I had to make a choice on my future, should I be a us soldier or a fire fighter? Or should i go after my dream and try to make it into the film industry? I love to help people and both a soldier and a firefighter do just that. However, I choose to be forever remembered for my work of art.

I died today

As I watched you slowly fade away

And with fascinated horror

Could not avert my gaze

Live for me

You begged me silently

As your eyes connected with mine

But your plea was lost

Because within my mind a single

Unrelenting thought

Pushed out all the rest

“I’m so glad it isn’t me.”

I could never be the hero

Like you who

Gave your life to save my own

In that position

I could

I would

I did

Selfishly

Only think of me

But a coward dies a thousand deaths

They say

And only now that my path is set

Along that course

Can I truly understand

What those words mean

Today was just the first of many

And I will spend the remainder of the life

I held so dear

Dying all the rest

It's been 542 days...

I know because I've counted every single one of them.

& now I have the biggest decision of my life...

Ironic, that decision is whether I should end yours.

I'm sitting here trying to decide which moment of all of this has been the hardest.

Perhaps it's waking up every single day realizing it's not a dream.

Maybe, it was the night it all happened, waiting for you to come home for the dinner I was prepared to surprise you with. In an attempt to start over. A chance for us to let go of all the fights we were having. A chance to move on from losing our baby.

I remember the sound of your voice on the phone that night, I remember the anxiety in your voice. You reminded me that you'd be a little late from work, but I waited.

I waited. For what seemed like forever. Turns out it was.

Maybe it was the feeling of my heart sinking to the bottom of my stomach as blue and red lights flashed in our driveway.

Or the sense of hopelessness as we passed by your mangled Volvo on the way to the hospital. I was too shocked to think. I had too many questions and so little answers. Why were you driving so fast? Why were you in the east side of town?

It could be days three to 145. The days where all those unfamiliar faces would pop up during visiting hours. Telling me how much of a good person you were, or at least, thought you were..

I just wish they'd piss off, they don't really know you.

Yeah I understand they're trying to comfort me, and I know that's not how you'd want me to respond but I don't know if you're here.

I don't know if you're really here, and I don't know how to do it without you.

I'm sitting here, in this stupid hospital trying to pinpoint the exact moment that has been the hardest in all of this.

Maybe it was days 24, 76, 132, 250 and 310. Those days where God seemed to be playing tricks on me. Making me think that you might've wiggled your toes or moved your index finger.

Making me think that there was hope only to be completely discouraged a few days later by the lack of brain activity in your scans.

What are these doctors here for anyway? There isn't anything they can do but hope, just like me. And it seems like I'm the only one who's been hoping for something...for anything...

Maybe the hardest moment is deciding to let you go, and always wondering what if I should've held on just a day longer. Or 2 days, or another 542...

I don't know if I can live with myself without you, I don't know if I want to. I don't know if you'd want me to.

I'm really trying to figure out the hardest moment in all of this. I figured if I can pinpoint a single moment that I've already overcome, then perhaps I should keep going. And keep hoping.

Part of me wants to keep hoping. I mean for goodness sake, you're my wife. You're everything.

But then part of me, part of me knows the truth.

The truth that maybe day 358 might've been the hardest day..

That day I was looking for something as simple as the insurance card, but I ended up finding something more complex..

A letter. Quite a few letters.

You were writing to Jackson again...

But it was different this time. It didn't sound like just a letter. It sounded like everything. Those days where you shut me out, you opened up to him.

I decided to go through those letters. Looking for things that I didn't really want to see, but was just unable to stop myself from searching for.

You talked to him more than you talked to me...

You told him things I never knew. Like the fact that you were feeling lonely even though I was around.

Or how you felt so lost after losing the baby.

These letters reveal so much more than secrets. It was a portal into the life you lived behind closed doors.

And most of all, it gave me the thing I needed the most. Answers.

Like the real reason you were coming home late...

And why you were on the east side of town the night this all happened...

And the question I never thought to ask until now. Was our unborn baby....ours? Or just yours?

I'm sitting in this hospital and I think I've figured out what the hardest moment has been. And it's right now, looking at you, laying there. I know who you're supposed to be, but I don't recognize you.

You're not my wife. You're just a shell of the woman who spoke the words "for better or for worse."

& although you're here being kept alive by these machines, I think you died long ago.

I loved who you were but I don't know who you are. So I'm letting you go.

I stood standing, wishing that this hadn't happen. Wishing I could go back in time and fix it. I couldn't. I stared at my mom and then at my dad. 

