No, she couldn't dwell on that right now. Samantha had spent two weeks bawling her eyes out. Maybe she would weep when she got back home today but not right now. Not while she could make her parents proud even now. They had plans for her. Dreams and wishes for her life. They were looking down at her works from their place in the kingdom of God.
She would never wish to disappoint them.
Samantha’s relatives had organized the funeral. Her uncles and aunts on both sides of the family had told her that they would ensure that she was allowed to remain in her family home for as long as she wanted. She did love her family home, but she would not be able to stay here for much longer.
There were too many memories. She wanted her life to have less misery in it, as well as less reminders of her greatest source of sorrow. She would leave her family home right after graduation when she moved to the city where her university campus was located.
She still had things she needed to take care of, concerning her family home. She still had to pack her family's pictures, heirlooms and treasures. Even if she felt the tears running down her face every time she saw the door to her parents' empty bedroom.
Samantha spends her time completing her assignments and studying for her finals and, in order to make things easier for herself, dropped her music elective. She wanted to do what her mom and dad had wanted her to. She would spend every waking moment she wasn’t thinking about her parents on her studies.
Her mother would not have wanted her to throw all her future plans away so she had to make adjustments wherever she needed to. She had a path to follow after all. What else could she do for them? What else would they have wanted for her? She wished she could just ask them…
Fuck. What is the point of all of this… Why did this have to happen? I… I have nothing. I really have fucking nothing now. Wouldn’t I be better off if I just… No, no, I can’t think like that. Unforgivable. Mom, dad and God would not forgive me for being tempted by such thoughts… I-I can’t… I’m sorry… I’m sorry… Please forgive me for my transgressions, oh Lord. I’m sorry your daughter is so weak in the face of your trials.
Samantha’s eyes start to water.
Shaula had mentioned to Ajax that thoughts of suicidal ideation had appeared when her foster parents had died. She had not lied about having such thoughts. It was not due to the guilt of killing her parents specifically; after all, they had both deserved a much more painful death than she had provided. Her guilt stemmed from the sight of their hellish, fiery demise.
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The sight was grotesque to her.
The repeated nightmares she had about the sight of their burning deaths made her wish to die after several weeks. She slowly dealt with her trauma through the intervention of antidepressants and therapy, which was provided for her while she was staying in her group home. Eventually, she threw away her trauma completely and came to savor their suffering in her memories.
Just like Shaula had suicidal thoughts, so does Samantha because of her parents’ deaths. It is something she is struggling with, even while focusing on school.
Unlike Shaula however, to Samantha, suicide is an unforgivable sin. Her parents were of the mind that those who commit suicide will end up in the eternal inferno of hell. It is a doctrine of her family’s church, one that she was raised to believe implicitly while growing up.
For Samantha, thoughts of self-harm emerged during the past two weeks. Samantha rejected such thoughts strongly, both out of disgust… and fear. Fear of death and damnation as well as fear towards how tempting such thoughts were at this mournful moment of her life.
Still, she does not want to be damned, so whenever those thoughts come, she represses them with urgency. Imagining her parents in heaven is one reason why she rejects those thoughts so fiercely. If she commits such a sin and ends it all before it is her time, how can she meet her family again on the day her soul is judged before the throne of the Lord?
All she can do right now is struggle with her own thoughts while hoping she can still make her parents proud, even in their absence on the face of the world.
"Samantha?"
Samantha is stewing in her own thoughts in the school library during lunch when she hears someone call out to her. It is someone that she hasn't hung around or spoken to since middle school, a girl named Ava Rodriguez. She is a girl with a radiant smile, who is slightly taller than Samantha, with light tan skin and dirty blonde hair.
Samantha hasn't seen those light green eyes and that lovely smile before her in a long time.
"Hi, Ava, what's up?" Samantha asks with a small smile, trying to hide her elation in talking to her old friend once again. The two of them grew apart through circumstance, not out of dislike for each other.
"I… I wanted to talk to you actually. I heard what happened to your parents and I… I just wanted to say hi, see if you're doing alright…" Ava’s smile becomes slightly sadder.
"Oh… I'm doing… Well, I'm doing, at least trying to do, what they wanted me to… No, no, sorry, yeah, I'm doing alright. I'm just… taking it day by day, I guess?" Samantha says, deciding not to overshare. She does feel a bit embarrassed using that tired television platitude at the end.