Have You Ever...

…been hurt so bad it feels like dying.

No, really. This is what it must feel like to go. And actually, it is rather pleasant.

It’s more like a release. The final 'fuck-it'. A complete and utter surrender to a higher power outside your control. Like drowning in a river. You struggle at first. But then, people say there is a moment of euphoria as your lungs learn how to breathe water instead of spit air. You have reverted to man’s pre-evolutionary state and ironically, you feel more alive than you have ever felt in your entire sorry land-locked lifetime.

You float. Then you sink into oblivion.

And the best part of the transition is the peace. Nothing can touch it or take it from you – it is six feet below. Profound. Exquisite. Deep. It consumes you. And you are left with nothing but the metaphysical conviction that everything in this topsy-turvy world is now as it should be.

Finally, you have done something right.

You always knew it was coming. Death and taxes, as they say. The only thing you could never pinpoint was how or when. All you knew was that it would be too soon.

Don’t believe what anyone tells you. Nobody ever really wants to go. Even the most reckless maniac with a death-wish wants to live – even if it is by the skin of her teeth. She may flirt with her mortality but ultimately all she wants is to be pulled back from the brink. To live another five minutes. To scrape by.

So follow your own advice, girl. Don’t fall in love.

Because in doing so, you will have signed a warrant for your own execution. In effect, you will have planted a knife in your heart – so deeply and so cleanly you don’t even feel it going in. Except when someone twists and pulls it out.

You wait. A year flies by – the best year of your life. Nothing happens. You grow careless. You begin to make modest little plans and dream modest little dreams, you have a little celebration to congraulate yourself on defying the odds. But in reality, all you are doing is looking forward to a future that isn’t yours and committing yourself to a person that can never fully reciprocate.

You fool.

Yet, you continue to laugh in the face of your own destruction. You court it. You jeer at it. And when it doesn’t come, you begin to trust in the myth of your own invincibility. You believe your own lies.

You forget you are on borrowed time.

And you are in such a mood when the knife is casually drawn from you, so swiftly that you lose your breath and immediately start to fall. You feel like you should resist or retaliate, do what all women do and cry even, but there is no point. The deed is already done. It is your time to go, not with a bang, but with a forced smile and a whimper.

The house always wins.

You turn to face your killer. Her features swim into view and somehow you think you have seen that face before. Your tongue moves out of its own accord and it is your voice you recognise being discharged from your throat. Congratulations, you’re a muppet on your own show. If life wasn’t ebbing away from you, you would find it terribly amusing.

“That…hurts me,” you mutter softly, resignedly, to no one in particular. It is all a bit of an anti-climax.

After all, the culprit is no evil priestess. She is your best friend, your confidante, your protector – against whom you are utterly defenceless. She comes bearing good intentions and takes you at your least aware – when you are sitting around tittering over something superficial, feeling reasonably content with life.

A moment which for her will just be another moment.

But for you, will be an eternity.