text: Have you ever disliked someone so much... hated even... that you wish that they would just die? Aoife did. Aoife disliked a lot of people throughout her life. When she was 6, there was a girl called Katie in her class in school. One day, their teacher split the class into pairs to do an art project. Amy was paired with a boy Aoife liked called Barry. Aoife instantly became jealous and from that day on, she grew a disliking to Katie. But she didn’t hate her. Another person who Aoife disliked was her friend Marie’s mom, Brenda. Brenda was a strict parent. When Aoife slept over in Marie’s house on occasion, her mom would regularly check on them to make sure that they were okay. But they both knew that Brenda was just being nosey and trying to catch them as they were up to some mischief. Nothing in particular, just mischief. One time, Aoife and Maria caught Brenda eavesdropping on them outside Marie’s bedroom when she was leaving her bedroom to use the bathroom. Of course, Brenda played it off, but they were 12 years old at that time and were well used to Brenda’s snoopiness. Yes, Aoife disliked Brenda too, but she didn’t hate her either. One person who Aoife did hate was Emma Whitmore. Aoife thought that Emma Whitmore was the devil incarnate. Aoife first met Emma when the began secondary school. She was a year ahead of Aoife and made her life miserable for three long years. One time, when Aoife was on her way to biology, Emma pulled her back by her ponytail and she fell to the floor. The other girls in the hallway saw her taking her tumble and they all pointed and laughed, whilst taking videos and pictures on their phones. Another time, at a school disco when Aoife was dancing with her friends, Emma came up behind her and pulled up her dress and held it up as Aoife failed miserably in pulling it back down. A boy who Aoife liked, Brian, was at that disco and saw the whole fiasco. He didn’t laugh, but the damage was done to Aoife. That incident had mentally scarred her for years. Yes, Aoife not only disliked Emma Whitmore, but she hated Emma. Aoife hated Emma Whitmore with a fiery hatred that was so strong, Aoife would physically shake and her heart would race. Aoife had her first panic attack whilst at home thinking about Emma Whitmore. Emma dumped her books out of her bag in school that day and some girls laughed at her again as she picked them up,. Looking pathetic and defeated. As Aoife sat in bed that night, thinking about Emma, she thought about how she bullied her for the past 3 years. “I hate her so much. I hate her. I hate her.” Aoife said to herself, whilst holding her knees to her chest with tears running down her face. “I just wish she would fucking DIE!” Aoife thought about that a lot, but she never said it out loud. But it felt good. She said it again: “ I wish she would fucking die! I wish. She would just. DIIIIEEEE!” She screamed silently under her breath. Aoife hung out with her friends that weekend and had a good weekend. She needed it and she felt much better going into school on Monday morning. On Monday morning at assembly, the school principal, Mr Irwin began the morning with a somber tone. “Ladies, it is with a heavy heart that I begin this week with some very sad news. Unfortunately, one of our students tragically passed away this weekend. Emma Whitmore.” The whole hall gasped simultaneously, including Aoife. “Before we begin this morning’s lessons, I want to make something very clear.” Mr Irwin continued. “This was a tragic accident, and the details will be revealed in due course. In the meantime, I don’t want anyone to spread rumours. As the details have not been released yet, anything you hear today from a fellow student will be false.” Of course, kids being kids, rumours did spread throughout the day, the most popular being that Emma killed herself. Another that came up was a drug overdose, which Aoife immediately dismissed as false. Another was that an intruder broke in and murdered Emma and her family in their sleep. Another theory that made Aoife rolled her eyes. Aoife spoke with her mother about it that evening and her mother also said that she didn’t know what happened. There was a lot of confusion about what happened to Emma. After a couple of more days, once the funeral had come and gone, the truth came to light. Emma Whitmore had merely died in her sleep. The doctors said they couldn’t figure out why. She had no underlying conditions. It was a brain hemorrhage, nor a heart attack. She just... died. Aoife didn’t feel happy when she heard the news. Yes, she hated Emma Whitmore, but she wouldn’t wish her dead, not really dead anyway. But she would be lying to herself if she didn’t feel relieved. From the day Emma Whitmore died, Aoife’s life became much better. She was no longer bullied. People seemed to forget about the disco incident and she never heard the chants “granny’s panties” in the halls