Her face full of dimples, and joy all those years

Her face full of agony, of betrayal, of fear

Her face bruising; mascara smeared with her tears

Her voice screaming for mercy, as she prays someone hears

Her face filled with terror, as he starts stumbling closer

Her face of desperation; days and nights become a blur

Her face stunned with sorrow; she never imagined this curse

Her heart trying to reason why; why had he chosen her?

Her face watching shreds of her gown, hit the ground

Her face, where no remnants of shame should be found

Her face frozen with fear; her broken heart pounds

Her face suffocating; she prepares to drown

Her look of determination; she'll find a way

Her eyes start to swell, as she stares at the escape

Her lips begins smiling; she knows his mistake

Her beautiful soul, was never his to take

I see it every single day. On good days... On bad days... It’s still painful but the pain has grown familiar after four years.

We were running to each other, so excited to embrace... Then she fell. I think I screamed her name but sounds are faint in my recollection. What haunts me were her eyes. Gone was everything I knew about her. My best friend, gone.

It seemed to take far too long to get her help. On the ride to the emergency room, I stayed at her side. She was unresponsive and, though I tried to hope, I think I knew I was going to lose her. I could see it in her eyes.

Stroke, they told us. It didn’t seem real, she was athletic and ate well. I had to wait outside the room for hours. When I finally got to see her, it was to say goodbye to a body without a consciousness. I had to be removed because I couldn’t let her go, even after watching her body join her mind. I wanted so badly for her to jump up and shock modern medicine. It might be silly, but I still feel guilty for leaving her body. Even more, I blame myself for her stroke. If I hadn’t gotten her excited, maybe she could have been around a little longer.

I miss her so much. I’ll always love you, MK.

The estatic glee

Or worse

The desperation

in the eyes

of one

about to commit

suicide

I was driving home from work one day in April of 2002. It was spring in northwestern Pennsylvania, a transition month from the snowy winter season to April shower’s, but far too early for the May flowers. It was 3:30 in the afternoon and the rainfall was plummeting down at 1 to 2 inches per hour. I was driving on State Hwy. 6, which is a two lane road that cuts through the rural areas of farmlands and open fields. I was driving about 40 miles per hour due to the poor visibility of the weather conditions. My wipers were on high speed but the torrential downpour that day made it difficult to see out my windshield regardless.

In the duration of the eighteen miles

I was driving home, I remember a small SUV coming up behind me awfully quick. I didn’t recognize the vehicle until the headlights appeared in my rearview mirror and it got immensely close to my sedan. The driver was tailgating me for a good five miles until he decided to pass me. I let off the gas and let him get around me so he could get back into the right lane as quickly as possible. Once the vehicle swerve back into the lane, it pulled away from me and within a few minutes it was out of sight. It must have been going a good 60 miles per hour which was too fast for the road conditions.

A few more minutes had passed by and then I seen taillights from a distance until I pulled up closer and that’s when I perceived something that would impact my life for a long time to come. The vehicle that rode my ass and passed me minutes before had crossed the center line to pass another moving vehicle and consequently hit an oncoming truck who was driving into the other direction. The vehicles were both smashed in like accordions. I began to panic, reaching for my phone to call 911. When I checked the victims in the car who passed me, I found two teenage males covered in blood, both of them were unresponsive. I then ran over to the other victim in the pickup truck, he was alone, same problem, unresponsive but not as badly covered in blood like the other two victims were. I began to lose myself, tears emerging from my eyes not knowing what to do. No other cars had driven by for at least 10 or 15 minutes. I was traumatized, engulfed by agony and my mental state became paralyzed. Were these victims alive or were they goners? I just waited until a Pennsylvania State Trooper medics arrived on the scene and the medics.

When all the emergency vehicles got there they asked me several questions before allowing me to leave the scene of the accident. I watched all the victims get taken away in ambulances. I kindly asked the medics along with the troopers to inform me on their conditions at some point. I prayed for all of them, in hopes of surviving the crash and snapping out of the unconsciousness they were all in. Finally, I was aloud to leave the scene and about my merry way. My clothes were drenched from standing in the rain and I wasn’t mentally on the right track subsequent to this horrific event.

