maybe this is what it means to be alive
By Victoria Shen
People often enjoy being unique.
My closest friend longed to be special, even if it was only to one person. I think she wanted that person to be me. She asked me yesterday that if she jumped, would I too. I thought she was talking about a trampoline; I said sure.
Apparently, that was not what she had meant. She meant: if I wanted to die, would you die—no, choose to die—with me?
I wondered how she thought of such a ridiculous question.
Then, I said, obviously, no.
After that occurrence, I began to wonder what it meant to be a friend. If a friend did something brainless, would I play along with it? If a friend wanted to die, would I die with them?
Absolutely not.
As a friend, I am loyal. But not loyal to the point where I become a slave. I am no dog chained to an owner’s slaughterhouse door. So, quell your expectations.
Then, I started thinking about what would happen if I really did jump. How sweet is the fruit of my imagination, how true are those thirty seconds that I remain somewhat alive after my heart stops beating when I am stranded in mid-air on a half-soul, half-spirit tightrope? When am I declared legally dead—is it when the half-minute is over or before it even begins?
I wonder what I would be thinking in that half minute. My mother? Undoubtedly so. My father? Probably not. My brothers and sisters? A few of them, maybe. My friend, who asked me to jump with them? A possibility.
After I use up my minute micro-minutes, where do I go? Am I ferried off towards the Promised Land for being devoted, or am I carted off to Hadestown for my utterly preposterous behavior?
I am unsure of many things, yet I am quite confident that I would rather not be in either one of those places; after all, mistakes do happen in Heaven, and Satan was an angel before, anyway.
As I fall and fall, becoming soap residue that slips down the sink drain, I bubble my foamy farewells. But before I meet the rhinestone-glinted gravel readying to harden for my impact, out would blow my parachute, with just enough time to still the momentary thought of:
I do not want to die.
Perhaps I think too much about jumping and not jumping. Maybe I am overly caught up in guessing where I land, whether it is too high up or too great a way down. So, instead, I will consider more often what it means to be alive: to scavenge for the chopped-up preserved eggs in Grandma’s handmade congee, which is plainliness at its finest and love at its most simple; to care for and protect equally the admittedly ugly blobfish as you do the fluffy baby quokka; to watch the hummingbirds slope across the dying afternoon rays in search of midnight-colored, dark-eyed fuschia plants; and to be drunken in the golden light on sunset bridges with someone who is the early Sunday mornings, not the late Saturday nights. Someone who is maybe not special but who can be special to you.
Victoria Shen is a rising Senior at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx. She appreciates New York City as her home. She is a National Winner of the Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards and a 1st place winner of the Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards. Besides thinking of creative titles to inform her writing, she enjoys figure skating and playing classical piano.