They always brings flowers, maybe a card, and their dear condolences, as if they understand. Every time I hear ‘I am so sorry,’ a sharp dagger drives into my heart. Who the flip cares if you’re sorry? It’s not like you were the one pointing the wand, its not like you were at fault, it’s not as if those words will reanimate the dead, my loved ones, but the sentence always flies from their poised lips, like an instinctual reaction. It doesn’t mean anything, I know, just some societal custom, but it seems asinine to go through the process of such trivial conversations, if you can call them that, after the uprooting of our whole society in a war, where our brothers, our sisters, our mothers, father, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, and every stinking relative that ever touched this planet die. It drives me insane. That, and flowers, I can’t stand the flowers.

They tell me it’s survivor’s guilt, the whole feeling of ‘why am I alive when they’re not, that’s not fair.’ It seems silly to tack some name onto such complex emotions that wretch my heart, my mind, to and fro, with a wanton disregard for my sanity. They think that every ‘survivor’ feels this way? Don’t tell me that this is a common feeling, you can’t see into my heart, you don’t know how its trembling, how its flutters compel me to think. This isn’t about this so called ‘survivor’s guilt,’ it’s that I wasn’t there to help him, them. It’s about that the world is so frickin’ messed up that it’s the cowards, like my own dear self, that survive. The heroes, the legends, the ones whose epics should wind about the centuries are the ones that die. Because they were good. They tell me that this complex utter annihilation of my faith in humanity is ‘survivor’s guilt’ then they pat me on my head like someone’s old golden retriever that doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together and send me on my way. And then they send me flowers.

I feel like I’m screaming at the top of my lungs, proclaiming to the world of the disorder of it all, how every act we do, however monumental it may seem, adds to nothing, but no one can hear me. They all go about their daily lives with painted smiles, like they can simply forget the ones that die and move on. They don’t hear them, the dead, they don’t feel the pain of loosing so much for naught. They don’t see how we busy ourselves with these inane existences when really none of it matters, we all die in the end, and the world goes on. They can’t hear me, they’ve half-forgotten about me, besides their insipid soothing and flowers. It’s only now, when I’ve thrown my mask of painted smiles to the wind, that I realize how readily society enforces good-nature upon us, ignoring the naysayers with forced contentment, as they masquerade towards their ever-approaching death. Their conceited, self-righteous, attitudes are only proven through their frivolous gifts that always break, crumble, and die but have no purpose. Like flowers, they always send flowers.

What I find simply hilarious is their insistence that I ‘move on.’ It’s simply uproarious, I tell you, for I have but one answer to that demand, one simple little question that destroys it all, breaking society before me into the endless circle I see it as. ‘To what?’ To what do I move on to? To a job? Why would I do that? To a family? I loved and lost enough to know it simply isn’t worth it. To life? Please, I doubt you want to hear my hollow, mirthless, laugh any more. What is there to life, running about in endless circles, searching for a imaginary prize, like mice in an endless maze? There’s nothing, and it’s taken me until all of my life’s been ripped away and shredded before my very eyes to realize it. Yet, they do not listen, they never do. No, they send me flowers, flowers. Flowers with straight-back stems, almost military in appearance, and petals that could have been ironed and starched for their crispness. Flowers whose colors stand in resolute, rosy shades, definite and rich. Flowers that fade in time, soften and bend, stems loosing their rigidity. Flowers whose petals drop softly, swirling towards infinity after loosing their beauty, their purpose, their lifeblood. Flowers who now stand as weary sentinels, reminders that we all die, loose our spirit, and fall, broken, no matter the ethereal splendor and façade of immortality we might originally possess.

They send me flowers, flowers.