Glitter Jars

It hurts..

That message hurt me. My best friend was not okay and I was freaking out because, shit, I tried everything and I don't know what to do..

In a last attempt to save her from herself, I grabbed two jars and two small packs of glitter. I placed one pack and each jar and got to her house as fast as I possibly could. When she opened the door I pushed passed her and speed walked to her kitchen.

"What are you doing?" she asked, she probably thought I'd gone mad.

"You'll see. Just sit there."

She sat at the breakfast bar while I poured the packs of glitter into each jar. I then poured water into the jars and closed them. I sat down at the breakfast bar with her, placing both jars in front of us, and faced her, "Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna shake these jars and watch them until all the glitter falls to the bottom of the jar. Then, if you still feel suicidal or if you just feel like, we're gonna talk about what's going through your head and try to figure everything out."

She looked at her hands where she was playing with her fingers. I placed a hand on top of hers, "Hey," she looked up, "We're in this together. Okay?"

She took a deep breath and nodded. We both counted down from three and shook the jars then placed them in front of us again. Time seemed to slow as we watched each piece slowly fall to the bottom until, three minutes later, all the glitter settled.

I looked at her, "How are you feeling?"

She shook her head, her tears slowly fell down her cheeks as I pulled her into a hug. "It worked," she said while trying to stop crying, "It's just-"

I pulled back to look at her, "We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

She shook her head again and sniffed, "I want to."

I nodded and waited patiently as she gathered her thoughts and tried to explain her feelings.

"I don't know," she sighed, "It's like one second I'm fine and the next thing you know, I'm fighting to keep my smile from slipping and all of a sudden I wanna drown myself, hang myself, anything! I just..I wanna stop. Stop feeling, existing. It's just so exhausting I-" she starts crying again.

I pull her back into my embrace and stroked her hair while assuring her that everything would be okay. She let me, because as much as I knew she wanted to argue that I didn't know the future, we both knew that at that moment she just wanted to believe that there was something better for her. In that moment she was ready to surrender to my encouragement.

When she stops crying I pull away and wipe her tears, "Like I said, we're in this together. We'll get through this, I'll be right here through it all."

We looked at the glitter jars again. She picked hers up, shook it and waited. When all the glitter settled again she looked at me, "Yup," she said, "I still love you."

"Dork," I muttered as we got up to go watch literally anything to distract herself from her negative thoughts.