How to Live

Have you ever watched a sunrise? Stayed up all night just to see it creep across the sky and light up the world you live in? Have you ever wondered what the world would say if you died tomorrow? Would it be enough, would you be enough?

Would they have a holiday in your honor, or would the day slip on by, like so many days do when people forget. They all run into each other, only separated by holidays, which are made so people can remember that they love each other. Sometimes I wonder if I am the only one who sees the world this way. I wonder if anyone else expects to die each day that they wake up. Does anyone else visit the surprised relief I do when another day ends, and they are still among the living?

Then I think about the people in the world with terminal illnesses, I think they might understand. They too must wonder if they have made the people they love proud. They too must wonder what people will remember them for, how long they will remember them for. They surely wonder why. I wonder why every day now.

Why was I, Harry Potter, born to die?

Why was I born to be snuffed out after having everyone I love taken from me? Did someone think I would make a good martyr? Did they think it was funny, messing with my life, taking my life, destroying my life? Was this all one big cosmic joke? They world will celebrate when I am gone, just like they celebrated when my parents died. They will not be celebrating my dead, they didn't celebrate theirs, they celebrate his demise. But I cannot see that, I see that they celebrate. Will my friends join in, or will they cry, or will they do both?

I lay in my broken bed, wondering these things. Wondering who else is unable to sleep, wondering who else suffers these heavy burdens. I find myself torn between wishing everyone knew what I felt like, and wishing this on no one. I knew with certainty that I will watch the sun rise again today. Sleep is wasted life, after all, and I have precious little to waste. At least that is how I start out thinking.

Just after sunrise I remember why I sleep. Sleep makes the pain go away for a little while. Even those few precious hours I get are heaven to me. I wonder if there really is a heaven. Will my parents be there? Will Sirius be there? Will they welcome me with open arms and be proud of what I did in my short life? Will I have done enough?

I toss and turn and wish that these musings will stop; I would give anything for them to stop. But I can't turn my brain off, I can't make myself forget. I wonder if I can life enough to be able to die.

Sometimes I picture the funeral when I lie here, or when I do anything. When I am surrounded by people, but so alone I think about what separates me from them. I try not to; I try to stop, to live, to enjoy what I have. Maybe I do enjoy what I have so much that I get irritated at people for wallowing in what is petty and trivial. I can't help but think, listening to Ron and Hermione fight once again, that in ten years this will not matter, and you will be alive to know that, or to not remember this argument even occurring.

I hear Ginny sniffling, and wonder how her relationship with Dean could be over so quickly. I assume that is why she's crying. That's the only reason girls cry, isn't it? I ask her why they broke up, and she slugs me in the arm and tells me I know nothing about her, and shouldn't presume that I do.

Instead of going after her I go back into my own little world, where nothing hurts, because I am already dead inside. I wonder if anyone out there is doing better at this than I am. I wonder if they can tell me how to live, until it's time for me to die.

I don't think anyone really knows.