A little girl once chased leaves of all colors and sizes as they were carried away by the wind on a warm autumn afternoon. She would run and fall and scrape her knees, but at the end of the day, she would lay on her bed with a smile on her face and a mind filled with hopes and dreams.
Years later, a woman enviously watched as the wind picked up a cluster of leaves and peacefully sent them flying off the rooftop into the still night sky. She knew she would not be going to bed tonight. Soon, she would be as weightless as those leaves, and there would be no more cold nights, no more heartache.
Phoebe Buffay was fourteen years old when her mother decided life was not worth living, not even for the sake of her two children. Young Phoebe coming home after a long day in the snow had expected to find hot chocolate and freshly baked cookies waiting for her on the kitchen counter. Instead, she stumbled upon a sight her eyes would never forget.
To this day, she still vividly remembers her dead mother laying on the kitchen floor.
The following months were filled with confusion and unbearable pain, a pain so strong and so new to Phoebe that it raged her. Her mother's selfish decision was causing her to feel things she had never felt before, have thoughts no fourteen year old should have. Having no control over her emotions made the young girl's blood boil. Her mother, the woman who was supposed to shield her away from harm's way, had hurt her in a way nothing else ever had. She couldn't understand why she had done something so impulsive, so mindless.
Now, as she stood on the rooftop's edge, inches away from death, Phoebe smiled to herself. She could finally grasp the reasoning behind her mom's decision, and she now knew that there had been nothing impulsive or mindless about it. Suicide started out as a small thought, but it slowly began to consume you until you made it a plan, a destination. You could take months, even years to finally go through with it, but when you did, you'd comprehend that the act of ending your own life takes an awful lot of contemplation.
But what exactly drives one to suicide? Add to the list of things Phoebe couldn't help but wonder as she set foot in the streets of New York city. All those years out in the cold of Manhattan, she blamed herself for her mother's death. The thought, Phoebe knew, was completley irrational. She had done nothing but be a child, a very loving, kind hearted and joyous one, as a matter of fact. How would a little girl like her kill her mother's will to live, she didn't know, but she was still convinced that it was her who drove the woman to end her life. Teenage Phoebe blamed herself because she had no answers and she desperately wished for closure, even if it meant carrying the unnecessary weight of guilt for the rest of her life. She didn't know, as she does now, that what killed her mother were the memories.
You can escape, go home, lock the door, but the memory of what happened will always be there, trapped in your mind. No matter how far you try to push it away, it will always come back. At first it'll only be there when the world goes dark and silent and you're left alone with your thoughts, but then, it'll start hunting you during the daylight, in the middle of a laugh. It'll stain your mind and devour your happiness until there's nothing left of it, until all that's left in you is the memory of what happened. And so you begin to fake a smile, to force a laugh. You become the optimist, the happy one, because the memory is yours only and if you let the others see behind the mask, they'll know, but they will never understand. Keeping it to yourself is easier, so you decide to suffer in silence.
Phoebe Buffay was sixteen years old when she was raped in a back alley. Her virginity, one of her only possessions at the time, was taken from her from her best friend, the guy she lived with and trusted with her life. He left her there, shaking and bleeding, and he was never to be seen again. All that was left of the cheery little girl she once was was gone. She left her happiness in that back alley and never came back for it. That night, a sixteen year old girl lay on a pile of cartons with tear stained cheeks and a mind filled with broken hopes and dreams.