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10 Times Quinn Fabray thinks of dying (told through quotes of Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie)
i. to die would be an awfully big adventure
The first time you think of dying you are still a child.
It is Sunday and you dress up nice, because you will leave for evening church services soon.
You normally attend in the mornings, but Frannie tells you that Mommy and Daddy are screaming again and that you will probably skip morning services and go in the evening, so you nod and Frannie lets you stay in her room all day while she studies for a Spanish exam.
Because you are already all dressed up, you ask your Mom if you can go outside for a while and read the next chapter of the old copy of “Peter Pan” that Frannie gave you a few days ago, insisting you will fall in love with the words.
You sit on the swing in the garden. Your eyes are glued to the pages, absorbing the inked lines, when all of the sudden an ambulance drives by and the sirens make you jerk up, before you lose your balance and fall off the swing. Your blue dress melts with dirt.
You keep your head low as you step inside the house quietly, hoping you can make it to the top of the stairs and change into another dress before Daddy notices that you messed up. But he is already standing in the middle of your room when you reach the door, towering over you with a grey belt in his hand, his forehead wrinkles in anger.
You try to shut your eyes as he grabs you by the arm with force and throws you on the bed.
The belt hits you four times.
One time you feel it smash into your lower back, another hit goes into the back of your thigh. The third time the metal buckle crashes into your shoulder. You try to remember the last time it hits you, but all you feel is pain.
Your eyes are forced shut and you wonder what happens if they will never open again.
“I am fine, Frannie. It doesn’t hurt so much.”, you try to convince your older sister later in the dark, when she holds you close to her chest in the small bed, cradling you like a small child when you’ve turned ten two month ago.
Frannie rocks your shaking body in slow motions, but the world is spinning around you fast.
You silently wish for the pain to go away. You want to sleep. Forever maybe, you think.
ii. second to the right, and straight on till morning. That, Peter had told Wendy, was the way to the Neverland
The second time you are sixteen and you are drunk on wine coolers.
Puck tells you that you are beautiful and because the world seems blurry you believe him. He hovers over you like a grey cloud, preparing for a storm.
He doesn’t ask for permission when he attacks your neck and begins to suck deep, hungrily.
When you feel his teeth stuck inside your pale skin, you wonder if romance is supposed to feel like spines boring into flesh.
He looks at you briefly, before pulling down his pants and you don’t say yes, but you don’t say no, so he lifts up your skirt and pulls down your underwear.
You shut your eyes when you feel him enter you and you muffle a cry as he begins to move inside you.
You don’t know how much time has passed, when you feel the mattress dip beside you, but you know it’s over. By this point, you are completely sober.
You think of God and the punishment you will receive.
You think of aching skin and burning thighs.
You think of Lucy and her dreams of falling in love with a prince.
You feel movement and then you hear a door shut.Your eyes remain close. You want to sleep, forever.
iii. come with me, where dreams are born, and life is never planned
The third time you are in a hospital.
A nurse tells you to push harder and you are clutching your mother’s hand, as showers of pain shoot through your body, again and again.
You are screaming at the top of your lungs to let you go and you are sure no pain has ever felt like this before.
You think you are seconds from blacking out and you think dying might be less painful then this and you think of going to sleep again.
Another wave of pain hits you and you jerk up again, you scream. And then it’s over.
You look around the cold room as you try to breathe again.
You see Mercedes on your left side, smiling, who has become such a good friend, and you look at Puck, who despite everything has changed and there are tears in his eyes, and you feel your mother on your right, who has finally left your father.
Nothing prepares you for when you see her or for when you cradle her into your arms.
You cry. You love. You are so glad you didn’t die. You want to sleep, but not forever.
iv. I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind’s back and then away we go
You feel the world spinning again and it’s so much out of control you can’t even collect your thoughts. Everything is blurry and you feel like you are not even in your own body anymore.
The next thing you remember is throwing up all over your dark jeans and black top, spitting some into your pink hair by accident. You feel your heart race sixty miles per hour.
You can hear the Mack’s voice as she says something to someone, but you are too far away to register the words. You don’t really care anyways.
The world doesn’t stop spinning and you cover your ears because your heart pounds too loudly inside your chest. You think of how everything has fallen apart in your life and you want the world to stop spinning, you want it to be silent. You wonder if you can make the world stop turning by taking an extra pill the next time.
But the next day, Rachel tells you to come back to Glee, because you were friends once, and because they need you. She is sorry that you are so sad and she is sad not seeing you in the choir room and you’ve been through so much together, and you’re a family.
She tells you this is your year to get it right. Whenever you’re ready.
You don’t take another pill.
v. whenever a child says, “I don’t believe in fairies”, there’s a little fairy somewhere that falls right down dead.
