Exodus

Treasure lived her life on the edge. The edge of desire, the edge of the cliff, just the edge. Her never ending whirl-wind dance with death was the only thing reminding her she was alive. I guess it was fitting that her journey to the edge of existence be just as exhilarating as the life she so suddenly left behind.

Her death was a gruesome and tragic battle with anxiety and depression. Her death was one that left behind a beautiful shell to bury. I remember learning that suicide is almost always more physically taxing for men. Men have 'masculine deaths' is what the professor spoke about in my Death and Dying lecture.

I had no idea that the lessons would prepare me to bury a friend in the same months we were planning a wedding.

In the lecture I was told that women have 'soft' suicides, this mean's that they often cut their wrists or swallow a bottle of pills. Statistically less than 1% of the total number of female suicides are by violent means, but Treasure was never a statistic and she ended her life like a strong-willed man. Shot-gun pointed at her chest, she left a hole where her heart used to be.

Her mother found her first, her father saw her last, and the world never saw her again.

Her funeral pyre was where we sent off burning lanterns and balloons, filled with hopes, filled with apologies, filled with grief. I often wonder if she knew she would have been saved, did she know that we would have fought the fates to keep her with us, pumped her stomach, a tourniquet for the wrists.. we were selfish like that...

There would have been no end to the extreme measures we'd have taken in an attempt to save her life.

I wonder if she has regrets...

I wonder if she misses us? Is she happy? Does she know that she's still loved?

Before she died, she lived.. and my God did she live. She had this beaming light around her and this melodic laughter that made you want to dance. She loved to dance, that girl was too pretty to be in someones school, she should have been in someones art gallery or on the cover of someones magazine.

She was the living embodiment of hand-crafted, her features came second to none and her heart was just as beautiful as her face.

She was Aphrodite.

No I take that back, she is Medusa. She is the misunderstood beauty who was made out to be a villain. She took her revenge by dying.. and now we suffer the same fate as those mythological miscreants.. our emotions making us stiff like stone.

I think she punished us for looking away..

I wish our gazes would have saved her.