I Should Be Long Dead By Now

I’m late. The Starbucks line was long and the coffee stain is still splattered on my black skirt. I check my calendar, September 11. The city’s smog is killing me. If it wasn’t for this meeting, I’d be at my allergist getting new medication to deal with it. I take another sip of my coffee. The heat and the splash of mint I had them add, helps open up my sinuses.

Throughout my entire life I’ve experienced many things that have made me into the person that I have become presently. I’ve traveled to different parts of the country and the world and have done so at a relatively young age. When I was 17 I

I had never given much thought into how I would die. There’s something about being young that causes us to believe we’re invincible. It’s not like dying young is uncommon, it’s just that there’s something extra despairing about a life ending before it had really begun. Over the past 18 years, I’ve never thought twice about my mortality. I mean, it wasn’t anything special to me. I knew that I would eventually die, but eventuallies aren’t always as far as you think. Here I am, only 18 years old, my cold body

I have always wondered what happens when people die, does their soul leave their body instantly or stay to see what happens. I guess mine sticked around because I feel I sudden jolt in my chest and my lungs greedily suck in oxygen. My eyes open to see my mom and someone unknown by her side. The sudden scent of bleach reaches my nose as I realize that I am in the hospital. I don 't know how much time passed since I was conscious. I try to talk but only a croak comes out of my dry lips. My mom gives me some the water on the bedside table and starts to explain what happened. From what I can decipher from the words in between her sobs is that the ground collapsed beneath me, and I fell into a sinkhole.

After several weeks of my Grandmother passing, I came to realize she wasn’t coming back. The feeling of shock had left and now I felt intense amount of emotional suffering. The continuous feeling of pain and unanswered questions lingered about in my mind. I began to wonder how it could have happened and what people could have done differently. At this time, my whole family was grieving over the loss as well.

One night after writing a history paper, I was so tired I went to bed without eating. Around two in the morning I woke up scared for my life. My clothes were soaked with sweat, my head was spinning, my whole body was shaking, and I knew my blood sugar was horribly low. Getting out of bed, I went to my fridge to get something to eat. The next thing I know, I wake up in a hospital bed with both of my parents looking at me. I had been informed that I slipped into a coma for a day and I was lucky to be alive. My heart had also stopped beating when they found me. My only thoughts were that I had missed a day of classes.

When we were traveling to America we faced many difficulties, but once we made it to our Aunt's house in Virginia we knew it was going to be a great, yet grueling experience. When I first started going to school it seemed as if I was on another planet. Everyone looked different, spoke a strange language, and had a distinct mindset then me; the life of a kid should seem easy because there isn’t anything to worry about, yet worrying about everything was my coping mechanism. When I entered middle school depression and anger hit me like a freight train, so much to the point where I almost committed suicide. Fighting my so called friends for “fun” and not caring about my future was my life for those

I thought to myself, I just was a little girl who loved having her freedom. When I realized that I was in a hospital bed, I began to cry my happiness went away. I started giving up on myself because I knew that I was heartbroken that could not enjoy my life anymore. I just wanted to feel the fresh air, eat my favorite food, which is plantains and fish, and listen to the bird sing instead of staying in a bed all day. When I touched my face, I felt the heat. The only thing I can taste in my mouth the hot flames. I went back to see the doctor and I found out that I had damaged scalp on my head and that I had to cut my

Five days had passed this time since anyone had heard from my mother. I remember praying to God to protect her from harm and for me to find her. The next day she showed up, but not in the way we had hoped. One morning as I was getting ready for school my sophomore year in high school, my phone rang to the voice of my stepfather. My stepfather had told me he heard a call come over the dispatch scanner at his work and my mother’s name was mentioned. The sheriff had informed my stepfather that my mother had been involved in an accident. My stepfather asked me to go to the emergency room and see what condition my mother was in because he lived a half hour away from the hospital. When I arrived at the hospital I found my mother cut out of her clothes, covered in her own urine, massive amounts of blood all over her body, and lying lifeless on life support on the table. At this point, no one knew whether my mother would be okay. My mother had bleeding on the brain as well as a tear in her shoulder, a shattered face, and a chest tube draining fluid from her lung which had collapsed. All I could do was pray! My mother’s life was in God’s hands now. Three days later she woke

Sometimes I inquired myself how I lived this far in life after we were invaded by the vikings and my siblings killed and captured. As days and weeks go by, a plague appears in Europe, where we lived. People said it originated from ships coming into port that transferred contaminated rats but nobody is sure. The last week in August, both my mother and father got the plague or also known as the Black Death. Their skin soon became black which causes the skin and flesh to die. Two days later, my mom and dad went to another world. I cried for an hour straight, thinking about how I’m going to be to survive. I have nothing. It was a tragedy for me and multitudinous people who lost their loved ones, especially that parents that were

When I wake up I see a deathly, pale, colourless body. I check to see if she is breathing. Nothing. As much as I tried to hold it in, the pain came out like an uproar from my throat in the form of a silent scream. The beads of water started falling down one after another, without a sign of stopping. I check to see if my mother left anything for me like some food or jewels so I could always remember her. I see a white piece of paper in her

How many of you have had the experience of facing death in previous life? Frankly, I haven’t really experienced it. But when I was 8 years old, I was misdiagnosed as having atypical pneumonia which was called “the SARS”. I was isolated in the isolation ward. As a juvenile, at that time, all I did was to wait for the deterioration of my condition, accompanied with a 24-hour non-stop oxygen cylinder, and bronchoscopies, blood and secretion tests.

It all started when I was a little girl, my mom had taught me how to cook and I was making buffalo soup, it smelled like heaven. Right as I was going to be done making the dish I heard my mom yell my name in fear, I went outside only to see a group of people from another tribe running toward the house I was confused, all of the sudden I felt someone grip my sides as it happened I looked at my mom I saw tears forming at her eyes, I finally realized she was yelling for me to hide when I heard her yell my name, I passed out.

After a while of sitting in my grandparents living room mindlessly playing with my toys I decided to get up. I walked towards the commotion going on in the small hallway connecting the living room to the kitchen. The gathering of people consisted of my mom, dad, grandpa, and grandma. Curious about what was going on I walked over to the group. I reached my mom and looked up to see that her eyes were bloodshot, as if she had been crying. I looked over to my dad and his face, like everyone else's, was grim. During this time I kept hearing one repeating word, cancer. I started to listen more closely to the conversation going on around me because even at the age of seven I knew that cancer was bad news. I listened intently and heard my mom explain how she had colon cancer.

February twenty-third 2010 was just a regular ordinary day. I was on my way to class on this cold February afternoon, when my phone rung. It was my cousin on the other end telling me to call my mom. I could not figure out what was wrong, so I quickly said okay and I hung up and called my mom. When my mom answered the phone I told her the message but I said I do not know what is wrong. My mom was at work and could not call right away, so I took the effort to call my cousin back to see what was going on. She told me that our uncle was in the hospital and that it did not look good. Starting to tear up I pull over in a fast food restaurant parking lot to listen to more to what my cousin had to say. She then tells me to tell my mom to get to