You are pretty sure you are in fact dying this time.
You are convinced that there is not an inch on you that is not broken and you slip into unconsciousness every few seconds. You can’t feel anything except for the pain that fills every part of your being.
You think of Frannie, and how she will never be able to hold you again.
You think of your mother, and how you wish you had more time to heal.
You think of Beth, and how you will miss out on everything in your life.
You think of Santana and Brittany, and Glee, and how you finally have found friends.
You think of Rachel, and a wedding.
Your heart cracks, as does your spine, and your lungs don’t fill with oxygen anymore.
You sleep.
vi. stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on for ever. It is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was.
When you wake up after the accident and you can’t feel your legs, you wish you had died.
Three days later you realize that you have people in your life that care too much and Rachel comes to visit you, alone, and she cries when she holds your hand and begs you to live while you are pretending to be asleep. Her hands are soft and you don’t feel the light pressure of a wedding ring. Suddenly, you are happy that you are alive.
vii. no matter how hard we try to be mature, we will always be a kid when we all get hurt and cry
It’s not until your senior year of college that you think of dying again.
You’ve learnt to survive and embrace life and for the first time in your life, you fully understand what loving and being loved really means.
You’ve never been so joyful and careless and yourself and you thank Rachel for that.
But your scars don’t heal as fast as you would like them to and there is still a darkness inside you that doesn’t seem to go away and there are moments when you close yourself off of the world, not letting anyone in, not even Rachel. It’s because you think you need to fight those demons alone and you try really hard, but you fail every time and it makes you weak.
Rachel and you break up because she can’t do this anymore.
You are broken, and you are insecure and you have a temper, so you don’t blame her.
You don’t call after her when she leaves your dorm room. You don’t deserve her now. Not when you don’t know self-love or when taking care of yourself is something so low on your list of things. So, you let her go. But you think of getting better and being enough, for her.
It doesn’t mean it hurts less when you cry yourself to sleep at night. The pain in your heart is unlike anything you’ve ever known and you are not sure how it is possible to breathe without your heart.
This time it feels like dying even though your skin shows no harms and your body is still.
viii. If he thought at all, but I don’t believe he ever thought, it was that he and his shadow, when brought near each other, would join like drops of water
The next time you think of dying, you are so thin Santana starts to worry.
The voices inside your head get louder and you give up fighting against them. You take nameless pills and you fuck faceless girls and you don’t eat.
Your grades are unaffected by all of this and it makes you go harder.
Santana comes to see you at Yale and she yells at you to get your life back on track and she doesn’t leave until you agree to see a therapist and until you stop with the drugs.
The first time your withdrawal hits you, hard, you think dying is easier than this.
Santana is there the first time and holds you. You stay alive.
The next time it happens, you are alone. And everything is falling apart.
You have failed two classes and people are talking behind your back. (She’s a freak)
You are seconds away from slicing the razor along your wrist, when your phone rings.
Rachel
You stay alive and she stays on the phone with you all night.
Rachel comes to New Haven two days later.
“I almost killed myself”, you say and you prepare yourself for a storm of words.
“I love you.”, she says instead.
“You saved me.”, you whisper.
Rachel holds you while your body shakes in waves and she talks about tomorrows.
You don’t think about dying for a long, long time.
ix. Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting
Years pass and you don’t really think about dying anymore.
Until you are holding a limb hand and try everything to bring it back to life.
“I love you.”, you say, tracing the wedding band on one of her fingers.
This is the day you forget how to breathe and you are sure there is a part of you that is gone now, too. A part of your soul goes to sleep that day, and this time forever. But you still exist.
You have thought of yourself dying countless of times, you were very close to take your own life once, and you have spent years imagining the way you might leave this earth.
You realize now that you have never contemplated that there was an alternative.
You are not prepared as your heart builds up bergs of ice and cracks ever so slightly, extinguishing the flames that have roamed in your cells and found a home in your heart for nearly sixty-two years.
You have thought of yourself dying and you have never been naïve enough to admit that there was no real forever in this world. You’ve always known that one of the two of you would go first.
You have just never imagined it could be her.
You think of dying, because you wish it was you breathing your last breath, not Rachel.
x. Peter had seen many tragedies, but he had forgotten them all.
The last time you think of dying, it’s different than any other time.
This time, you are 91.
This time, you don’t feel pain.
This time, you are grateful for the years you’ve lived and the people you’ve known.
This time, you think of beautiful children, and grandchildren, a family, and love, and joy.
This time, dying is coming home.
This time, you think of Rachel.
You close your eyes and sleep.
This time you sleep forever.
I suppose it’s like the ticking crocodile, isn’t it?
Time is chasing after all of us.
Just be waiting for me.