Jayst's The Yearbook

Chapter 23: What's Life For?

Aisha stepped out of the shower, before drying off and putting on clothes on, she stood in front of the mirror and stared at herself. Her face looked tired, more tired than the day after she had that horrible nightmare of her and her mother dying in that car accident. She looked at herself and inside of herself. She stared inside her eyes through the mirror. She kept staring until she faded off into what it felt like another dimension. Another plane where she can see everyone and everything. Kinda like the narrator of a book. And then she saw herself. She walked over to her physical body, she walked around it observing every inch of her own body. And she stood in front looking into her own eyes. She said to herself, “Who am I?” That was all she said before she opened her eyes and found herself back into reality.

She took the towel from off the rack and wrapped it around her body, then picked up her dirty clothes from off of the floor. She opened the bathroom door, all the steam and molecules of the steam rushed out of the door and began to flow throughout the hallway. After putting her clothes into the laundry basket, she walked back into her room and sat on her bed. She began to sob, thinking about everything that happened 4 days ago at Jiliana’s house. She banged her head against the bed, wanting this nightmare to end. Wishing that everything that happened-Jahonna, McKennezie, and Keivana-was just a dream and that she could wake up from. But it wasn’t this was all reality. This was all real. She stopped, breathing hard and tears still draining down her face like rain on a window pane.

Her mother walked into the room asking Aisha if she was ready to go to the hospital. She saw her daughter on the bed, eyes closed sobbing. She walked over to Aisha and sat down next to her on the bed. She began to rub her forehead.

“Let it all out, baby.” Aisha started to cry more. She sat up, holding onto her mother and crying in her arms. Aisha’s mother rubbed the back of her head and back.

“It’s all my fault.” Aisha sobbed.

“It’s no one’s fault. It’s-this… Sometimes, this is what life is.” Aisha lifted her head off her mother’s shoulder and looked at her. Her face soaked with tears.

“Then what’s life for? What’s life for if you can longer grow along with your friends? What’s life for if you can’t see how you and your friends’ lives are going to turn out? What’s life for if you can’t even live long enough to pass your highschool years? What’s life exactly for mama? What is it?”

Aisha’s mother looked at Aisha, full with silence as she didn’t have the answers for her daughter’s questions. She found this heart broken, sitting right next to her crying daughter crying for answers that she couldn’t even answer. Watching her daughter cry as she slowly starts to lose hope into herself-into her life-questioning life. There was nothing for her to do nor say just sit there as limitless tears rain from the eyes of her own daughter. She thought the same… What is life? Exactly what definition explicitly explains the meaning of life. Maybe that was something both she and her daughter had to learn.