September 19, 2132 was the small date forever marked on the underside of my wrist. Everyone you met had a date on the exact same place; we were all born with it. But every date was different on each person; it made us feel unique, almost as if we were something special. Until we reached the day that was on our wrist; our death date.
The goal in life was to achieve all that you possibly could before you come close to reaching the date that is marked deep into your skin. And if you can achieve this, then you have successfully lived the life that you were intended to have. Today is August 19, 2132 and I have exactly one more month to live and I’m not ready to go.
Thinking back, I started to question what this date was when I was around sixteen years old. I had talked to my mother and father about it several times but it always seemed that they never really wanted to tell me what it stood for. I could see the fear and sadness in their eyes as they began to tell me that the day marked on all of our wrists was the day that our time here on earth would come to an end. As I looked at my wrist and then looked at my parents I saw that my date came before both of theirs and this explained the exact reason to me of why they had hesitated to inform me before of what it meant. At that moment in time I had no idea how fast time would go by and how much this date would affect the choices I forever made.
As I went through the rest of high school I tried to ignore the date and act as if I had never even seen it in the first place. I would spend time with friends, go to the movies and do everything that a normal teenager would do. But as senior year came around, I knew that I would have to make a big decision that would impact how the rest of my life went. Do I go to college or not? This was an everyday question that raced through my mind. Do I want to continue going to school, only having a life that was full of however many years solely sitting in a classroom wasting my days away? Or do I want to decide that after I was done with high school I could start the journey of my life and try and live it up to its fullest potential before it was time for me to go? At the age of eighteen I decided to make that decision and not go to college once I had finished high school.
My parents were disappointed in me, but what they did not understand was that they had about thirty more years of their lifes to live than I did. They were both able to finish high school, go to college and successfully start a family, while I was only supposed to live until I was twenty. I would explain this to them but it only brought tears to their eyes. “It’s not fair for you to have to go so soon, Lily!” my mother would repeatedly say as she held me in her arms. “I know Mom, but this was not something that I got to choose. I was given this date and I will make the rest of the time that I have now the best that one has ever had before” I told her this as tears also approached my eyes and as a family we sat together all holding one another knowing that we would make it through everything as long as we had each other.
It was June 23, 2131 and it was my birthday. I was finally nineteen, and as birthdays were always looked forward to when I was a kid they are not so much looked forward to now. I decided to go out that night with some of my closest friends from high school that I had known since I was a little girl. I always envied these friends because the date on their wrists was not for another eighty years or so while mine was quickly approaching next year.  We were all sad but decided to keep that topic far from the conversation for the night because we were celebrating. As the night went on the partying continued and so did all of the fun that we were having. I would have to say looking back that night was one of the best times I had ever had in my life with friends. For once, I was surrounded by those who love me for who I am and who keep the conversation far from only asking if I’m afraid of death.
Since I was not going to school my parents gave me the money that they had been saving up for college to spend as I pleased. They knew that this would be my last full year and they wanted to allow me to do the things I wanted to be happy. It had always been a dream of mine to go skydiving and to travel the world. During that summer I was able to complete both of those tasks and had never felt more alive than I did in those moments. I traveled to Hawaii and had the amazing opportunity to get in a plane there and jump out over the beautiful view of the glistening white sand and the sparking blue waters. I was terrified as I jumped but had never felt so free before. Freefalling from the sky feeling the wind rushing through my hair, while laughing and doing flips in the air simply because I could was the best feeling. I would do anything to go back and skydive all over again. I was also able to travel to Australia with my family and had experienced all of the different activities that they had and it was astonishing to me. The way that everything was so different from our small town back in Montana made me wish that I had begun traveling sooner.
As I was living life to the best of my abilities while back home, I met a boy. His name was Anthony and he was the most handsome boy I had ever seen in my life. He had short brown hair and ocean blue eyes that as soon as you looked into them it was as if you were lost at sea. He worked at the coffee shop near my house and although I hated coffee I learned to love it as the summer was ending and we started into fall.
I guess that going into the coffee shop often enough worked because as the seasons changed Anthony and I started to get to know each other more. I never really had a boy that I was interested in and this feeling was all new to me. Anthony was attending college at a small university in Montana not far from where we both lived. After he was done with his school days we would meet up at parks or each other’s houses and simply enjoy each other’s company. It was nice to have a friend that was still in the same state as I was. All of my friends had gone off to college in different states and the only time I got to see them was if they came back home on breaks, so having Anthony around was a positive addition to my lonely life.
As time went on Anthony and I became very close over the next year; we knew basically everything about each other expect for one thing; he had never seen the date on my wrist. He had shared his date, which was March 19, 2201, and we talked about it often but he never asked about mine. It was August now and I was approaching the date that I had been dreading to come. I had spent so much time with Anthony and I knew that once I showed him the date the friendship would be over. I had brought him along too far into my journey simply to only let him go at the end with no explanation. It was a Saturday and I decided that would be the night that I finally showed him. We went to a local restaurant and I broke the news to him there. “You’re kidding right?!” I heard the crack in his voice as he yelled those words at me.
“I’m sorry, Anthony,” I said, “we were having such a great time and I didn’t want to ruin anything”.
We sat at the table in mere silence for what seemed like an eternity. Then he finally grabbed my arm and pulled me as we ran into a tattoo shop, at this tattoo shop they did both tattoos and tattoo removals. “I want to try something” Anthony said. He asked the tattoo artist to remove the date from my wrist to see if it could possibly change the day that I was predicted to die. The pain was so strong and my eyes filled up with water as I watched the year slowly remove from my wrist. As the year was now gone I could see my vision starting to blur and the only thing I remember was Anthony’s face. 
I was suddenly awakened in a hospital bed looking to my right, seeing Anthony pacing back and forth. And then looking down with a throbbing pain on my wrist and as I looked I saw a new date. March 19, 2201.