Hey, it's all gonna be okay

It's all about the 'okay's: "you're going to be okay," "okay, today's a better day". They're all smiling faces with pity in their watery eyes. I'm going to be okay because they say so, because I don't know what's going on and they won't tell me. All I'm allowed to know is the I'm doing "okay" and it is all going to be good very soon and I'm supposed to believe it.

I'm in a gown in a hospital bed, with IVs running from angry machines into my sickly veins. I cannot breathe on my own but I know my tears when I feel them, but it's going to be okay, isn't it?

"Shit," I say breathlessly, and my father looks to me with conscious knowing and a false expression of reprimand. He knows that I'm aware. He can't tell me it's going to be okay, he knows his little girl more than that. "I'm dying..."

Silence.

Like a quiet agreement, they all cast their eyes onto the ground. There's no better way to be lied to, and there's no comfort in their actions because they're afraid to touch me. They don't want to accept what is and they don't want to know I'm already halfway there. Why are they here? Support. Support so that it will all be okay when I slip into my abysmal fate.

"Honey, it's all going to be okay very soon. The doctors are doing the best they can, sweetie," my mum says, putting a sweaty palm on my pale forehead - just enough contact to let her know I'm a reality, that is really happening. I can't help but laugh a little, just the little that my lungs allow me to. Liars. Even on a death bed, they'd lie to me to make me feel okay.

"I remember when I was 12," I started, looking ahead onto the mouldy walls accommodating the dusty hospital TV, "Nana told me I was the worst liar when I said I didn't know how the fire started in the basement." A low chuckle from my gran in the back - she knows the truth; she knows she'd never lie to me. "Truth is," I continue, "I know how every fire is lit: match sticks, rocks, lighters, humans."

"Humans?" Mum asks, concerned. What is she saying, right? Gran knows, dad knows - they smile. Hope is a beautiful thing and that's all I need to know - a fire in the darkness of my tired soul.

"There's a fire in my me, mom. It's been burning since the day I was born; don't you see it? Can't you feel it?" She looks at me, perplexed and with her lips slightly parted. That's what she needs; to feel like I'm okay, to know that the fire in me is keeping me somewhat alive. The truth is there's no fire, there never was. There's a cold storm in me, blowing across my sad bones. I'm shivering, there's no warmth in there. There’s death, and they all know it, but even on my death bed I, too, lie to myself to make myself feel okay and extend that comfort to my fragile mother.

It's all sad and dismal and excruciating. "I can't feel it, but I know you're the fire. You're the light in a solemn room and the sun on a gloomy day, but there's also a fire in the basement of your soul and no one knows how to deal with it. You asked for this, remember that. We love you, our shooting star. This is what you wanted," my mum says finally, and I squeeze my eyes shut tiredly. I'm three quarters there and I'm wholly selfish. I've taken away the happiness from the ones who possess the capability to love me the most.

"How much longer?" I whisper, looking straight to my dad. He doesn't answer. The furrowing of his eyebrows tells my story of fourteen months ago when I cried in his arms on the bathroom floor whilst waiting for the medics to complete the stitches and drain the tub. I wanted this, to die, and how selfless they are to let me believe that it is their fault instead of my own - euthanasia. 'They did this to me,' not 'I'm doing this to them.' My gran's tired eyes resonate my screams at the dinner table before taking the newly unpackaged knife and stabbing my own bruised thigh, and mum's tears re-tell the regurgitation of bathwater last summer. It may be obvious, the words they reiterated after each episode -

"Hey, it's all going to be okay."

I'm on a death bed devoid of any cognizance of feeling and I'm okay. I know I'm doing 'okay' but,

"Shit," I say, "I'm dying."