The Date

Today is the day, I've known it all my life; am I ready?

           From the first time I opened my eyes and was held in my mother’s arms, I was told that I would soon be dead. Like everyone else, I was born with a time stamp on my arm: when I would die. It was completely normal and it took the anxiety and fear out of death, in a sense. It allowed us to go about our days without a single fear, knowing that we wouldn’t die that day. Someone could jump from the top of the highest building in the world and, had their number not been set for that day, they would’ve been saved in one miraculous way or another. It got to the point where our society consisted of hundreds of “dare devils,” but I never thought of them that way. Was it daring if you knew you weren’t going to die? Then there were the true risk-takers, the families that immediately had their children’s marks covered and tattooed over so they could live a life that was spontaneous, just like it used to be. Those were the true dare-devils.

            For me, however, I never really cared about my mark, I hardly stared at it anymore. I knew the date better than I knew anything. I would go to bed with it on my mind, and when I woke up, it was the first thing I thought about. But, I didn’t care about it. I just lived my life, being adventurous, exploring the world, meeting new people. There wasn’t a country or place that a person could name that I hadn’t been to yet.

            One morning I woke up and I paused, my breath stuck in my throat. It was the day. I lifted my arm up and let out a deep sigh. It shook my whole chest as it came out, leaving me breathless. All the fear, anxiety, and shock I had been hiding over the multiple years of my life finally surfaced. I laid there for what seemed like an eternity, contemplating how it would happen. Would my heart just stop? Would I get hit by a car? Would someone decide they had a bad day and needed to take it out on someone else? Burned alive, decapitated, stroke, spontaneous combustion, drowning, falling, skinned alive? I didn’t know, and it was terrifying.

            I finally worked up the courage to get out of bed and dragged myself to the bathroom. Staring into the sink, the ever-present feeling of imminent death had obviously taken a toll on me: My green eyes were blood shot and beneath them were blue bags of sleep deprivation, my skin was pasty and colorless, causing the freckles that speckled my nose to stand out even more than they usually did. My face was void of emotion save for the twitch in my upper right eyebrow. My hair was a bedraggled mess upon my head, brown and wild, falling all the way down my spine. Basically, I looked like death.

            I instinctively picked up my toothbrush and began brushing my teeth. For I moment I forgot to breathe again and began choking on toothpaste. Fear spiked through my heart, is this how I am going to die? Choking on toothpaste? I managed to catch my breath and spit it out in the sink. Apparently not. Quickly rinsing out my mouth, I ran to my room and dressed myself in the first outfit I saw. A simple black blouse and white skinny jeans. Nothing too fancy, as I was going to die today. I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at my room. It was small, showing my obvious lack of wealth. I lived in a one room apartment with a small kitchen and a bathroom, that is it. I didn’t splurge when it came to materialism, as I spent most of my time travelling anyway. I lived alone, I had never found someone to love and potentially have a kid with, I didn’t want to thrust a child into the world knowing they would have the looming fear of death on their shoulders for their entire lives.

            I sat there for hours, staring at everything in my room, wondering if this was where I was going to die. Perhaps I would trip and fall, cracking my skull on the corner of my desk and bleeding out, or maybe there would be a break in and someone would try to steal my stuff, murdering me in the process. The worst part was not knowing how it was going to happen. I just stared at my clock, watching as the time went down, wondering when, when, when. Maybe if I don’t do anything, it won’t happen at all? A foolish thought, really, but one I had nonetheless, so I sat there doing nothing. The clock went from 1 pm to 2 pm and so one until I realized it was 11:50 pm. How could that much time have passed already? My fear increased immeasurably, it was going to happen any second now. 11:51, any moment and I would die, and I didn’t know how. 11:52, my hands were shaking, and no matter how hard I tried, they wouldn’t stop. 11:53, my breathing grew increasingly heavy and ravenous. 11:54, my heart pounded in my chest so hard I could feel it in my ears. 11:55, tears were forming in the corners of my eyes, one or two escaping down my cheeks. 11:56, I fell to my knees and put my face in my hands. 11:57, I was rocking myself back and forth, crying uncontrollably. 11:58, my throat ached and my eyes burned, the pain was almost as unbearable as my fear. 11:59, I squeezed my eyes shut tightly for a moment and everything went still; my eyes opened, locking with the clock. 12:00, I stood there in shock, holding my hands out in front of me.

           Confusion burst throughout my entire body and I didn’t know what to feel. I checked and rechecked the date on my arm, on my phone, on the calendar I had marked off every day since I learned how to read. Without a doubt, I was supposed to die, but I didn’t. Shock encased me and I stood there in the middle of my room and all I could think was: What do I do now?