Don’t Stop the Dance
不要停止跳舞
Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help
create the fact.
William James
Christy Gonzales killed herself in the spring of our senior year.
She was beautiful. She played volleyball. She was homecoming queen.
Everyone was more than shocked. She’d always been so happy, so popular and so active in extracurriculars. She had so much love and light. She always signed her name with a heart above the “i” and included her middle name, which was Valentina.
Why she did it is a human mystery, but the obvious reason given was that she was heartbroken because her boyfriend—some sophomore, no less—dumped her.
I remember the silence in our homeroom class—except for the sounds of people crying: boys
and girls, jocks and nerds.
As the hour wore on, Nick Denver, the quarterback, quietly spoke to Fred Gregory through his sniffles.
“Remember,” Nick said, “when Christy punched me in the face at the seventh grade dance?”
They both started to laugh, softly. Nick had been making fun of her, and she lost her temper and gave him a sock straight to his nose that started him bleeding. He was shocked, but recognized he deserved it.
I could imagine Christy doing something like that. Although she was the sweetest person in the world, she had so much fire—she lived so in the moment of her feelings and emotions.
In freshman year English class, we’d read the other’s stories aloud to the class because we were too scared to read our own.
She’d let me cheat off her geometry test my sophomore year. We’d both been caught.
I’d once had a secret romantic view of suicide. I thought that it would be nice to have everyone miss me, to have my name forever bound with the tragedy of a depth no one could fathom. I imagined the kind of silence in the classrooms, the people sobbing in the halls. I imagined how people I didn’t know or barely knew would try to remember every detail—what I had said to
them, what I had worn the last day.
She had worn red the last day. At lunch the last day, she had said she was tired of always getting the tater tots, tomorrow she was getting fries. I could not have imagined a better funeral for Christy with the heavens outpouring rain like tears. The entire town was there, mourning.
I just kept thinking about how we all kept on going but Christy’s life stopped.
When I want it all to stop, I remember that you can’t dance without a body, and you can’t cry without eyes, and you can’t have the luxury of feeling when you aren’t here.
I wish she could have loved herself when she didn’t feel it from anyone else.
Simone Would
相信活着是值得的，那么你的信念将帮你创造这个事实。
——威廉·詹姆斯
克里斯蒂·冈萨雷斯在我们高三那年的春天结束了自己的生命。
她长得很美，会打排球，还是校园的舞会皇后。
人们得知这个消息后都很震惊。她一副乐天派的样子，很受大家欢迎，课外活动都很积极。她签名总是将字母“i”上面的点换成心形，里面写上自己的中间名——瓦伦蒂娜。
至于她为什么要自杀没人知道，比较容易让人接受的理由是她因为被男友——一个低年级的男生，应该是高二的——抛弃而自暴自弃。
我清楚地记着当时教室异样安静，除了哭泣的声音：女生、男生、活跃分子、书呆子，大家都为她的死感到悲伤。
时间在缓慢地流逝，球队的四分卫尼克·丹佛哽咽着对弗雷德·格里高利说：“还记得吗，七年级时一次克里斯蒂一拳打在我的脸上？”
接着他们都开始轻轻地笑了起来。那时尼克想和克里斯蒂开玩笑，没想到她生气了，对着他就是一拳，尼克的鼻子还流血了。
他当时惊呆了，但事后承认是自己活该。
我完全可以想象当时克里斯蒂的样子，尽管平时她很温柔，但也有脾气——一时的激愤肯定也会让她有出人意料的举动。
高一的一次英语课，我和她因为害怕读自己写的作文，于是决定互相交换然后大声朗读对方的文章。
她还让我帮她在几何考试中作弊，结果我们都被老师发现了。
曾经我也对自杀有过浪漫的想法，那时在我看来，让别人怀念是一件很美好的事，我的名字也将因此添上一抹悲剧色彩。我设想过教室里会是怎样的平静，人们在操场上哭泣，和我不太熟悉甚至并不相识的人也会竭力回忆和我在一起的细节——我曾经对他们说过什么，昨天我穿了什么样的衣服。
她昨天穿了件红衣服。昨天午餐时她说她已经吃腻了土豆泥，明天她会吃炸薯条。
克里斯蒂葬礼的那天大雨倾盆，好像上天也在为她哭泣，如此糟糕的天气很难想象接下来的仪式将如何进行，整个小镇都像是沉浸在哀痛之中。
我不停地思考，为什么大家都在而克里斯蒂离开了。我想让一切都静止下来。你跳舞的时候必须有一个舞伴，哭的时候也必须要掉眼泪，现在你不在也一定会感到落寞吧！
我多么希望，克里斯蒂在感受不到别人的爱时，能够学会爱自己。
——西蒙妮·武尔德
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