A few days later, I received a phone call from the Pennsylvania State Police Department wanting to follow up with me and they told me some information I was praying that I would not hear. Unfortunately, all three victims died as a result of too many bodily injuries. The teenagers were both seniors in high school who were preparing to graduate that June. The other man in the pickup truck was a husband and father of three young children. When I was informed of that unwanted news, I lost it and broke down in tears. That was a day that left an impact on my heart and my life. The worst thing I’ve ever had to see in my life and it still saddens me to this very day.

#lifestyle #stories #nonfiction

"I wonder how your brother's doing?"

Those words stung, more than I would've liked to admit.

"How was your day?"

They always cared more about him than they did me.

"Don't interup your brother!"

Even though I was born first.

"Why can't you be more like him?

Everyone around me loved my brother more than me.

Despite all my attempts to be amazing

he always out shone me in every way despite being older than him.

But our parents always used that as an excuse to blame me for the disruptions.

These are the things I hate hearing the most...

The comparisons to my brother.

Tears. It's as simple as that. It's the worst thing I've ever seen. Streaming down your own face as you stare into the mirror. Streaming doing the face of your friend whose father has just passed away. Welling in the eyes of a hungry child, sitting on the corner of some street. Streaming down the eyes of the hurt, broken, lonely, embarrassed, abandoned, disappointed, depressed, the sad. To know that reaching out and wiping them away will only temporarily fix the problem before more come. To see tears you can't fix. You can only console. To see their broken eyes through the teary wells.

You can feel their ribs break after doing chest compressions for a certain amount of time—the amount of guilt I’ll forever feel in knowing they were in my hands—and the sound their parents make after will never leave your soul—at night when I try to fall asleep I can still hear the wails ringing in my ears—Its been years and I still celebrate their birthday with my family and wonder who you could’ve become

The worst thing I have seen was when I was stationed in Afghanistan. We were on patrol on "Ring Road". (It's called Ring Road because it is a paved road that forms a giant ring around the country.) We arrived at a small city near Kunduz where a clear disturbance was taking place. My crew dismounted our MRAP and made contact with the citizens that were in a clear uproar and as the driver, I had to remain inside in case we had to leave quickly.

What I saw bothered me for quite a few years afterward. I saw a girl, a young girl but not younger than 13 or 14 get tied to a pole in the center of this small village. My Sgt and the interpreter were speaking to a person that I assumed to be the village elder or leader about the girl. During the interaction, my Sgt got angrier than I ever seen him before and he started to shout at the elder. The interpreter and two others in my crew pushed my Sgt back to the vehicle where he remained as the interpreter tried to smooth things over with the elder.

As the interpreter and elder spoke, I saw a woman throw a rock at the tied up girl which struck her in the side of the head. Of course, the girl screamed and tried to get free of the rope but she was tied tight. I kept asking my Sgt what was going on, but he only repeated "Bullshit... just bullshit!"

Person after person kept throwing big ass rocks at this girl but we were told by our Sgt that we needed to leave them alone. The small group surrounded the girl, continously throwing rocks until she was simply...there. She was covered in blood, her hair was a mess and she was slumped there, tied to that pole.

Everyone in my MRAP were in tears. All of us were grown as men, crying. While we continued the patrol, my Sgt told me that the girl was raped by a member of a neighboring village and her parents found out. They believed that she provoked the rapist into committing the act and per their religious beliefs, the village elders decided that she should be stoned to death. Her mother was the first woman that I saw throwing the first rock. We were strickly told by our Sgt Major that we were NOT supposed to interfere in their way of life thats why we couldn't act. My command staff were concerned that interference by us or the Germans (the government agency we were attached to at the time) would cause unwanted conflict.

Basically, we stood by and watched a girl get stoned to death. That still makes me shed tears time to time.

The worst thing I have ever heard was the story of the Father that killed his two daughters and put their bodies in an oil tank on his job. Not only that........ one of the daughters witness the other being killed. And the second daughter asked the father was he going to kill her like he killed her sister, and he replied "Yes". This man, after killing his pregnant wife and two daughters, only received 5 life sentences with no parole. So our taxes have to take care of him after he took care of them. This IS the worst I have ever heard.