again. When Aoife turned 18, she finished secondly school and went on to study Physics and Astronomy in college. She grew a fascination with the universe and how worked. She dreamed that someday she would go on to work for NASA. While in college, Aoife met her first serious boyfriend, Colm. Colm was a country boy who played hurling in secondary school and for his local team. He would drive an hour home 3 times during the week to train and would go home on Sundays for matches. Aoife would often go to his matches on the weekend. She enjoyed watching hurling and seeing as Colm was rather good at it, it only made her more and more infatuated by him. He was a romantic. He bought her flowers on her birthday and bought her random gifts, such as pajamas when it was her time of the month and funny mugs related to private jokes they had. She lost her virginity to Colm and knew from that day on, he was the only person she ever wanted to be with, physically and romantically. Even though it was only a month into their relationship, he was so gentle and tender towards her, she instantly fell in love. Of course, she didn’t tell him she loved him for another couple of months and only after Colm had told her first. Yes, Aoife absolutely adored Colm, and when she found out that he cheated on her while in Tenerife on a boys holiday, it destroyed her. Aoife had never felt pain like it. She received an anonymous photograph of him kissing a girl on a beach at night while lying on a sun lounger. At first, she couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be him. He told her he loved her a thousand times. But the more she looked at it, she knew it was him. She felt a knot in her stomach and she thought her heart was going to explode. It was a physical pain that she had only heard about in movies, but had never actually experienced herself. Aoife replied to the anonymous message on Facebook asking “who is this?” But the account was deleted soon after. When Aoife approached Colm about it, of course, he denied it. When she showed him the picture, he studied it closely, biting his bottom lip whilst trying to come up with an excuse. Eventually, he dropped his gaze to his feet. He couldn’t look Aoife in the eye. “How could you?” Aoife asked through tears that wouldn’t stop flowing and were making her vision blurry. “How could you?” She screamed this time, demanding a response. “Aoife, I’m sorry,” Colm said again, tears welling up in his eyes. “We slept together one time and I regretted it immediately afterward. I was drunk and I think someone spiked me and..... look that’s no excuse, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” When he looked up, Aoife's mouth was hanging open. She sat down on his bed, staring at the ground. Now she couldn’t look him in the eye. “You slept with her?” She asked.”I thought.... I thought you just kis...” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She felt like she just found out about the cheating all over again. The pain in her stomach. The crushing pain in her heart. Her legs were weak, she thought she was going to be sick. “Yeah, why? What did you hear?” Colm asked, instantly realizing that he had told her more than she knew. And when Aoife looked up at him again, with her bloodshot eyes, tears streaming down her face and puffy cheeks, she could only let out one word: “Why?” And with that, she got up and left Colm’s bedroom and house for the last time. When Aoife went home that night. She cried. She cried in her bedroom as she had cried the past couple of nights since finding out. She had cried harder than she ever had before. Harder than when her grandmother died when she was 11. Harder than when her pet cat, Oliver, died when she was 16. This was a different kind of pain. The ultimate betrayal. She had given every single part of herself to Colm, and he spat on it and threw it away like it was nothing. Had she meant so little to him? So little that he was willing to go behind her back for an easy fuck on a boys holiday? Yes, Aoife loved Colm. She loved him more than she loved anyone ever before. But in that moment, while she held her knees to her chest, crying uncontrollably in bed, she hated Colm. She hated Colm with every fiber of her being. “I hate him,” she said to herself through the tears. “I hate him so fucking much” she to herself though the steering pain in her chest. “I just wish he would fucking die!” And with that, she fell onto her side and wailed, and wailed and wailed some more, until she finally fell asleep. The next morning, Aoife woke up to 5 text messages and 8 missed calls from her friend, Amy. “Can you talk?” One text said. “Call me.” Another read. “Hello?” “Hello?” “Pick up!!!!!!” Another read. Aoife sat up in bed and rang Amy back. Amy answered almost instantly. “What’s wrong?” Aoife asked while whipping her nose with her sleeve. “So you heard?” Amy asked, after hearing Aoife’s