My time is running out. The clock is ticking. It’s that noise, one of a ticking clock, that has become a part of the background. White noise. But sometimes, like all other white noises, it weaves its way through until it reaches my ear drums. Pushes through the noise of the highway traffic, the radio, the people having a bonfire down the block, until it becomes deafening.

You’ve only got so long to live….it reminds me. I try to quiet the ticking. “Go away!” I tell the ticking inside of my head. But this makes the ticking angry. It pushes its way through my ears into the deeper tissues of my brain. Digging itself in. Taking root. This idea, this cancer consumes my tired head. I don’t have much time left at all do I?

How long? Does it depend on the watch or the owner? One man, so desperate to survive, he would cut off his own arm. But on the other end of the often-cheated cycle of life and death, a fourteen-year-old girl in a Wisconsin suburb, jumps off of a tower. Defying the ticking. Messing with the system.

How will I die? Will I be one of the cheaters? Either forcing my clock to keep ticking or ripping out the batteries before the alarm has a chance to sound? Or will I obey my allotted time on earth? Letting my clock’s batteries slow down unlit finally the ticking stops?

This clock is a friend sometimes. Other times I hate it. And other times all I want to do is understand what it really means.

What makes us tick? An expression I’ve never fully understood until now. My life, the giant clock…

I told them that if I were ever in this position, they should let me go. The ticking, I’ve noticed lately, has been very forced. Why won’t they just let it stop? I’m trapped in a limbo. I’m caught between sound and silence. Unable to enter either world completely because of the oxygen being forced into my lungs, the feeding tube stuck into my arm, the constant chatter of nurses.

But now, I hear something new. I tearful voice delivering a painful decision.

The ticking stops.