I kept the clothes to remind me.

After the car crashed, while I was struggling for one small breath, I was thinking and believing, "Oh God, I’m going to die." I was not afraid of the dying. It felt like the worst kind of luck.

But I thought, "No, I can’t die alone, I just CAN’T! Not yet, please, there’s no one here with me. Oh God, not yet!" I felt a fear and panic I have never come close to feeling before. It was shockingly unreal. I felt mentally out of myself. (Is that where the saying "out of my mind" comes from?) I was so afraid of dying without anyone there next to me- I’m not sure it mattered who it was, just anyone. It would have felt like a final betrayal from a cold, hard life if I had had to die alone:

I didn’t matter. I was not important. Just another temporary noise in the current of humanity. I was not special, I was not heard. Thirty years of putting up with all that shit, for what? Never to be acknowledged as someone even at my last conscious moments? No, I wanted to have a say, I didn’t care who listened. Damn it, I had to be heard. I deserved it. No way was I going to leave without that right, after all that crap I had to deal with all those years. "Life’s a bitch, then you die"-no way.

I kept the clothes to remind me. To remind me never to hold back from having my say and being heard. I can’t hold back- what would be left? Life without acknowledgement. How hollow. Before I go, it needs to be known that I was someone, someone who lived a life here, too. I will search until I find people who will listen- who will acknowledge my existence. And I will get the chance to leave the message:

I WAS HERE