A Fallen Wish Too Far

A Fallen Wish Too Far

I can’t count the times I’ve looked on these blank sheets wishing they’d consume me, but they can not as I am already consumed in the pain of the knowledge I have been given. Just like I can’t count how many times I asked the question, the question’s answer which now has me in its grips. How I used to console my friends after hearing such dreadful happenings, family secrets unearthed, yet now I realise everyone has something, something which haunts our futures for eternity. Just because we don’t know its there doesn’t mean it isn’t. What happened to the dominating ‘happy’ families there once was and the future full of hope? Now everybody seems to be carrying something within, emotional baggage you could call it I guess. Until you carry some you do not know what it is all about, you can not even begin to imagine the pain involved, I was totally innocent to it all, but I was the one who tainted that, curiosity killed the cat and all that.

She closed her book once again hoping that her thoughts would not be carried from the paper to her head. It was already too late though and she could not break away from the struggle which gripped her daily, more often as the days went by. She however chose not to tell anyone how much the news had affected her, as she did want to become ‘any more trouble than I already am’.

Instead, she wrote it all down in her book which she named ‘Iwoas’. She never left it anywhere long enough for someone to read it, but the book looked rather too tatty to be of any importance. Its pages covered in small, black scruffy words that were only legible to the trained eye. Though the most noticeable give away to its significance was the small picture of a young woman tucked into the inside cover.

Building up courage again she opened up the book to continue writing her latest entry, the entry to complete the book.

I always enjoyed watching the sea as a kid and now how easily I could jump if only this did not pull me back so fast from the edge. The guilt I feel for being alive, but the guilt I also feel for even thinking about taking it. I’m wishing on a star now, because it is the only chance I seem to have left. Sixteen months I’ve known my mothers fate now, the fate that I decided for her. How could my father tell me so easily, as if it would have little impact on me? If only history could rewrite itself without me ever being born then she would still be here. My father would have a smile on his face, how much it must pain him to stare at his wife’s murderer everyday. Oh I’m wishing on a star tonight.

She reached out her hands fumbling to meet the cardboard, which she eventually found. Quickly she drank down the glass of water before she got the chance to change her mind again. Snuggled up to the duvet to keep her warm her eyes were heavier than ever. She feel asleep almost instantly, anticipating the norm; nightmares.

Strangely as soon as she was asleep she awoke again. Her hands tingled as she rolled over to try and get back to sleep, however it seemed almost impossible and it was not long before she gave up. Standing up she did not feel the guilt she had felt before, but more deepened guilt, scarred into her memory.

Glancing over to the mirror a faint reflection could be seen. It was her own, but somehow she had not expected it to be, Walking closer she recognised herself more so, but the guilt within was becoming unliveable, something just didn’t add up. She slumped back over to her bed and leaned over to switch the bed side light on. Opening the tatty book again her eyes darted around in confusion, the picture of her mum was no longer there. Turning the pages more rapidly as she went the realisation sank in. This book was not about her mother but her herself and the book ended more abruptly than she had expected. The one thing she had wished for every night for the last sixteen months of her life was happening or had happened.

She had been what her mother had waited for, for years. Built up everything around the day that Hope would come into the world, but she was never to see that day. Her mother here had felt the same guilt she had and would give everything just to have her baby girl.

She looked to the sky, almost fully clouded over apart from one star that was shining through and she then realised she had had her wish. It was no better here. All the time she had spent wishing she was never been born she’d never thought of the alternatives. You live, you learn.

Suddenly her eyes opened, light streamed in showing the shape of a familiar face. Her father. She’d been given another chance and she smiled knowing that if life was perfect, there would be no reason for tomorrow. No reason at all.