Diary Of A Bad Witch

You blew out the candles

So we couldn’t guide you home

You should have let me know

You were going

I would have never left you

But that, is the price of love.

And to love and be loved is the ultimate human experience.

Sincerely,

Think of the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do

In your entire lifetime.

I have done it twice

Before thirty.

Putting pieces of yourself into the ground and

Walking away at 13 years old.

As a child

I thought a way out was rebelling.

I never planned past seventeen,

Always assuming I’d have the backbone to leave.

But now I see

That living for those I love that cannot anymore

It sits with me when no one else will

It passes through everyday

And everyday I greet it

Sitting in my throat

A weight in my chest

A knot in my stomach

We are long acquainted

It seeps in to photos

Like discoloration

And reminds me

That you are gone

But it also reminds me that you were here

That all the memories I mourn

I also cherish

And even in all my anguish

Everything my shadow falls upon

I try to beautify

And that

All along

Has been

It sits with me when no one else will

It passes through everyday

And everyday I greet it

Sitting in my throat

A weight in my chest

A knot in my stomach

We are long acquainted

It seeps in to photos

Like discoloration

And reminds me

Death and I have always seen each other. We met when I was young, in the still of the morning, and I watched them ferry the losses away. At first it was animals, ones we'd tried to save along the way. Baby opossums, old dogs, and good feline friends. But then one day, death picked up the hand of a loved one, and off they went too.

I was seven the first time I recall prophesying a death. The words rang out of my mouth and no one believed me, but somewhere deep down in my gut I knew.

And a few days later my grandparents did too. My great grandmother passed quietly along, and things went back to as normal as one could expect. The usual greed and chaos ensued, leaving yet another family split and scattered, but you see, that's just something loss does.

I would go on to dream and predict many a thing in my two decades of being, but one prediction haunted me.

I would keep most of them written down or locked away in my head to keep from alarming anyone, but for some reason there was always this little tick tocking in my head. The immortal drone of a looming grandfather clock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

He rang out in my ears and for years I tried to drown it out, fully aware as to what was coming.

Tick. Tock.

Tick. Tock.

The Clock began to grow louder, and with every passing deafening tick, I knew what it meant. It was getting closer.

I tried to out run the clock, but it only got closer. So, I began to beg. In all of my private moments and rituals, I would beg that wretched ticking to slow down and to quiet. But nothing dulled it. It kept coming, barreling now, towards me and everyone around me.

I knew it was coming, and Death had long been my friend, so you'd think that it would have made the looming ticking of this clock easier to bare, but it didn't.

We had always had an unspoken deal, as I'd grown to understand what seeing really meant. It was a responsibility of a sort. Not everything you viewed was meant to be seen or talked about. Not everyone was deserving of the news.

At 23 I fell in love, even with that tick tocking hanging over my head. From the ringing in my ears, it felt like it was about five years out, even though I was begging for ten or even twenty.

I moved away soon after that, and started planning, trying to cram everything that I could into five years' time. I eloped and saved and worked my ass off to get somewhere, anywhere higher than where I had been when I left home.

And by year four, I was almost there.

I had long dreamt of a wedding reception and had started planning a five-year wedding anniversary. All I truly yearned for was a few photos for my own personal sentiment for when after the ominous countdown ended.

I never got them. Time came, the clock chimed, and I was left in tears once again. I had known all along that it was coming but like everyone else thought I had much more time.

So, six months after the fateful chime, I found myself at work, hearing the sound again. Loud and full it rang out.

Tick. TOCK.

It was, ironically enough at a wedding I was working. I watched the Bride freak out over every unnecessary moment that came. I worked through the day with no water, and no ac, on a very short timeline while the bridesmaids lost champagne flutes and threw back 'mimosas' and made messes. And in all the chaos, all I could think about is how grateful I would have been, to have been in that moment, with the looming and discordant TICK TOCK still creating a cacophony in my ears.

But she wasn't grateful. She couldn't hear the clock and see what a gift she had been handed in time. And I was in all senses, envious of the luck she'd received and appalled at her ungratefulness.

I went home that day drained and sad, and in a mourning state all of my own. I wrote down some basic disagreeances on my own personal social media pages only to recieve backlash from the coordinator of the event, as I had not thought to set my pages to private.

And in a few hours, my thoughts were erased from my page with little more than haughty dismissal and invalidation of my feelings...

But I still felt it all.

I remember my first abortion like it was yesterday. Or bits and pieces of it, that cling to me like untouched dust on a mantel piece.

I was eighteen and terrified, and I begged anyone to convince me that it could be okay. I begged for him to tell me that we could get through this together and that I didn't have to...

But deep down in my soul I knew the words would never come. So, I gathered those that would support me, and I started the process. I made the call, and it made me sick.

It's funny, because I still think to this day people assume that for me, especially with having never been interested in having children throughout what had been my life, that it would be easy. But it was one of the hardest things that I have ever had to do for myself. I knew an illegitimate child out of wedlock meant welfare and long nights, and no easy prospects when it came to growing up, or even trying to have another relationship with a human being. So, for 5 hours of my life I chose to be incredibly selfish.

I signed, and agreed, and acknowledged, all in a blur. The thing I remember most, after the barrage of questions and over explanation of the procedure from the doctor, was that book.

It sat cold and plain against the table, a pen poised beside it as if I was supposed to impart some wisdom for me or someone else that would come after.

I had none.

I remember being sick after the anesthesia, desperately trying to wake up again so that I could leave. I remember going back to my uncle's "friend" 's home and the very next day he appeared as well.

There was no sympathy, no words of solace were coming. The only words out of his mouth were "Well, I guess it's time you get a new job and start supporting yourself." And that hurt worse than the ache in my stomach, the constant reminder every time I moved, of what I had done.

But that was it. No "how are you?" No check on my mental well-being. Just "get back to work."