If anyone is reading this, then I want you to know who I am and why I have done the things I’ve done on this day. So let me tell you about myself and what brought me here to this place.
For a long time my heart been broken, and my mind a place of torment and regret. It’s like there’s a monster inside me; killing anything of meaning, burning it out of me. I’ve lost the ability to feel emotion. This cannot be living and I cannot be alive.
So that must mean that I’m dead.
But if I am dead inside then why has no one noticed? How can I feel so damaged and unlike myself without anyone seeing it. Or perhaps they have! How brilliant that would be! What if everyone has noticed? But they choose to say nothing. They chose to go on with their lives and they leave my problems to me.
What if everyone sees it, but no one cares.
But then again, it’s not as if I blame them. Caring is the real problem. Caring, love, connections and attachments will be your undoing every time. Your great demise if you would. They will give you something that no matter how hard you try and how far you look, you’ll never find something that can replace it. They can make you feel like you finally belong, and that all along everyone was wrong about you. But then, all of a sudden, things go wrong. I want use a more expressive word than ‘wrong’, but I’ve always had trouble with words and I find nothing quite describes the feeling as well. Sometimes the word ‘wrong’ suits things so well there is no other word you can even consider. Like when you were a kid and you came home and your goldfish had died; it was so wrong that something should die. That someone who you loved could leave you so suddenly and without so much as an explanation or a goodbye. Then you go and seek comfort and the only thing anyone can tell you is that the he’s in a better place. So if you would forgive me, let me explain with an example.
There is a girl you call your best friend, and she calls you hers. The secret here, the painful one, is that you’re in love with her. Head over heels, desperately in love with this young woman, who makes you feel alive who makes you feel alive for the first time. Her every movement captivates you and her every word is music to your ears. To you she’s the very picture of love and happiness and the best things you could get out of life. She has always been there for you, and swears she always will be. She is fantastic, funny, beautiful, witty, intelligent and caring. She looks at you with such affection that it gives you hope. Not enough to actually inspire action, but enough to keep you imprisoned in your affection. Every time she smiles at you is a sharp pain, and a punch in the stomach. Why must you love this girl who does not love you? It isn’t fair.
Then one day things change. She changes.
She’s blank now. Like an empty canvas when she used to be one so full of colors and designs. She was passion and reds and now she’s emptiness and greys. She was bright red lips and thin blue sweaters, where now she’s pale skin and dark fathomless eyes. Where she has found joy she now finds nothing. She is like sand slipping through your fingers and you cannot reclaim her. You never can. She gets farther away every day.
Then she’s gone.
From one day to the next she committed suicide. People now give you sad eyes while whispering with their ‘friends’. Sometimes you hear them talk about you, saying things about how you’ll be next. You wouldn’t care if you could only have her back. You blame yourself. The guilt and sadness is like a tidal wave, rushing behind you and swallowing you up. No matter how fast you run there is no escaping it. There never is. But you will not do to others what she did to you so you endure it, you endure the pain. But you resent her, my God do you resent her! That wonderful creature ruined your life. She made you love her than she left. No warning, no stopping for air or breaking the surface for one last breath. She. Is. Gone. And the darkness that took her from you pulls you down and keeps you captive.
You’ll never fully love again will you? I know the answer to the question! I know the end of the story because I have it in my head, playing like a funny little movie. Can you guess the answer though? Will you love again?
Do you even want to know?
If you would like to know I’ll tell you. The answer is no. You will love again yes; you meet a nice girl in college who has the same blue eyes as the dead girl but none of her spark. The nice girl is just that, a nice girl. She is simple and pretty, you like her. But she falls flat. Eventually you marry her, because she would never leave you, would she? You will have children and you will love them so much it hurts you. So you bury it. You do not show them enough affection. In an attempt to not grow attached to them. Doesn’t that make you sad, not wanting to be attached to anything? Anything at all. Before the dead girl you loved recklessly, your heart was whole and you were naïve. But she took it…..she took it bit by bit while she lived and then all at once when she died.
You could never trust, not really, not after that. How could you?
So if caring really is the problem, then why do we endure it? Why do we give in to this thing that can change us, mold us, ruin us, build us up or tear us down? It is because we are desperate to feel. We are the emptiest things, we’re voids that can never really be filled. We are a building finished on the outside, with everything lovely from the paint color to the flowers on the windowsills: but the inside is empty and incomplete. I have heard love described as the motivator for so many things. Love makes people stupid, love makes people jealous, love makes people fearless, love makes people strong, love makes people weak. Love makes people kill and love makes people die. Love makes people. I once said that everything we do is for the purpose of one thing-prolonging our death. Why do we forge onward with medicine? To prolong our deaths. Why do we write novels? We want to be remember, as if we are still alive, we want a piece of us to remain on this earth after we’re long gone. I guess that’s why we love too, we want to make a mark. We want people to carry a piece of us. We don’t think about how it’ll affect them.
If you haven’t already suspected it, the girl was my best friend and I’m the one who loved her. I often look back and think of her. I think of how she hummed while she poured coffee and how she sounded just after waking up. The way she laughed on rollercoasters and hours after someone told her a joke she hadn’t fully gotten, eyes lighting up while through her giggles she managed to get out ‘I get it now!’. I think of every moment I had with her and every day I didn’t. I miss her. I miss her more than words can say. It’s like a really, really deep hole and I’ve spent decades shoveling dirt into it, but it remains as empty as ever. Because people tell you that time heals wounds and so you pretend to get over it and move on. But only you know that the scar you have isn’t even a scar; it’s still an open wound that burns and stings every time you try to put a bandage on it. So you live with it and it seeps into every crevice of your life.
I miss her. I never got away from her. And I go to join her now.
