An Outsider

For people, there are three possible endings to life.

It sounds strange, as if I'm making some freaky documentary about it, but it's the truth. For the fortunate, it's a happy life. Happy lives filled with blue skies and a family to love, with steady income and a wonderful future laid out before you.

These people will wake up every day and smile at nothing and everything. It's something to wish for, I think.

In the end, they'll be old and grateful for their lives. They'll have a family crying over them and a nice coffin picked out. That's the fortunate life.

Others, though, won't be as lucky. They'll grow up in the streets, with no parents to guide them and no love to help them grow right. They'll be forced to fight their way through life, a gun in one hand and their anger clutched in the other.

Poor, beaten, and bitter, they'll be the ones no one'll miss. Another hoodlum gone, another lucky one safe. They'll simply be tossed in the dirt with only a bare rock serving as a reminder that they're there.

Then, there are the ones I like to call Outsiders. Those are, perhaps, the worst to be.

An Outsider would have no preference of rich or poor. They'll simply be the ones who have it all but just not the right things. They are the ones who'll have a family to love but no breaks, or sometimes their the ones who have all the breaks but no real family. Their broken, they'll be the ones without a sure ending.

You see, sometimes the Outsiders will be the ones dying gallant like a southern gentlemen. They'll die but with the reward of something money could never buy.

Other times, they'll be the ones going down under street lights. They'll be the ones feeling so broken that there's no way to put them back together. They'll be the ones with that bitter look only becoming a satisfied smile when the blood breaks through and they're looking at the night sky for the last time...

Sometimes, and this is the scariest one, the Outsider will die thoughtfully. They'll sit on their bed one night and just remember; remember the rich boy who wouldn't stop fighting, wouldn't calm down, and who's death sparked a nightmare. They'll remember the man-no, boy, that died a thief who had lost the only person they ever loved in the world. They'll remember the black-eyed boy who didn't get a happy ending, and died just fine with that.

They'll remember all of this and cry, and cry, and cry. They'll remember all the injustice in the world and that's then they'll die. Their eyes will become dull with the pain and their hearts heavy with grief.

For a moment, they'll wonder what it was like. Did it hurt? Were they happy now? Would it ever get any easier? And then they'll realize that it's not just them. There's a whole world filled with Outsiders. People who'll steal and steal and just laugh because there's no other meaning in the world. The older brother who loves someone so much that they'll damn their future just so that person can have what they never could. The beautiful boy, a light in a dark world, who dies a bloody death in a war started by people of much less worth.

It's the irony, maybe, that really kills them in the end. Because it'll be in those last moments that everything finally clicks. They'll realize the true nature of life and death and happy endings and that's when their tears will drown them and their eyes will dull. It's then that the world will seem to crumble around them and they begin to wish that it'd just crush them already.

I'm able to write all of this because now, as I lie in bed, it's all I can think about. My shoulders are shaking but my fingers are still holding the pen tight. I can barely see and I know that my tears are staining the paper, but I just can't make myself care.

I'm only 18, honestly. I shouldn't have these thoughts. I shouldn't be able to understand what's to come of it. And I wish I could share more with you as well, but it's another of these strange feelings I'm getting in my heart that tells me that doing so would cause more harm than good.

There's one more truth I can share. I'm dying now, but I'm not leaving. No, you see, this is why this death is the worst. I won't be seeing the people I adore who have left this world in other endings. I won't be leaving the dysfunction and pain that my life draws in so closely. Rather, I'll be staying here, broken and unfix-able until my body finally agrees with my heart.

I wonder if this really is what being broken is. Perhaps I have just been fixed, and all the happy people of this Earth are the broken ones. Look at me with my strange ideals, I must really be crazy.

It doesn't matter, I think, because tomorrow I'll wake up and I'll be smiling. I'll see a brighter sky and a silver lining and damn, I'll be so happy. All at the cost of truly beautiful people. It's this horrible dark side of life I've just learned of that will be the reason for it, and it's what's sets me aside from the others.

So, to put it all simply, I'm dying. It's horrifying and painful now, but in the end the dead have no business with pain, depression or grief. It's only now that I can see it all so clearly. I am no longer living like these happy people, and that is what makes me an Outsider.

It's only with another choked sob that I can admit and finally, completely, understand: nothing golden will ever stay. You won't understand that. You won't feel the power in those words, you won't see what I can see in them. They're simply a familiar phrase to you, a simple quote you've seen too much of...but God, I hope you do.

I really, honestly, hope you do.