My Freedom

The stormy waters stretched as far as I could see, the crashing waves breaking the nights silence. I licked my lips and tasted the salt in the air, probably the last source of food I would ever have. I knew what I was about to do. Most say that your final moments are lived by your life flashing before your eyes. Mine wasn't. My brain and common sense were trying their hardest to make me change my mind, but I knew it had to be done.

I won't say that I didn't have a choice, because I did. This was my choice. This was what I was going to do.

Remember how you felt when they went a voice said in my ear. Remember? You said yourself you wouldn't wish anyone that pain, not even your worst enemy. But when you jump, when you go, that is what you will be giving everyone who cares about you.

I shook my head. The voice was wrong. No one would care that I was gone. But yes, I admit that I wouldn't wish anyone that pain that I felt when I received the news that she had finally gone through with it. She was found in her bathroom two days after her sixteenth birthday, a razor in her pale hand and cuts along her wrist.

When I heard the news I felt as if part of my soul had been ripped to pieces. Several days after and I was thinner than ever, weighing a tiny 4 stone. I hadn’t eaten since I'd heard. I became more enclosed only saying a 'yes' or 'no' answer and crying at random moments. I would have starved to death if he hadn't have helped.

He came along when I was about to do it. In my opinion, at that time I had no reason to keep on living. I held the razor against my wrist when he ran through the door. I slipped and missed my artery, just cutting the flesh. I gasped as the pain stung at me, and I pressed a paper towel against the wound the bluish paper quickly turning crimson with blood. My blood. Tears stung my eyes as fresh stabs of pain erupted, but I embraced it. It felt good that I could finally control something in my life. Something that I could do on my own and not have anyone interfering. Well, everyone except him.

He had run towards me and held my sobbing body against his chest. He told me it was okay to grieve. He said that it was okay to feel pain, that she had someway betrayed me. He said it was okay to hate her for it. I spent the rest of the night sobbing into his arms. Who would have thought? My own brother, the one who I had argued with for the 16 years of my life was the one to comfort me in my time of need.

We had had a unfortunate childhood, him being cornered by the police every time possible and me watching from the sidelines as my parents missed the most important times of my life because of it. At my parents evening in my final year of school they were down at the police station after he had been accused for assault against a group of boys. At my graduation party they had been on the other side of the country, probably arguing with a judge over how he was innocent in the cannabis possession allegations. At my prom dance I was seen off by my grandparents, my mum and dad having gone 'away' to Cornwall for them to get away from the police phone calls once every other night. I acted as if I didn't mind when they missed my parents evening, I said it was okay that they missed my graduation party, I told my date to the prom that my mother and father were away on work business.

I acted as of I didn’t care. But I did. Every little thing they missed felt as though a knife was being plunged into my heart. Their Cornwall trip was only a week before she had gone through with it. I found out the day after their arrival - when I was suffering from a terrible hangover - that they had crashed with a lorry on the M6. They had died instantly.

The following days people acted soft around me, expecting me to explode at any given moment. But I didn’t. Having not known them for most of my life I couldn’t feel any sympathy. Then she did that and everything that had happened had gone up in flames, the fire licking at my wounds and me grieving not only for her, but finally for my parents and myself. That was when he had comforted me.

When mum and dad died it was if he had finally seen the light. Ever since then he had not been involved with the police once. In an attempt to clear his record he had gone to Iraq to fight in the war. I received a letter around two months after he had departed. Since that night of my failed suicide attempt I had tried my hardest to overcome my pain.

Everyday I was asked by my other friends how I could not be grieving anymore when they still were. They hated to see me happy when she wouldn’t be there to see it too. But I wasn’t happy. I was far from it. I acted strong for them. If I didn't then I would receive sympathy. That would only make things worse. So me and my friends faded apart and I finally started to live on my own free will. I rented an apartment on the other side of town where me and my brother would live when he came back from Iraq for Christmas. It was a month before the festivities began that I received the letter. I braced myself as I read the paper.

We are sorry to say that your brother has been killed in action in the Iraq war. You should be proud. He died a hero.

I almost didn't believe my eyes. Be proud? Be proud that my brother, my only source of comfort, was dead? That was the turning point. A month later, one day before Christmas, I found myself on the cliffs of Cornwall. The place where my parents were killed.

As I was brought back to the present I realised that my life had indeed flashed before my eyes. No one was there anymore. No one was there for me to live for. I stood in my lacy nightgown looking over the edge once more.

My feet were bare and blue, standing out against the white of the snow. White. White for hope. My life was anything but hopeful. I was though. I had been hopeful for months that something would happen. Whether it was that my family would come back or that maybe on my cutting nights that I would slip once more and cut an artery. Neither happened.

So here I found myself on the cliffs, ready to jump into the icy waters below. The icy waters and the jagged rocks. My death. I smiled at the word. The word that would end everything. Looking down at my white scars on my arms one more time I took a deep breath and fell.

My last thought was as I reached my peak before I plummeted to the ground. For a heart renching millisecond, it was as if gravity decided to ignore me and allow me to just lay there in mid air. I remembered with a smile of how the coyote from the cartoon would be falling from a cliff after yet another plan going wrong. He had just enough time to hold up a sign before falling to the floor with a thump. He always seemed to survive and carry his search for the road runner. I was different. I was no cartoon. I only had one life. And finally it was over.

I spread my arms wide. I must have looked like an angel in the air, my white gown billowing around me, my eyes closed as I waited for the impact below. I felt nothing as I hit the water and darkness surrounded me. It had finally come.

My death.

My freedom.

AN: Hi. I'm Stacey and I'm 13 years old. This is my first story thingy that I've posted online, so if you'd review then I'd appreciate it very much. =) Thanks. xx