Amazing, Because It Is.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. - Leonardo Da Vinci.

"I know you're not too keen on the idea, Sweetheart, but you really will love Baltimore," my father’s voice assured me as he patted my shoulder gently; awkwardly, seemingly afraid to touch me, as we stood together on our wrap-around porch, watching passively as the movers carried heavy boxes onto the large U-Haul. "I grew up there, you know? And my new job is much better paying."

I wondered fleetingly who he was trying to convince, me or himself?

The new job he spoke so highly of; cherished so much? I didn't allow it fool me, although he was a great salesman. It was a cover up, nothing more. It wasn't more money he was so enamored with, though it didn't hurt. It was longer working hours. He had somehow managed to procure a job at a large law firm, which meant more time at the office. More time away from his family. His family that plagued him with recollections of his son.

I was startled at the words my own mind had weaved. They stung badly, like the slice of a sharp knife.

"Well, that's the last of them," my mother finally emerged from deep within the house, dusting off her hands on her jeans as if she'd actually stooped to doing some work, instead of simply standing around and conducting less frail looking men who were sporting official-looking t-shirts. "We should probably get on the road if we want to get there before the movers do."

She managed to force a smile, after intense effort, but it looked so obscene - warped and unreal, like a mockery of the former smiles that I knew; the ones that used to greet me after a long day at school.

Her statement didn't make much sense in my mind, and I then realized that she was just salivating for an excuse to leave, impatient enough that she’d make something up. Both she and my father were disgustingly eager to leave behind everything that reminded them of Jeremy. Too bad they couldn't leave behind the thing that would remind them most - me.

We loaded up the ever-so typical soccer mom car, the Honda Odyssey, and were merging onto the highway in a matter of minutes.

The car ride afforded me plenty of time to think; a lot of time to wallow, to mull over our exodus from my hometown.

I didn't have friends to miss. I had slowly but steadily alienated myself from my normal clique following Jeremy's death, and hadn't felt like exchanging fake ‘I’ll miss you’s and ‘I’ll be sure to text you’s. I wouldn’t honestly miss any of them, which was, in all reality, pretty sad.

I always felt like screaming, crying, and throwing things nowadays. But the practical side of me kept control of those emotions. It wouldn't do me any good, and I certainly didn't have the energy. Like my mother, I didn't get much sleep. And the sleep I did get was plagued with dreams that made me wake up in a cold sweat, tears streaming down my face.

They tended to include Jeremy, as a general topic.

His death, to be exact.

I hadn't been there, hadn’t seen it, heard it, felt it, but I'd been told how it'd happened.

On the way home from a Bring Me the Horizon concert, a drunk driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and run them off the road, right into a tree.

Jeremy was the only passenger who hadn't survived. Coincidentally, he had been the only one not wearing his seatbelt.

I had begged him to let me go to go to that concert, and I often wondered how different it would've been if he'd let me tag along, like the pesky little sister I was.

I always fussed over him wearing his seat-belt, and never would've let him go without.

At the very least, I could've been killed as well.