Chapter 10
Pain
Did you ever feel pain so deeply inside, that you wished you could take a shovel and dig it out, then toss it far, far away? Did it ever hurt so bad that even though you weren't in any physical pain, your body ached because of it? Pain so bad, that you can't even express it to the one person that knows you better than anyone else. It's just too strong for you to even deal with, and the only outlet you see to stopping that pain, is to become extinct. Some say it's the cowardly way out, but when faced with that situation, where your life has become so bad that all you want to do is crawl into a hole and die, sometimes death seems like the only way to accomplish anything. What if you tried for years to turn things around and it never worked? Could you live with such great pain for all those years? Or could you make it stop right now, right this instant, by just one act? No one should be forced into making such a decision, but these kids faced that exact judgment all too often on the streets.
Estrella sat on the roof, the cool summer night's breeze teasing her long, pale brown hair. The stars above brilliantly lighting the sky, the clouds absent from this particular night. It was like the stars were calling her – showing her a bright path to a new beginning. They twinkled in her eyes, mystifying her senses, and tickling her soul. Everything was all right when she gazed at the universe. Nothing else mattered – not her simple existence, the ragged clothing on her back, nor her famished figure. The stars above in the heavens provided her with a worthy reality – one she wanted to live out. Estrella wanted to be up there with the stars, where they had a real point to living, instead of some mundane vocation. She wanted to be a star that guided someone home, or the star that someone made a wish on, because she had shown brightly first that night. She yearned to have a validity that made her important and noteworthy.
But in her real world, she didn't think of herself as significant. Estrella felt she was just a tiny ant, not big enough to complete considerable tasks, or worthy enough to be noticed. She was just another face in the crowd – going to work each day, striving for one more penny so she could afford to eat and sleep someplace warm. This wasn't how she wanted to live. She felt it better not to breathe one more breath on this earth than have to submit herself to the streets again.
Could she end her life? Could she come to the decision both mentally and physically that it was time to move on from this cruel world? Or was it worth sticking it out? Could she rely on her friends to pull her through?