It's A Shame There's No One To Blame For All The Pain That Life Brings

“How would you like to live forever?” asked Ski.

“I think it’s pretty ridiculous. What would you do for forever?”

“It seems cool. I would play basketball forever.”

I rolled my eyes. “Uh huh, so even when you’re 300 years old with creaking knees and no teeth at all, you’re still going to play basketball under the sun and run around chasing the ball? When will you retire from your job, assuming that someone would want to hire a 300-year-old grandma?”

Ski turned to face me, her facial expression hidden by the shadow of the leaves above our heads. From all the time we’ve spent together, I already know she’s going to once again start her lecture about being more optimistic and romantic and stop thinking about all the technical problems in dreaming. If time permitted, she would also go into her lecture about just enjoying life and not worry about careers or all the strains and pains of the adult world.

“Hei! What you guys waiting for? Come on! We need 2 more players to play 5-5!” came Link’s voice from the basketball court.

“Stop wasting time there and let’s play some ball, you guys!” shouted Bel, as if she was afraid Link’s voice wasn’t loud enough to wake up the whole world.

As I rushed to join them, I couldn’t help myself from smiling. I stopped for a while and looked up at the sky; the rays of sunlight were casting a warm glow on us as the clouds glided slowly with the wind.

This is my life. A large portion of it is spent with my 3 best friends as we talk about life, world news and everything under the sun, but mostly our conversation circles around who’s dating who and the weight of everyone we know. We play basketball to pass our time when the weather warranted. We’re high school students but we don’t seem to find a meaning in studying until the very last second before exam begins. In short, we are everything teenagers should be and everything parents wish their children won’t grow up to become.

George Bernard Shaw said “Youth is wasted on the young.” And I couldn’t agree more. But quite frankly, I couldn’t care less. We don’t have work; we don’t have a family to feed or deadlines to meet. Time is the only thing we could callously spend at our own desire. That was four months before I learned my first lesson on time. It was only four months later that I began my journey on discovering how a second in a person’s life could change the story of so many lives.

Xxxxx

People say that when you’re sixteen, you make your debut into society and finally dip your hands into the future you’re going to be living out. Indeed we had our future laid out before us, the possibilities only limited by our own abilities and desires.

July 17^th year 2004. It was a glorious Saturday morning unlike the other mornings we have been waking up to for the past couple of weeks. For once in so many days, my morning wasn’t accompanied by the roaring of thunders and the sound of raindrops splattering upon the windows. I found myself sitting once again under the same tree I sat four months ago, only this time I was alone, waiting for Ski and Link’s arrival. I took a glance at my watch. 23 minutes pass the time we agreed to meet up, at least another 7 minutes until the time when they would actually show up. Malaysian punctuality, something we could truly be proud of.

Just as leaned back to enjoy the occasional silence I was granted, Avril Lavigne’s voice jolted me back to reality. I picked up the phone to hear someone sobbing and an ambulance wailing in the background. I was ready to say “wrong number” and put the phone down when to my utter surprise, Link’s voice came from the other end of the line. “Niyi, it’s me. Look, we have an emergency here. Can you call your father and ask him to get the emergency room at his hospital ready for two patients?”

A little panicked and doubtful, I asked “What’s going on here? Why is there an ambulance?”

I would never forget the sights and sounds that followed that conversation in the next couple of hours. A few dazed actions later, I had my father waiting at the hospital as my mom fetched me there. Another glance at my watch, 16 minutes since Link called me. I can’t believe this is happening. We were only 16 years old.

As I stepped through the sliding doors at the hospital’s entrance, I couldn’t help but give a cold shiver as I remembered all the people crying along the corridors every time I came to find my father in his office. Having been here a great number of times, I found myself in the Emergency Ward with no trouble at all. I looked at the chairs at the beds, not a single familiar face. At that point, I didn’t know whether I should give out a sigh of relief or grief that my friends aren’t there yet. I paced up and down the white corridor when my phone rang again.

“Where are you? I’m at the X-ray department?” said Link.

“Coming. Be there in 2 minutes.”

I dashed down the corridors that seemed similar to each other until I finally arrived at where Link was, sitting nervously on the floor. To my horror, her basketball jersey was stained with blood. In fact, almost all clothing and bags lying beside her was stained a dark red colour. She looked up at me. That was the first time I’ve seen her cry since I met her years ago. Although the stench of blood was strong about her, I waved it away as I ran to give her a consoling hug. Until that point, I still had no idea how horrible the accident was.

Not too long after that, Ski came out of the X-Ray room lying on a bed. Her leg was all wrapped up but the only thing I could do was stare at her. Looking at her face that just looked back at me as if I was about to give an answer to life’s greatest mystery. Sadly, all I could do was look. And then she spoke. The line that broke the silence and also my heart.

“I could see my bone. It’s so white… but it was very red too.”

xxxxx

It has been 3 years since that incident occurred. Ski took a long time to recover and came back to accompany us at the basketball court briefly but when something like that happens, no amount of dreaming or laughing can really bring things back to normal. We no longer play together nowadays. I because the game seems to have lost its appeal and she because of the injuries she suffered that morning. Bel is too busy to play these days and she rarely even keeps in touch with the rest of us.

Isn’t it strange that so long after everything has happened, I finally want to live forever. No, I want to play with my friends forever the game that I love the most. And when I do finally die, I want to be all used up. I want to not be able to move a single muscle because I’ve lived to my heart’s content and have nothing left in me. We go through life trying to find ourselves and our true friends but in truth, life isn’t about finding it. It’s about creating it. We found ourselves on that court under the clear blue sky so many years ago. But nobody told us we could lose what we found and so we let go and now it’s gone. So what’s left now is for us to create a future that nobody can steal from us. We have to create ourselves.

You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'

PS: I know this post would have been a lot better had I not deleted most of it but it was too hard for me to post such personal things here and I apologise.