By Khen P. Julia, 17,

Grade 12

Estancia National High School

Friends, let me tell you something they never warn you about: You will die long before your funeral. Not in the dramatic way that earns flowers, speeches, or people dressed in black. You will die quietly, in moments that do not announce themselves. In moments that look ordinary from the outside but split you open from within.

You die when someone walks out of your life and never looks back. When conversations turn into memories and memories turn into silence. You die when the version of yourself you once loved goes missing and you do not know where to look for them. These are the deaths no one prepares you for. There are no eulogies for them, no graves to visit, no dates to mark on a calendar. And yet, they shape us just as deeply as the final one ever will.

I know this because I have died more than once.

I was a problem child back then. I say that without pride and without denial. I was addicted to computers, to the glow of a screen inside cramped computer shops where time disappeared. I spent entire days there, hours bleeding into one another, chasing games and distractions instead of direction. My mother did not know what to do with me. I could see it in her eyes. The worry, the exhaustion, the quiet prayers she thought I could not hear. I was alive, breathing, laughing even, but a better version of me was slowly slipping away.

That version died quietly.

I am not saying I am perfect now. I still make mistakes. I still fail in ways that humble me. But I am trying. I am trying in ways I never did before. I found my way back to being an academic achiever, not because I suddenly became brilliant, but because I learned how to care again. I explored leadership, not because I wanted power, but because I wanted purpose. And above all, I thank God for giving me the talent to write. Writing became my second breath. Through words, I learned how to listen to myself. I am now, loudly and proudly, a campus journalist. That did not come from talent alone. It came from surviving the quiet deaths that forced me to grow.

But the most painful death I have known did not belong only to me.

I lost my friend Matt to a brain aneurysm. There was no warning. No goodbye. One moment he was there, solid and real, and the next moment he was gone. Let me say this as honestly as I can. Both of us died that day, but only one of us stopped breathing. A part of me never made it past that moment. The laughter we were supposed to share later, the conversations that never happened, the future we assumed was waiting for us. All of that died with him.

Grief does not always scream. Sometimes it sits beside you while you pretend to live normally.

I still visit the computer shop today. But not to escape life anymore. I go there to edit drafts, to polish submissions for magazines, journals, and newspapers. The same place that once held my worst habits now witnesses my quiet discipline. That feels like redemption.

If there is one thing I have learned, it is this. We are made not only by what we survive, but by what we let die within us. Some deaths destroy us. Others save us. And if you are still breathing after losing parts of yourself, after losing people you loved, then maybe you are not broken. Maybe you are becoming.