     "Mommy," I whimpered. 

     "It's okay honey," Mom said. She moved into an odd position so her arm wouldn't hurt her. The guard behind her was twisting her arm. 

     "But Daddy,"  I whimpered again. "What do I do?"

     "Choose!" The guard growled. "Or we'll kill them both." 

     "I choose my family," I said. 

I think in everyone's life there comes a time when we realize that another person we call "friend" is not a friend at all, but a passing acquaintance. My mistake was giving another far too much value than their actual worth. To them, my friendship was like an ATM machine. Insert a card and take what you want. However, as painful as it may have been I protected myself, and one day I closed their account. 

HEARTBREAK....

I only tell you these tings because dey were life lessons dat have truly come full circle now. Take dese pieces of my heart and learn my children so dat you may not have to go trough dis same pains dat I once did.

Broken heart pain, it changes you cheré.

Once I thought telling my mother I was pregnant before I was married was de hardest decision I ever made.

Den...

Once I knew dat letting my stepdaughter go back to her bipolar mother would be such a bad idea. Her mother and father just used her to play games on each other, de did not care for my daughter! Jus cut out my heart right den!

Once I had a four month old baby boy. "Oh my God!" I cried. My baby was stricken wit

Spinal meningitis! For a whole month I stayed wit him up in dat hospital, an him ain't gettin no better. I had to make a tough decision right den an there, Brain Surgery!

Him came out ok, Aspergers, a scar from ear to ear, and epilepsy. He is a good man now.

Once I had a 14 year old son. He was my eldest son, very bright and beautiful child heart of a warrior. If only.....if only..... If only.. I just keep thinking if only I had known about the rape and the threats made against me at that time I could have done something more to help my son. He was so Angry and full of rage all the time, the least thing would set him off into a rage! The last straw was when he took a knife to his eight year old brothers troat. What was I to do?

Hardest decision at that time was to send my eldest son to a home for boys in Texas.

Yes I lost more pieces of my heart. I cried for my boy many nights. I prayed he would get the help he needed there. (Never send a Native American to a white Christian school!)One of de worst decisions I ever made!

Years later dis same son whom I love wit all my soul, needed a place to stay wit his wife an two babies. I said "of course come, I have room." At first he was grateful, but 3months later he decided he was boss of MY house.

MAMMA DONT PLAY DAT SHIT!

I realize den dat all those times before were practice for what I had to do now.

I done told dat boy he ain't talkin to me like dat an he can jus haul hims ass out de dor!

He called me a cunt and whore!

Now you may tink de hardest part was to banish hims from my house, but no!

De hardest decision I had to make dat day was to send my daughter in law and two precious grand babies away because I new if I let dem stay, my son would be right back treatin me de same way.

De hardest decision a Mother will ever have to make is when to be strong enough to love her child hard so dat he learn hims lesson in life.

Dat make hims a better man, better dan hims father was.

Dat what my job in dis life is.

Jesus help me, God is great!'

I know that I was the only sperm to have made this far ahead of 10 million others, but I can't take it anymore; the thoughts swirled along the ice cubes in a destructive vortex of violently rotating whiskey storm in the tumbler. With trembling hands I lifted, kissed the tumbler and guzzled down the storm in a flash. The burning liquid assimilated as it travelled down my gut. In no time it started taking over the charge of my constitution. Yes...Yes...Yeaahh!!! I feel the storm swirling in my heart and the blood started pumping mercilessly in my veins. Stirring that little heart crazy, so crazy that it banged hard against the walls of my chest. Banging hard enough to rip out. The time has come my friend! The bird won't fly again (smiled as I told that to myself with bated breaths).

     I wobbled as i tried to get up but managed to balance the chassis by my hands pushing against the wall. "I had a little too many, how many? Who cares now for the decision has been made", I assured myself as the sweat droplets rolled down my temple.

     I stretched my hand and got a grip of a piece of cold metal that lay on the table next to the tumbler...i pulled it closer to my head; the feel of that metal barrel got my heart pounding harder as the cold metal barrel pressed against my head turning my feet cold; am I taking an easy way out? Yes the pain would end straightaway instead of lingering forever.

     I said these lines to myself and went to the washroom, just to look in the mirror for one last time before the lights could flutter away from my eyes and the soul, like a bird, could break free from its cage. There in the mirror stood an angry looking teenager with bloodshot eyes whose certificates said that he was an ace shooter and victor at various sports...then where did it go wrong?

