Prologue
Have you ever felt so alone in a single belief that has caused you to lose so many in the past because of the choices they make that you were too foolish to ever think would happen? The hurt that passes through your body because you were so blind to their true character. Had you seen it sooner you could have avoided the heartbreak & misery of the reality of their intentions. But no one is ever that lucky, because without these trials what purpose do we have in life? We are left to believe in saving ourselves, to figure it out all on our own because every case is so unique, everyone's situation is always different than the one before; but that was never the truth.
As different as everyone is, we are meant to learn from others, to learn from the mistakes that we make & to pass the lessons onto the next generation. Anything can happen in this constant evolving society, whether bad or good. The Good? We want to assure that our descendants take advantage of the rewards & blessing we encountered in our experience. The Bad? We never want them to have to go through that like we had to, no matter the degree of hurt or pain or the struggle we faced. It would be like sentencing ourselves to Hell for allowing such an act occur to our next generation.
Every choice we make has a consequence & it won't be a quick punishment or reward, but something that could affect our lives for hundreds of years & even affect the people around us just because we made that one little choice. It's like the Butterfly Effect on steroids. We develop ourselves from innocence to curiosity to what the world holds for us to lying in our deathbeds with all the knowledge our limited brain space has allowed us to store there. Why hold it in when it could hold the key & solution for someone else's problems? We were sent here to gain experience & knowledge.
So what does this have to do with such a simple & single belief that constantly pushes people away? Well, my life has never been anything normal. What do you do with a gift such as seeing when someone is meant to die & knowing every little detail from the date, the hour, the second they will die to knowing how it was they were going to die. Whether of old age or a gunshot through the chest. & the worst part? Not being able to do a single thing to stop it, to change even the slightest detail.
The smallest detail changed, even if it was a second off could mean changing whether they actually die at that moment. & if they don't die, then someone else has to. An eye for an eye. A life for a life. So either way, you don't win. You never win. The decision is yours, save someone & condemn another to the same fate, or let nature take toll.
I was born with this "gift", never given the choice if I wanted it. If I was given the option I'm pretty sure I would respond with something between the lines of "Oh, hell no!"
No one understood at the time what was wrong with me. I'm positive they still don't. I definitely don't. I was seven that I began to realise what I could do. Once in the first grade, we had an event where parents came to the school to meet the teachers & learn all about the classroom. I told a schoolmate of mine that her mother who I had just met was going to die over the weekend. My comment caused her to go hysterics. It took hours for her to calm down enough & once she did she explained what had happened to her parents who then called the school. I was sent home with a report & to very furious parents. After hours of explaining to them that it wasn't a prank or some sick joke, they just gave up trying to argue with me & sent me to bed that night without dinner. The following Monday, the girl was missing from school. Word spread that her mother did indeed die the past weekend due to losing a battle with cancer. I was bullied by my peers following the incident, calling me a "freak" & some even believed I had something to do with it.
This wasn't my only incident either.
There was a sweet elderly woman from our church that always sat in front of us & snuck me candy when my parents weren't looking. I informed my mum of the oncoming heart attack that was going to occur for this sweet lady & she chastised me for saying such a thing. We never saw her the following Sunday. Turns out that she did have that heart attack Tuesday night when intruders entered her home late & scared her to death, literally.
The following years my parents started to take me to therapies & research centres to find the cause of curse, or coincidences in everyone else's eyes. I started to learn that it was better if I didn't share anything with anyone or ever said a word about it to anyone, hoping I could give myself a sense of normality, to be a regular growing teen without people calling me names or bullying me.
After awhile, my family & I moved to a different part of the country for a fresh start as I was presented a wonderful opportunity to attend a prestigious school now that my "occurrences" have stopped—or so I led my parents to believe. The problem was that we moved to Westminster, London, a largely populated area in which many accidents & deaths occurred. I was overwhelmed with all the numbers & the amount of people whose life was soon to be over & there was nothing that could be done. But my parents don't know that the numbers still plagued me & the city would only cause me to remember my curse rather than the peace & solitude they had hoped for. One can only do their best to adapt to the world around them, even if they are so different than everyone else. It never hurts to try, or does it?
