Everything I Should Have Said

I

drapetomania

[n.] an overwhelming urge to run away
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The school hallways were covered with the homecoming dance posters and he was there holding Gabby's hand and in her other she held the tickets. He smiled at me and excused himself from Gabby. I was trying to ask him last night but it went terribly wrong and I ended up ending our conversation.

"Well aren't you in a good mood today?" He smiled for real, I think and I patted myself on the back knowing he was back to his normal self, well at least I thought so.

"Yeah, I bought tickets for Gabby and I and she says she needs to talk to me about something important." I hear the happiness in his voice something that wasn't there yesterday. I knew he was going to just be fine, I knew it.

She pulled him away then and smiled at me before I couldn't see them at all. I didn't realize that the talk Gabby wanted to have with Shane was more negative than positive.

He loved her and she broke him while he was already fragile, you want to know what she said? Well it was the most inhuman like thing to do. She told him that he's been acting strange and it's scares her, that she was just dating him to get with Matt and she did. He smiled at her and handed her the tickets which she had given back to him, he walked away but with his heart heavier than it had been the night before, and he thought maybe something was looking up. It wasn't.

Matt never dated her, he couldn't but he did something else, something that shattered Shane even more. The girl that told Matt not to get involved in the fight where everything started to go downhill extremely fast for Shane was non other than Gabby.
She thought Matt liked her, she really did but really who does Matt ever like.

Shane began crossing his days of backwards, backwards from the his birthday, backwards from the day we all became one, when we all became friends.
Maybe that was the biggest clue that we were one of the causes of his mulled decision but I'm going to defend ourselves, mainly myself because I know I was. One of the causes of his death.

Because the guilt is getting heightened and my body is taking the repercussions for my sleep deprivation. I'm going to say it but only so you understand that you need to stop judging me because it's getting to me too, it's getting too much.

Shane Moore's choice to kill himself had nothing to do with me, or my friends, sure I could've and possibly did contribute to his final decision of ending his life, but if I was there I would've helped him, I know I would. And they would too, Matt, Miles, Charlotte and Lea would've too.

I knew he wasn't ok after his breakup with Gabby as much as he said he was, he wasn't but I acted like it was fine, like everything was fine. I acted like I didn't hear the definite pleading in his words or voice when he called out for help, my help.

"Everything's so inconsistent and fake and I hate everything, I feel nothing and I absolutely thrive on that feeling. I know, there's something wrong with me, I'm sadistic and I'm ecstatic that I am. I need it to all stop, the guilt, the feeling of unworthiness and the screaming." He was begging for me to help him and offer him support but I shrugged it off thinking if I paid more heed to the situation he would become more dramatic. Maybe if we ignored it, it would just go away, but it didn't.

"Shane, she broke up with you. She wasn't the one for you so stop drowning yourself and cut away your sorrows from your life. Just live free spiritedly like Wonder Woman or something." I could hear him shake his head and I could tell his decision was made. I couldn't tell which one it was but I forced myself to hear his shallow breaths through my phone, till I was certain he was truly asleep.

She's not deserving of you Shane, she doesn't deserve someone so... spectacular, so real. You have had enough of hurt filled relationships but think about me and you in New York City, December 1st 2016. When we were the only ones without a partner to share the New Years kiss with. So I, feeling brave and a little high looked up at you and crashed my lips to yours. No electricity, no fireworks just an undeniable connection. Emotional, heart to heart. Physical, lip to lip. Real.

Maybe if you expressed your desire for me to help you a little more I would've said it, but it would have been an everlasting game because I'll always need a little more. Maybe an everlasting game was what you needed and I didn't provide:

I cut the call then, knowing that he lived one more day knowing that I was hearing him fall asleep but not to eternity, but for a while. A while till he gets up and the process is repeated.

Plaster smiles on faces, look perfect, die a little inside.
Plaster smiles on faces, look perfect, die a little inside.
Plaster smiles on faces, look perfect, die a little inside.
Over and over again till the day you're truly dead.

So when he came to school the next day I pretended I didn't see it, I pretended I didn't see my not so literal advice scarring his skin, just because my wording happened to be wrong and so that one word, affected so many lives. Cut, if I said wash instead. Cut.

I didn't think he would take my advice so seriously, when I said cut away your sorrows, I swear I didn't mean it literally, and maybe I was the one who planted that idea into his graveyard of a mind, which I did.