   Contemplating... the intoxicated mind took a dive into the depths of nostalgia zapping through the memories...it got locked over a scene where the hand that rocked my cradle once, brought me the books to grow old one day. Old enough that my success could be gauged only on the basis of exams which were never meant for me. There was actually no country for non-engineers and doctors in the eyes of our traditional Indian middle-class family .  And I was literally dragging my feet everyday to live a dream which others had fabricated on me...

     Now I had failed in the exams and all my friends had moved on to the colleges of their choice, leaving behind a complete loser...someone who was now unacceptable in their society, an abomination, a failure with no future; talking to whom was now a taboo. Tears streamed down my cheeks when I looked down upon myself through the eyes of my friends. Perhaps that's why even my Girlfriend gave up on me.

    I cried "Oh god! why did you made me to see this day?" I realised that I was barking the wrong tree as there was no God around and I was talking only to myself. My whole world was coming down crashing around me, trying to bulldoze my mind into a passive coma. All dreams and love promises were popping like soap bubbles around my head. That does it, the annoying mouth had to be shut down forever now. The barrel was now in my mouth and I did not prefer to close my eyes as I wanted to look at myself while squeezing the trigger slowly....Tick Tock Tick Tock an angry teenager with a gun in his mouth...tick tock tick tock

    Suddenly my mind traversed into a phase of life where I used to call my richard as my "Gun". My Richard?? in my mouth? OMG I bursted into laughter and while pulling out the gun it suddenly went "Bang!!!!" i had accidentally squeezed the full trigger while laughing. I quickly scanned my self to find if I was leaking from anywhere? Thank God, I looked around and found that only a chip of the plaster from ceiling had fallen on the ground... consuming all the momentum of the lead. I went to the room, kept the Gun back and refilled the tumbler.

The endorphins had kicked into the blood streams and the depression was slowly melting away waking up my sportsman spirit. The hole in the ceiling was the wake up call for me and I and decided that I won't give up without a fight beyond the lifeline. I explored all avenues and buckled down to the idea that If colleges did not accept me then I will open my own college. Next morning I made an avowed intent about my new target. Everybody thought that I had lost my grip on reality and sometimes even I doubted my own sanity. But the study, strategies and the tough grind which I had inculcated to fill in the social gaps that my dear ones had left behind ensured that I would land somewhere at least. So I irrigated the seed of my Idea with blood, sweat and tears and watched it germinate slowly, taking a shape. Every setback used to throw me back to my tumbler again and I contemplated at that bullet hole in the washroom; it reminded that I had taken the toughest decision of my life as my only choice that night, and now there was no turning back. Next day i used to double my usual work and one day success came knocking at my door like a Santa with more than I had ever wished for.

   Now whenever I find someone down or planning to give up the ghost, I tell them of what I had been through and how a little humour and the hardest decision changed my life forever. One day my kid (who is a topper) asked me why I had failed in entrance exams? spontaneously i replied "Because I am a Godzilla who was chomping at chickenfeed"...he laughed innocently and went to school.

P.S. I turn down the Facebook friend requests and calls of all those friends who once had deserted me every now and then. (Karma is a Bitch)

@chainedinshadow

If global warming is real then I'd be the asshole to blame,

Because when I eat crackers I like my cheese in a can.

Then one summer evening,

While out; I still got a tan,

In the partial sun as dusk was upon us, at the suns retreating stance.

That atmospheric layer thinner than the spread on my 

ham substitute.

I like my plastic under pressure, and colored yellow, with flavors resembling cheddar that I'm used to Puttin' on my Ritz, 

and this Crackers crackers will come with spray cheese, at the risk of an active shift in earths climates attitudes.

  The ozone being eaten by what Im eating, depleating it, causing change. Making mother nature deranged, and  'hot tempered'.

I have considered the options.

And while nations march to raise awareness of this warming globally, I think of rebelling locally, at the gas station down the street from me, with a can of spray cheese.

But I'd have to walk, and it's too far in this heat..

Don't think so much.

You are always in your thoughts.

Plugging away at hypotheticals,

Analyzing every possible variable.

You are paralyzed by indecision.

A slave trapped in your own mind,

When the reality is that you are free.

Truth is, you have always been free.

Stop waiting for the right moment,

Create it. Be the agent of change,

who brings about your own happiness.

Break free from their condescending tone, and condemning judgement.

You are always worrying too much about others,when will it be their turn for them to concern themselves about you?

Yes you will fall sometimes, but when you make mistakes, learn from them and grow. For experience has proven time and time again to be one of the world's greatest teachers.

Now stop overthinking and go, for the greatest mistake you can make is to never know.