first love never die

| One • Boundless |

| Chapter One ~ Boundless |

It is difficult to explain what it's like to live life as a ghost. To have a brain that insists on turning on you at every opportunity, ruining beautiful moments and, sometimes, claiming entire portions of time simply because it is hellbent on making you believe its lies.

And you fall for it, you do. I don't think it matters how long you've been aware of it; that constant tug-of-war of melancholy that you truly have no control over and no idea how you even managed to keep it at bay for so long, no matter how hard you've tried. Also, it wins. It's bound to. And when it does you usually have a decision to make. For the most part, though, I think I've been making the right ones.

Being able to spot the signs is incidental; knowing you can seek ways to prevent it from taking over and making you get bad again borderline irrelevant. It is important, don't get me wrong. However, it can also be illogical, or at the very least unrealistic, to think you are somehow free from it. Because you're not, and you will never be. At least not when you're like me. When you're like me, you're never safe enough, if at all. Life, time, the universe—whatever you choose to name it—is wicked. And it will make that fact known to you, at every opportunity.

Strength, I've always found, has little to do with it as well. You're not going to prevent anything by being strong. You can get through it of course, but that is a whole other matter. No, I don't think strength is key, mainly because one day, regardless of how tough you think you are, it'll creep up on you, and you will most definitely not see it coming. Before you know it, it'll start to take over, and if you are not careful, it'll take you, and everything else with it.

The way you decide to handle it is up to you. There is no rulebook, no manual to follow, no x amount of steps to go through, to complete. Only the finish line, and that is not immutable, but rather a shapeshifting ethereal entity; a gamut of possibility.

Me? I know that I will never be quite as I was. I will never have nothing wrong. And it is something I need to better accept. After all, we are all different, and the choices we make are ours to be proud of, to regret, to own up to.

People tend to equate episodes with sadness. They are quick to rule that if you are bad again, it's because there is a clear reason behind it—and it's usually just the one. It can be your childhood coming back to haunt you, or your life falling apart. Perhaps your work is too demanding, or your relationship is in trouble. If not that, then someone must've said something or done something that triggered it. You might have even lost someone, are about to, or had them disappear in front of your very eyes. Regardless, it is always one thing, and one thing only.

God, how I wish it were that simple.

Reality, however, is paradoxical. Your life can be absolutely fine, it still doesn't make you immune to melancholy. 

What I did that night was something I knew better, yet I did it anyway. I reacted—it was all I could do. And the manner in which I did was the only way I knew how, for it was familiar.

I hid it.

To be fair, I've always been good at it, and I had gotten away with it my entire life, with little to no consequence to worry about—for the most part.

Four months. That's how long I was able to manage this time. Just four. But I did it, despite knowing better. I did it.

That boy in the park? He didn't have a clue. He had no idea that, ten years on, at seventeen years old, one of the few certainties he would have left would be how much he did not want to make it to his eighteenth birthday. How he had known it, probably for longer than he'd ever care to admit to anyone, let alone himself. Or how that night was destined to turn into one of a mere handful of memories he would somehow manage to prevent from being corroded by sadness. He was so blissfully unaware of how quickly his innocence would be lifted, as well as how he would end up dealing with it when it were.