Intro
It's all about perspective. I'd said, I wasn't stopping at one, for something as big as this.
I will not.
Below are all pieces that are written from that person's point of view, one of the hundreds of thousands that have been so strongly affected, each one's story different. Most of them are true.
Mommy, It Hurts
It’s been two days.
Yet the reality of it tears at me, stabbing me through and through every time I remember.
And mind you, that happens quite often.
You see, it isn’t something anyone is likely to forget. Maybe one day, children will learn it from old Chengdu history books in school. Everyday, forever, maybe, painful reminders will be everywhere, to remind me of the fate I had stumbled onto, in split seconds, how my life had been turned upside-down and inside-out. I had seen things like it everywhere, on the news, thousands dead, injured, families torn apart, but it was merely a statistic, like it is for everyone else who watches on the sidelines. You pity them, but that’s still what it merely is; a statistic.
Well, this was no statistic.
Never had I thought I would be involved in one of these catastrophes. Humans were infinitely times stronger than I had ever imagined; surviving through such pain that would have thought to crush, tear, destroy, annihilate completely.
Yet here we are.
We heal, but in the stages before that happens...we try not to disintegrate. Barely holding ourselves together, slowly, healing, through encouragement, love, and comfort brought from those around us, strangers who help.
I guess the world has some good in it.
It’s been two days since the complete ending of that earthquake. Ever since they had found mom, dad, and even my sister under building piles of debris, rubble, cracked glass, blood, corpses.
Still, white, dead. Never again able to breathe, laugh, love.
Never again to live.
No, it had to be some kind of dream. Nightmare, really. Nothing this tragic or devastating could happen to an innocent young girl like me. Nothing should.Oh, why did I have to survive? It was painful, surviving. Exhausting.
“Don’t let me die, please don’t let me die. I need my family; they need me.”
Who knew this was what I survived for? No family, nothing.Nothing.It helped a bit, knowing that I wasn’t alone. They put me into this shelter place, with lots of children. Some were crying, sulking, staring into space.
There was no joy.
That helped, to know that there were other children. Other children...like me.We talked a bit, cried. Wondered if this was every going to end.It already had, for me. Ended, I mean; it wouldn’t make a big difference. We played some games, laughed a bit, even. I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to laugh. Ignored the pitiful looks, or the “They’re all orphans” in that sympathetic tone of voice. Even consolations led to uncontained fury sometimes.
“It’s okay, everything’s going to be okay.”
No, it’s not.
It’s not going to be okay; these kinds of sustained injuries had already broken us beyond repair. You didn’t know what it’s like, in a state like me, or all the thousands of other children.
You’ll never know what it’s like. It’s not going to be okay.
We all got food, good food, from donations, but I barely tasted it. I knew I was being greedy, ungrateful. But what did they expect? I hurt, all over, healing sometimes, only to be punctured through again, with new pain, new wounds. Mentally, physically.I don’t know how I survived. 94 hours, under debris, rubble, under the very things that killed my family. I willed myself to breathe, live. Being still, I barely felt hunger; when it weakened me, I lay there. Turning my head this way and that, trying to breathe, trying to survive. To survive, for my family that no longer existed. It was a claustrophobic's deepest fear; the area was small, I made myself believe that people would find me, eventually, wherever I was.
They did.
“It’s a miracle...92 hours...lucky girl...her parents, sister...unfortunate deaths,” were fragments of the conversation that I heard, when they were dragging me out, their cruel assumption that the mangled, bloody bodies they had recovered were my parents and sister.
The shards of glass in their flesh, the blood, the splintered bone--forever scars, trademarks of the items that had crushed them to their death.
My father had the air-condidioning metal vent above his head. My hard-working, beloved maid mother, had been working under the bathtub of the floor above her, heavy, white, fatal. And my sister, who had been sitting next to the glass window, with the school's looming Chinese flagpole beyond that. Even the large chalkboard in front of her; an innocent girl, my sister, placed directly in the center of it all--she, of all students, sustaining the most damage, no time even to run out the door, her class room being on the third floor, the whole school crumbling beneath her feet, three more floors of school tumbling across her body...