tone. She was clearly upset and was crying hard recently. “No?” Aoife responded. There was a pause on the line. “Aoife... Colm passed away in his sleep last night.” Aoife’s jaw dropped open. She didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Her world was caving in on her and there was no way out. “Hello? Are you still there?” Amy asked. Aoife hung up the phone and dropped it. She looked around her room, confused and disorientated. She began hyperventilating and clawing at her chest gasping for air. She was having a panic attack, her first one in a couple of years. Her vision became blurry and soon, she passed out. The next thing Aoife remembered, she was on her bedroom floor, and her mother had a wet rag on her forehead. She took a moment to collect her thoughts. “Aoife? Are you okay? I heard a crash and you were face down on the floor. Did you have another attack?” Aoife sat up a bit in her mother's arms, and then it all came back. She looked at her mother as she felt like her whole being was collapsing in on itself. “Mom... he’s gone.” She squeaked out and she began crying again. “Who? Who’s gone?” Her mother asked. “Colm.” She responded, looking at her mother with tears in her eyes. “He died. Last night. He’s dead mom.” And she began sobbing into her mother's chest so hard she thought that she would never not feel pain again. Yes, Colm had cheated on her. But she didn’t want this. She didn’t know what she wanted, but it wasn’t this. And now all she wanted was to have him back. To go back to 2 weeks ago and lie in bed with him with a cup of tea and watching Netflix with him in the pajamas he bought her a couple of months prior. That’s all she wanted, and she would never have it again. The doctors did an autopsy on Colm and they found no complications or cause of death. The said that it was sudden adult death syndrome. Nothing caused it, he just went. They said that it would have been very quick and painless. Aoife went to the funeral and cried more. And she cried more and more for the next couple of weeks. She didn’t go to class and barely left her bedroom. She lost a stone in weight over the 2 weeks and her classmates sent her their notes and assignments, but she never looked at them. She felt dead inside. She felt nothing but pain. When Aoife did start leaving the house again, she went to see a therapist and kept seeing them for three years. It became a habit for her. An expensive habit, but a habit all the same. She enjoyed going to see her therapist and felt it helped her with her relationships with friends and family. Aoife failed her second-year exams. Colm’s death had taken its toll on her and she decided she would repeat them the following August. After getting a full-time job as a hotel receptionist over the summer, Aoife ended up going full time and dropped out of college completely. She worked at that hotel as a receptionist for 11 years, until her second child came along and she found it too difficult juggling a job and 2 children. And her husband, who she was now married to for 3 years was earning enough so that she could stay at home. Aoife still thought about Colm from time to time. How could she not? He was her first lover, the person she thought she’d have children with and grow old with. When she was standing on the altar and saying her vows to her would-be husband, Craig, she couldn’t help but also think of Colm. Even though she hated him, he had left his mark on her. Aoife loved Craig. She loved him with all her heart, but she gave a piece of herself of Colm, and Colm took that piece with him when he died suddenly that night. On a summer evening on the way home from a family day, Aoife drove as her husband and 2 kids slept after a long day at the beach. Her phone vibrated in the centre console and she picked it up. There was a message from “Mom”. As she went to unlock the phone, she dropped it and it fell to the ground between her feet. “Fuck.” She said and looked in the rearview mirror to make sure the kids were still asleep and didn’t hear her. They were. Aoife reached down with her right hand to try and reach her phone. As she reached down, the car slowly began to drift to the right. When she reached the phone, picked it up, and sat up, she quickly corrected her positioning on the road. She pulled the steering wheel to the left to reposition herself in the centre of the road but pulled the wheel too quickly. The car jackknifed and flipped 6 times before landing right side up and she was knocked unconscious. When Aoife came too, she was being wheeled from her wrecked Nissan Qashqai and 4 firemen were cutting the roof off of it with a buzzsaw. She couldn’t see into the front passenger seat to her husband as the windshield was completely smashed. What she could make out clearly though was the blood on the inside of the windscreen. “What happened?” She asked the paramedics, adrenaline beginning to fill