Losing Him // phan

Prologue

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"Dan had this thing he called his 'existential crisis'. I never tried to understand it. He had the commercial version, the one that all our viewers saw, the ones he had me film. The ones where he over fills bowls of cereal. Ones where those thoughts hit him on the stairs, and he fell to the ground, lays there, doesn't move. When something happens while we're filming, some deep subject is approached, he just laid down. It was funny. It was his content. It's what his viewers wanted.

"But, as he told me many, many times, he was just trying to put it in a way that people could understand. But someone who's not an existentialist, someone who hasn't had that incapacitating feeling, they just don't understand it.

"He said it was like a tsunami of darkness that consumes you. He said the thoughts take hold of your body, it chokes you, it hurts you.

"I can't really say how it feels.

"But I can tell you what it did to him. And, in turn what it did to me.

"He locked himself in his room a lot. Sometimes for days. He didn't eat. He didn't talk. He left his phone on Do-Not-Disturb. He didn't accept my pleas. He didn't want to let me help him. He just sat in the darkness, and thought.

"It took a lot out of him emotionally, but also so much physically. When he came out of his room after the particularly long bouts, the ones that were days long, he'd have these dark circles under his eyes. His cheeks looked hollow. His hair was messed up. His mouth was dry, his throat was scratchy. When he spoke,  if he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

"And I wasn't allowed to say anything. I wasn't allowed to ask. He wouldn't tell me anything, anyway. I was supposed to pretend like it didn't happen. Like he was fine, and I was fine, and everything was fine.

"But I don't think he understood what that did to me. It's emotionally harrowing. He was my best friend. I loved him. He didn't know, but it hurt me to see him like that. There's was nothing I could do for him.

"It's my fault he did it."

"No it's not, Phil. It's not your fault."

"Of course it was! I was supposed to be there for him. I was supposed to help. He might not have been vocal about it, but these crises were cries for help! And I did nothing but watch as he slipped further and further into the darkness. But I couldn't see it until it was too late. I didn't understand until I found his body.

"He'd been having dreams. He told me about them. He'd scream in the middle of the night, I'd come into his room, and he'd be crying. Until the last month of his life, I had never seen him seriously cry. He'd ask me to sleep with him. He'd be that scared.

"He told me he felt like he was falling. Falling and falling. Wind ripping at his clothes, at his hair. Darkness shrouding his vision. He couldn't breathe.

"And what did I say?

"It's just a dream.'"

"That's the right thing to say."

Phil hadn't opened up like this to anyone in months. He hadn't been the same since Dan passed. He'd gone to therapists due to the pleas of his friends and families who missed his smiles and his videos. His audience was worried about the both of them, as they had been M.I.A. for months. He'd been getting tweet after tweet, text after text, videos full of thousands of phans begging them to tell them what was happening. But Phil ignored all of them.

There were rumors, of course. Many people had figured out what had happened, but other people called them crazy. Phil said nothing. He hadn't said anything until now.

"Apparently not! Because one night, he screamed loud, crying, kicking, thrashing. There was nothing I could do. He said that he hit the bottom that night." Phil paused. Darkness washed over his face. Tears welled up in the corners of his eyes. "And he didn't live to see the next."

PJ sighed. Louise started to bawl. Chris reached his hand out to Phil, attempting to console him, but Phil slapped it away. He had never been so rude to his friends.

"He killed himself. He wasn't happy. I was supposed to make him happy. I was the happy one. But the sea was stronger than I was and it... it took him away. I don't care what you say. It's my fault he's gone." Before anyone could say anything, Phil got up and stormed away.