The Coffin

Photo by Sirena Velena on Unsplash

I imagined the coffin.

I imagined the outfit they would put me in. The outfit I would wear for the rest of time.

I wondered what it would smell like.

What does a coffin smell like?

What does 6 feet underground smell like?

How spacious is it?

Would someone put make-up on me? Would I spend eternity with a face that wasn’t mine?

I imagined them finding the letter.

The letter that explained everything because they never asked.

The letter that apologized because even this was my fault.

Everything was always my fault.

I was always the one to apologize.

Would they be upset? Angry? Numb? Distant?

Would they visit the grave? How often?

Would they bring flowers?

Wouldn’t that be ironic? The first time I got flowers was 6 feet under.

How long until they forgot about me?

How long until they stopped crying? Or being angry?

How long until they stopped talking about me? Or to me?

I looked at those pills for a long time. I imagined the funeral. Everyone moving on with their lives. An afterlife of still feeling like I don’t matter. An afterlife of watching everyone fail to care. Or worse, they only care now that i’m gone. What if I only mattered dead?

If we really get to look down upon the ones we love, what if everything I feared was true.

I started to think of all the things people would say, of all the things they could never say while I was alive. I thought of how they would say how they missed me, how they would of spent more time with me, said ‘I love you’ more, cared more, listened more or apologized.

Death let them off the hook. It let them say all the changes they would make if I were still here without actually having to change. It gave them a chance to perform.

Disappearing held them accountable.

If I disappeared and no one called

No one wrote

No one texted

No one reached out

No one changed.

Then no one could say they cared. No one could say they wished they had more time, wished I was still here, because if I stopped reaching out and they fell out of my life because they weren’t reaching out, then did they really want to be in my life in the first place?

The more I thought about my coffin, the more I realized I was already in it. Surrounded by a bunch of people saying they care but never really showing it. Watching them move on with their lives while I’m stuck, wishing they would care that I was paralyzed. If I stay in the coffin, I watch my life pass by without me.

It’s time to get out of the coffin.