The pain started then; I couldn’t pay attention very well. But I'd heard enough.
Lucky girl. Lucky girl.
Lies; they thought lies. My family torn from underneath my feet; me, surviving on my own, under a pile of rubble and debris for 92 hours...A lucky girl, I was. Maybe, over time, over the world’s support, and the support of my friends, I would heal.
Maybe, I would learn to live again, and learn to love, to laugh. Not to dwell on the past, the past that stole my future. Impossibilities, they all were. But maybe, over time. I would try, at least.I would try. T
he estimation of over 50,000 deaths, 50,000 families like mine, torn apart, hurt, changed forever. I was never alone, I never would be.
Of course, I didn’t completely agree with myself yet, but maybe, over time...For now, I’ll struggle through this period of time, support those like me, survive with them, mourn with them. For now, I’ll hurt, emotionally, socially, physically. I’ll hurt, all over. Maybe forget what one of the children told me one day, in the morning.
“You sleep-talk,” she muttered, a brawny girl of five, rubbing her eyes, stretching.
“Really?” I replied, although my voice showed no signs of interest. It was dead, just like my family, my future, my life. “What was I saying?”
The little girl became very silent.
“You said ’Mommy, it hurts.’ You said it many times, too”, she replied. I felt myself go limp. I pressed my cheek to the cold floor, closing my eyes. The pain, the pain was too much. I heard the little girl whimper in fright.
Mommy, it hurts.
It was my last thought before I sank into the shadows that greeted my with open arms.
For Her. For Us.
Author's Note: As depressing as it may sound, this is true. Welcome to the cruel side of reality.
I will never forget the reason I'm still alive today.
Never, ever.
I guess, with great sorrow and grief comes a lesson; such pain shouldn't be endured without some kind of benefit, right? Life could be cruel, but not that cruel.
I can remember every detail with infinite clarity. Narrowed down to the nearest millisecond, each clear as crystal, always ingrained in my forever swirling pool of thoughts.
My forever swirling pool of thoughts, which will always revolve around one thought that names itself the core, the root.
I was supposed to die. I was supposed to be crushed under the crumbling ceiling, buried alive under the debris, with no chance of survival, deprived of any hope. It was me who was supposed to be dead, and yet I'm not. And she is.
Her future, taken from her, her memories, thoughts, secrets...hopes, ambitions, dreams, wrenched from underneath her feet. And yet she had made the decision consciously, with only us in mind.
Our future was all that she thought about, the lives we would live, and not even her own. One good soul of purity, traded in for four others. Those other three; they were my best friends. Were they as befuddled, shaken, as I was? Do they remember that afternoon, when one had no time to think, but only to do, and react? Do they remember the humid, claustrophobic area under the wide, wooden podium that she managed to stash us in?
Do they remember the way she screamed, in pain, in defeat, although with some sense of relief and satisfaction? The way she screamed as she used her own body to brace the caving ceiling from crushing the podium on top of us?
Do they remember?
Or rather, how would they ever forget? How could they ever forget? The woman who had saved our lives, given us a chance, a sliver of hope that had eventually led us back into the light.
It had led us into the light, and left her, forever in the darkness that would consume her.
The way the tears ran their glistening path down her cheeks as she struggled to fit us under the podium, as she planned to thrust herself, to bar the way of the falling concrete?
“Keep still, and don't worry. This will not be for nothing. You will walk out alive.” Brief words, spoken in less than five seconds, yet remembered with such clarity, a voice that will never be heard again, lost inside the debris that claimed its body as well.
She was a mother to all of us, and we were all her children. She was a mother to all the children in the world, as they were her children as well. If it were children she didn't know, standing before her, helpless, confused, in shock, would she have acted the same?
Of course.
This will not be for nothing.
I will not live for nothing. I will not walk out into the world like before, as a student, a minor who was belittled as all children are.
I will not.
Life is short. Sometimes, it's cut drastically.
