December 31, 2045. I stood on the bridge 10 kilometers from my apartment, ready to start the new year in heaven. I've lived enough, I thought. I've suffered enough. It's time to leave this hell of a world. It's only made me suffer after all.
My parents abandoned me when I was three years old. I wish they had abandoned me earlier, because then I wouldn't have to remember their faces, nor remember the feeling of being abandoned. I was forced to live with a horrid family, treated like trash. I was called a bitch more than I could count, and beat up almost every night. The night I did not get beaten was always a happy one. I never received the same luxuries as my caretakers: no birthday gifts, no Christmas cookies, no pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. Instead, I got the socks with holes on my birthday, the spoiled milk on Christmas, and the coal-colored burnt turkey on Thanksgiving. Unfairness was the only normal I knew.
On my sixteenth birthday, I decided to leave. I was legally allowed to now live on my own. I had collected a few hundred dollars by stealing a dollar from my caretaker's wallet every night. I was smart enough to know that if I left after stealing hundreds of dollars from them at once, I would get reported for theft and would have to return to the dungeon that was my caretakers' home. And that was the last thing I wanted.
My black tattered backpack was filled with my 5 T-shirts, 2 pants, 3 boxers, and a cheap cell phone I was able to sneakingly buy the day before from the store. I was excited. Excited to step out the door into the beautiful world: into the freedom I had dreamt about all my life. And so I, the bluebird, left behind the dreadful cage and entered into a world I had never stepped into. Little did I know that the world I had stepped into was not going to treat me any better.
I fell into a huge debt. It was expected after I left with only a few hundred dollars. I lived in motels for a little while, then on the streets. Soon, I was able to work three jobs a day, and did so for two very long years. It was physically taxing, but for survival in the real world, back pain does not overrule the paycheck. And even so, I still could not pay my bills. I was still not doing enough. I could never do enough.
So I ended up on this bridge at eighteen years of age. A bridge between life and death. A bridge between the horrifying world and the charming after-life. It was time. I looked up into the night sky full of sparkling stars. There was a common myth that people turned into stars once they died. I wanted to be the star farthest from planet Earth. "I wonder if there's someone up there that is actually going to listen to my death specifications," I chuckled to myself. I was now ready. I was going to be free. My left foot left the ground. My right foot followed. And soon I was floating down into the abyss that would envelope me and take me to a place full of happiness and away from agony.