"Caught me at the right time, baby..."
~+~
Caution-
This story may have strong reference to suicide and suicidal thoughts and it may be graphic. Readers Discretion is highly recommended.
~+~
Sometimes Taeil recalls the event as if it happened a mere moment ago, and it gets like that sometimes when he's left alone to wallow in his self-induced depressing thoughts. When you're asleep you really have no choice but he has one now. He hates it, and not just the thoughts but the prominence of feeling alone.
He has always felt alone or left out and even odd, ever since he could grasp reading the atmosphere and understand basic common sense. It wasn't hard to put two and two together when people kept their distance away from a hidden, yet, expressive soul as himself.
Taeil is different and when someone wasn't trying to avoid him, then they would at least be using him. There was absolutely no in between and he learnt that at an early age, long before he decided to be non-existent to the void people had placed him in.
At the age of 21, Taeil made the decision to disappear.
It wasn't a hard decision in the least. Rather, it was too easy to conclude. Having drowned away his despair with a bottle of alcohol after being throw to the side again like the dirty rag doll he was born to be, his first option had been his last one. Just dissipate into the earth from whence you're rightfully from, he remembers thinking.
That's all he has ever been and it seemed that was all he would ever be as long as he was living. There was no one he could turn to, down in the slump as he was, because those persons had long abandon him to suffer.
Maybe he deserved it.
For liking flowers instead of a soccer ball.
For preferring to dress like Cinderella instead of Prince Charming.
For choosing the femininity of the fragrance he wore over the one's of masculinity.
For liking someone of the same sex instead of the opposite he saw himself as.
For being birth into a body he didn't ask for.
He had enough of everything visible and non-visible to the naked eyes. From having to prove himself to be equal to others even if he wore bright colored nail polish to match his outfit, or well done, warm makeup to go with the season. From having to be recovering from being used to making a mockery or example of being different. From his love being taken for granted and spat upon like it was nothing. From the thought of him being disowned by his own mother.
He wanted nothing to do with the life he was destined to have before he was even conceived. Wearing pretty dresses with heels, growing his hair out so he could do cute styles, throwing on his usual oversized sweater with his shorts, it wasn't worth breathing anymore.
He was going to end it all in one night and no one would care. Maybe one day his name would roll off of a person who knew him, tongue, speaking of when he was around, and they'll laugh and probably call him stupid but it wouldn't matter. He won't be here anyway.
He won't be able to hear the distasteful sounds of persons planning his demise, nor will he be in the disposal of someone he would have given his heart to in the palm of their hands. He won't be able to be himself anymore but that was better than being used.
He was at the bridge that night, the cliche way persons would take there life in the country he resides in. And it was funny that this was the way he decided to get it over with. He wasn't common in the least yet here he was, not going out with a bang.
He had laughed, cladded in his floral dress and his favourite sandals that had enough heel to add to his pathetic height, his hair resting on his shoulders and bang just above his perfectly arched brows. He dolled all up for this. His makeup was also done, eyelashes curled and lips glossy and plump. At least he's pretty tonight.
He looked down at the vast abundance of water that was just beneath the bridge he stood on, waiting to swallow him whole and to pull him to depths he had never prayed to see till now. This wasn't planned, the destination at least, though it cruised through his mind when he would pass by it on one of his down days in a cab. Down days are days that knew him very well. That day was pre notioned but was never set.
The bottle that was in his hand fell into the water as he watched it fade the further it fell. He didn't even see when or how it made contact with the water body. It didn't matter. It just showed Taeil that no one will be able to see him the moment he committed to the act.
He climbed on the railing, the cool metal bar making contact with his palm as he gripped it. He could already taste it. The bitterness of not being wanted, of not being accepted, of being violated unjustly, all sauced up with his tears of hopelessness, wrapped in a cold burrito for Taeil to take a bite.
A tear slipped down the face of a person who didn't deserve what he went through. Broken. Hurt. Unwanted. Abnormal. Different.
He leaned forward, null to the voice in his head that told him to fight, to not give up. But what would he be fighting for? To suffer? It didn't seem like a plausible reason to pass up on the freedom he has always wanted. Freedom from the weight of the world fighting against him. It was plain stupid and unreasonable his brain even conjured him to walk away and have faith. Faith was no longer something he believed in. That thought was just as fading as the bottle he released from his numbed hands.
I was at the edge.
When Taeil leaned further, a wind push away from evanesce, he had a premonition. His eyes were blurred when he saw him, like a ray of hope; which was stupid. He couldn't exactly recall when he last had any form of hope graced his way, so to see it in human form, of all things, was unreal.
So, his premonition was that, whatever was coming his way must be the gatekeeper to hell, the place he was said to be going by people who he knew or passersby; even his mother.
The person running towards him was no hope. Not even in the least.
The person that spoke to him in his half dead state could have never been hope.
Hope? That couldn't possibly be it. Pleading to him, practically begging him to stop and take a look at the stars that highlighted the dark sky alongside the moon. To lean away from death and take his hand towards life. That successfully pulled a shattered beyond repair, child in an adult's body, Taeil away from what he thought was the only possible option from a recurring destruction.
He was no hope, the person that pulled him into a hug like he knew Taeil, treating him no different than glass. Fragile. Human.
It was the first anyone had held him the way this stranger did, like he was no less than him. Dressed as this was, Taeil had very low expectations. He treated him humane, whispering sweet words on his deafened ears, skin sensitive to the warmth of the man enveloping him in his embrace. His skin could almost hear everything his ear couldn't and he felt that in just one encounter. Just one hug.
It felt like CPR.
Like he had hauled him out of the bottom of the sea of treachery, pressing against his chest to push the despair out, and breathe reform and life into his lungs. It felt like that first breath you take when you are no longer drowning, being weighed down as if you were left with no other choice but to accept your faith.
That's why the man that night just could not be hope. He had to be an angel in its true form because Taeil had never seen anyone like him.
Johnny breathed life into him just as how someone would to a person submerged into the unfairness that life breed, even if it was printed clearly on Taeil's resolute body 'do-not-resuscitate'.
Even now that he thinks about it, everyday he is blessed to just gaze at Johnny, it is refreshing. Or in times when he is alone, thinking back to the past, suffocating, Johnny would give him a breath of fresh air with just a kiss, reminding him he is no longer where he was.