her with panic. “Ma’am, please stay calm, you’ve been in an accident and we’re taking you to the hospital.” “What happened?” Aoife asked again, raising her voice. “My babies, where are my babies? Where are my babies?” She began to scream, the reality of the situation sinking in, as the paramedics put her into the back of an ambulance. There were 2 more ambulances around her, 2 fire trucks, and 2 police cars. There were flashing lights all around her and glass and metal all over the road in front of her. Aoife began to scream in horror and despair. “I need my babies! Let me out!” She screamed at the paramedics in desperation to find her children. A moment later, she was fading and fading until she was eventually unconscious after the paramedics sedated her. The next day, Aoife woke up in a hospital bed. She had a cast on her arm and a bandage on her head. She had a splitting headache and her left eye was completely red from the trauma, but that would also heal in time. Her vision in that eye would be temporarily lost. Her mother was sleeping in a chair next to her. “Mom.” Her Mom jolted awake at the sound of her daughter's voice. “Oh baby,” she said and kissed her cheek gently, careful not to hurt her fragile face. “Mom, where’s Craig?” Her mother’s eyes began to fill up with tears. “Mom, where are my children?” That sickening feeling in Aoife’s stomach and physical pain she had felt in her heart over a decade earlier had returned. Her mother shook her head. “I’m sorry baby, they didn’t make it.” Aoife laid her head back in the pillow and let out a wail that would haunt her mother forever. It was a sound only a mother who had lost her children could make. A sound no one should neither make nor hear. But here was Aoife, wailing in the trauma of the loss of her family, in the realization that she’ll never hold her children or hold her husband again. All she wanted to do was tell them that she loved them and that she was sorry. And she would, every day and night until the day she died, but they would never hear her. As the weeks and months past, Aoife’s pain never subsided. She fell into a deep depression, moved in with her mother, and spent her days doing chores around the house or watching TV. On Wednesday’s her mother would bring her to her therapy session. That was the only time she left the house. She didn’t want to live anymore. She didn’t think she deserved it. She thought that she killed her family and if they couldn’t live, why should she. She thought about killing herself plenty of times, but she was always too afraid too. And she hated herself more for that. So she decided that she would live but it would be a miserable existence. As punishment to herself for what she did. One night, Aoife sat up in bed. The television had some reality TV show on that she wasn’t watching. She was alone, with just her and her thoughts. “I hate you.” She said to herself. She looked left, at the mirror built into her wardrobe door. She rolled off the bed and kneeled, looking at herself in the mirror. “I hate you.” She said again, stronger this time. “Why don’t you just fucking die!” She screamed and punched the mirror. She held her hand in pain, it was bleeding and the mirror was cracked. Her mother came into the room. “Aoife, what did you do? Let me help you, honey.” She brought her to the bathroom where she cleaned her wound and bandaged it up. “I know it’s hard Aoife. I don’t even know what to tell you, or how to help you. I just want you to forgive yourself. You’re not a bad person.” “How can I forgive myself, mom?” Aoife asked through her tears. Her mother helped her back to her room. She turned off the TV and light. “I love you, honey. I’ll see you in the morning. Maybe we could go out for a walk?” “Maybe.” Aoife responded” “Goodnight,” her mother said and closed the door softly. Aoife cried some more that night, as she did most nights. She fell asleep and she dreamt. She dreamt of Colm. Colm said that he was sorry again for hurting her and that he was glad that she was found happiness with her family. "They're waiting for you," he said. She dreamt of her old school bully, Emma, who gave her the finger and spat at her. "Some things never change," she thought to herself. She then saw her family. She saw her children, who came running towards her and she hugged and kissed them and she told them that she loved them. She cried with joy, as she did most nights when she dreamt of her children. They asked her would she bring them to the park and she said, of course she would. And she saw her husband Craig. Craig kissed her on the forehead and put an arm around her. Aoife began to cry and said she was sorry. She told Craig that they deserved better and she wished it was her that died and not them. Craig kissed her on the forehead again and said “It’s okay hun, you're here now. Come on guys, let’s got to the park. And then there was..... nothing.