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What is so beautiful about the world that it inspires a feeling of peace and awe in someone?
Sure the sun glints on dew drops and sends cascading rainbows over your skin. Sure the vibrant green leaves of summer trees sway gently in the light breeze. Sure the stormy nights pour rain and whip umbrellas away while lightning streaks across the sky.
Sure the wide toothy smiles beam as bright as a streak of light. Sure the skin is soft and smooth no matter how calloused or hardened. Sure the sound of laughter echoes across the walls and the cavern of the heart.
But humanity isn't as beautiful as nature. We've clouded the sky, torn away the trunks, tainted the streams. There are innocents, of course, but all humans are to blame for how the sick the world is. Maybe it really is our own faults for the pain we feel.
What is so beautiful about the world that it drives someone to despair?
Emotions are as fickle as life itself; they can change in an instant. How many instances did you have, I wonder. How long did they last? Did they drag on for hours until weeks passed by or were they fleeting seconds too confusing to count as them actually being there? How long did you hide behind that familiar smile?
I stare down at my phone as its light fades leaving only a black box cluched in my hand. I stare at it even after the end call screen disappears into darkness, just like the rest of the room. I stare as thoughts swirl around my head like a rampaging twister and emotions squeeze my chest like a tight hug that has surpassed the boundary of comfort. I feel numb and conflicted at the same time, disbelief and denial on the tip of my tongue but the truth swimming in my eyes.
Why? Why you? Of all people....
"You know, there are times when I think about how cruel the world is." My words are choked up and quiet. I whisper to you as if telling a secret, but you know the most out of anyone what I think about.
"Like how it made you feel like you're alone," but you were almost never alone. Physically. Mentally is always a completely different story; no one ever knows who's with you up in your mind, who's voice you hear after you get the results from a test or when you're trying to sleep way too late at night.
"Like how it made you feel like you're a burden, a waste of space," I never thought that once, and yet you did everyday about your own self. I always gazed at you, your grin, your eyes, your hands, your funny shirts and pins, like you were the messiah of my dismal world.
"Like how it made you feel like you deserved to hurt," when I first saw how you drew on yourself, how the lines were perfect and evenly spaced, never overlapping or different lengths, I was surprised. I was used to different versions of your arts; I didn't agree with this masterpiece despite your pride for it.
"Like how I wasn't there to catch you as you fell." My voice breaks and my words become heavier as does my heart. It's overwhelming: the feeling of inadequacy and regret. It's unavoidable no matter the reassurances that I couldn't have done anything. But I know I could have. I could given you the comfort you craved and the words you desperately needed to hear. I didn't do enough, and it hurts.
I know what your pain felt like, but this, this is so much more.
I let my arm drop to the floor, still clutching my phone. A void of emotions and pain and the absolutely numbing feeling of nothing encompasses my whole body. The only things I feel is the tight heartwrenching ache in chest, spreading and pulsating as if alive and feeding off of my whirlwind of grief and sorrow, and the cold touch of your skin on mine. I clutch your hand just the tiniest bit tighter as my fingers are intwinded with your stiff icy ones.
It's a shocking reality, how cold you are when you always ran warm. Bright as the sun, as hot as the summer heat, as cheerful as someone in a better position and life than you. I enveyed your ability to find the light in the darkness when both of us were always clouded in the murky shadows of night during the day. I hated how I could never grin like nothing was wrong and raise our spirits. I regret not realizing sooner how everytime you manage to lift me up, you slowly sank lower.
You don't squeeze my hand back.
Never had I avoided looking at you before, but now I can't break the point I endlessly stare at. I cannot look at the cold agonizing truth laying beside me on the floor of your bedroom. I cannot see again how peaceful you look without being here. I cannot yet face how I was once again too late, too slow to reach out for you, not grabbing your hand in time.
"I'm here now," I say shakily as salty droplets of overbearing anguish and grief drip down my face. "I'm so sorry," I sob, my shoulders trembling as much as my defeated heart in the crushing silence.
What is so beautiful about death that people long for it?
It feels like the best options at times, the last possibility that our minds very nearly almost always immediately jump too like some deep instinct. It's permanent relief, forever peace, an everlasting escape.
I thought we agreed, though, we'd go at the same time. That we'd support each other, cradle one another, soothe the other until we both leave simultaneously. Isn't that what friends do, wait? Wait for when they're both ready?
In reality, I believed you'd keep going longer than I would. You were the reason I got up every morning, why I smiled and chuckled, while I didn't absolutely abhor the cards we'd both been dealt. I've never been good at games, never won or understood gambling, but you helped me not come in last and not lose all my earnings. You were my beacon of hope.
What am I to do now that all the beauty in my world is gone?