It's not to be wasted, ever. She did not save our lives for nothing.
This will not be for nothing.
I will write it down, what happened that day. I will write it down, and I will never forget.
Never.
That day, when she saved us; not only giving us our lives, but releasing us from the cage of mind, that barren cage that held us enclosed, although we never knew it was there. Gave us new eyes to see the world with.
She was my teacher.
For Them, For Me.
If I were alive today, if I had somehow survived the crushing debris, no doubt many people would shower me with questions like “Why did you do it?”, or, “Do you think it was worth it?”
Of course it was worth it, if four innocent lives were spared in exchange for one.
But why did I do it?
It was reflex thinking. Others first. It was always like that. But did it still apply if your own life was at stake? They were only children, and I was an adult. I'd already experienced a lot more than they had, seen a lot more of the world than any of them. Was it fair for them never again to see the light of day, never again to experience the joys of life?
No, it wasn't fair. Life wasn't fair; if it was, I'd still be alive, laughing and crying and mourning with the rest of the world.
Life wasn't fair, but it can be worth something. I knew, ever since that deep roar beneath my feet, the shaking ground, when the exit was blocked by already-fallen debris, that I would have to make a choice, with the other four children that were with me.
I was the teacher here, but I was also the mother. How would a teacher act, and how would a mother? I still remember what we had been learning, before it started. We had been reading a piece of writing from the textbook. A beautiful piece of writing. There was only one sentence left to read before the roaring started.
A beautiful composition; its reading never finished, forever, left dangling at the last line. Cut short.
Did the precious lives of these four children have to be cut the same way? I thought of my family, my friends, all the ones I loved, and all the ones that loved me. Would I wrench myself from them just to save the lives of four more?
Yes, I would.
That was when I realized that I'd started crying, and that the earth was still trembling beneath my feet. How much time had passed? I felt myself trembling along with the ground, my stomach in a pit of nausea and worry. What if this didn't work? Would this be for nothing?
The four girls were wide-eyed, frantic, rapidly searching around for something, any sign of hope, though rooted to their spot.
The chalkboard began to shake; threatening to tumble off from its place in the wall. Some books fell from the shelf, heavy books that could cause heavy damage. I had to do something, and I had to do something fast. I looked around for any sign of shelter.
Maybe, we would all make it out alive. I crossed my high hopes away from my own head, and scrambled around, looking.
And then I found it. The large space under the podium. The surface on top would give them some shelter, but once the debris fell, it would crush them for sure.
I knew what I had to do.
Scrambling over, I explained to them what they were going to do, and pulled them hastily over to the small space. They fit inside eventually, crowding together, crying.
I couldn't stop my own tears from spilling over my face, whether it was from my decided fate, the anticipation of pain and fear, or for the children, I didn't know. Maybe it was a combination of all three.
““Keep still, and don't worry. This will not be for nothing. You will walk out alive.”
I tried to be convincing, I hoped they believed me. I hoped their future believed me.
That was when I heard the earthquake tremor grow stronger, more intense, and I knew that it was time. I looked down once more, for the last time, at the crying, youthful faces of my students; my children. They would live, I would make sure of that. And when the pain was over and I soared to heaven, I would make sure that they all lived happy lives. I think I smiled then, but there was so much overwhelming emotion it was difficult to tell. The fear gripped me, but underneath that, buried deeper, was the greater relief, satisfaction. I spread my arms out, using my body to shield the podium. I could see the ceiling shifting...ready to collapse.
Time seemed to slow. That angered me, why couldn't we just finish this and be done with it? Inside my head, I prayed for all the other children in the province, I prayed for their families. I prayed for my family, too. All the people I loved, and all the people that loved me. I felt the wet tears stream again, and I was rigid and tense. I hoped they would realize that it was for the best, I hoped that the children would survive, and help my family cope. I hoped everything would turn out okay.
I felt strangely calm, serene, as slowly, the ceiling broke. I closed my eyes, gripped the sides of the podium tighter, and waited for the darkness of death to come and greet me.
