot. Wherever she goes, she takes alcohol. I don’t know how she gets it all, probably from her new friends. I haven’t seen her smile once, not properly. Her lips smile, but the rest of her stays the same. Her eyes are still like thrashing rainclouds. I don’t think she’ll ever properly recover from what she saw. She watched me die, my last few seconds. And my body was a cut-up petal red mess. If I could let her know now that it wasn’t her fault, I would.

I hate what I did. I may not have been happy, but everyone else was. Now they’re all going through all this, because of me. And the saddest thing is, I’m still not happy. Thanks to me, when Danny and Karen look back on their teen years, they’ll remember how a stubborn freak stole all those happy times away. And when Aunty Lee grows old, someone will ask her how many grandchildren she has. She’ll think of the fact that the closest thing she even had to a child left her. Deserted her.
One day, they’ll start to forget. The bad memories will be swept away, to make room for new, good ones. All of them will recover eventually, I know that. But right now, they need me. And I can’t even help them with that. I do wish that they could all think I didn’t do it because of them, but that wouldn’t be true. Even if maybe one of them did something just a little differently, this wouldn’t have happened. And I can’t help but think this.

Because of what I did.

Because I’m Selfish.