Healed

4:00 PM (+78 Hours)

Isaac?

The voice sounded so familiar, I couldn't put a name to it though, which filled me with terrible uncertainty. What truly struck at my heart, though, was the way it shook speaking my name. it was not a call from an old friend looking to catch up, this was a bad news call, a call I wasn't ready to hear.

I had slept in after that night of panic and internal arguments, not sharing anything with Grace. I'm too far gone now, there's nothing she can do for me, nothing I can do but wait for what lies ahead; either tragedy or salvation await.

Filled with dread, I considered hanging up, as my brain searched for a name for the voice on the phone. I didn't want to know what this was about, but my need to know slowly overpowered my desire to run away from the conversation

This is him.

My voice answered after fighting off the sense of impending dread. The sound of it startled me, it was a stronger voice than what I thought would come out. The voice on the other end doesn't speak for a moment. The hesitation is killing me I know there's something coming I know it's not good and I know I'm not gonna handle it.There's been too much going on for too long and I'm past my limit, and if this is what I think it is then I'm done for I should hang up before I find out the truth but if I do that the anxiety will do the damage instead.

Isaac the voice says I'm sorry it says but I need to tell you something it says do you remember Hannah it asks, and I do we all graduated together the voice clarifies but I need no more clarification

I don't even need to hear what the next words out of his mouth are going to be;

She killed herself she killed herself she killed her self she killed her self she killed her self she killed her self she killed her self she killed her self she killed her self she killed her self she killed her self she killed her self she killed her self she's fucking dead she fucking killed her self she's fucking gone she's never fucking coming back

That's what I thought they were going to say, that's what I wish they would've said, but that's not what they said at all.

The voice said there was an accident on the highway it said coming back from soccer practice it said oh God, Isaac the voice said I can't even say it the voice said her whole family the voice said they're all dead.

Hannah was more than someone I just graduated with; she's more than just a memory. We've been keeping in touch via letters for the past five years. The thing is that Hannah was, at some point, a lot like me. During high school we talked a lot after finding out that we did the same things. Well maybe not the same things; you see I was always into blades and that was my thing. I never tried anything else even though I've heard some heavy endorsements for burning. Mostly from Hannah. 

That's what she did, she liked to heat up little pieces of metal and then drag them across her skin, leaving what to me, were very beautiful intricate lines. They would heal clean and quick, unlike the deeper ones which resulted from taking a larger piece of metal and holding it against her skin until it sizzled and popped.

And she was doing so fucking good until her last letter, when she told me that she had relapsed. That letter hit me hard because she has... or she had... or she was someone who had a beautiful family. A loving husband, two beautiful kids, and everything to live for.

Just like me, really, and I realized once again how unspecial my struggles are and how goddamn lucky I am to have what I have; how I'm responsible to hold onto it and keep it together. So, when she told me that she had relapsed so heavily that she needed to be hospitalized and wrapped in gauze and given skin transfusions, I thought for sure this would be the end for her, that my next letter would be a suicide note, or perhaps even something she left behind for me in her will.

But for her to die by some mundane force some random twist of fate that resulted in the death of her entire family merely on some cosmic fucking whim like everyone else. The random 'other' people on the news or in the obituaries who have no tragic story, no alternative ending, no surprise when you find out that the cause of death was by anything but their own hand.

The more I thought about it the less sense it made that she could be dead, to think that I could be dead in the same split of a second or that Grace and Audrie could meet the same fate. It simply didn't make any sense. No sense at all.

Without realizing it, I hung up the phone. There was something inside of me that flip like a switch, and I'm not sure if the switch turned a new thing on or an old thing off. Like on autopilot, my body took itself into the bedroom and sat me on the bed where my blank eyes locked with the walls and all thoughts evacuated.

This world doesn't make any sense and neither does recovery. How many times have I denied myself what I desire in order to save something so fragile as this life, this family? It could all be over so quickly, and it wouldn't even be my fault.

So here I've sat for four hours now, no longer thinking or feeling. Perhaps it is time to accept reality for the cold and indifferent ruler it is. All is hanging, as I've said before, by the thinnest thread. Mine is about to break.