Is it bad that I have become accustomed to it? The darkness I mean. That is all I ever see now that he is gone. It is like all of the light has been sucked out of the world and all that is left is this... Nothingness. I have no idea how he took all of this away from me so quickly. One moment he was there and the next he wasn't.
Well actually I guess that isn't very true, he was gone long before that, about the time he didn't recognise me any more. About the time he was laying in the hospital bed, his paper thin skin almost as grey as the sky outside. About the time I stopped going home because what was the point? I had to – no, needed to – spend as much time with him as I could. He was slipping away a little more every second that ticked on the clock to the right of his bed.
That ticking, the horrible sound that was haunting my dreams. His face, the half confused half terrified look that was etched onto his face whenever he saw me, desperately trying to remember me, scared that he couldn't. That face haunts my every thought, the thought of all of the emotional pain he was going through, the fact that I couldn't do anything to help him or comfort him in any way. His parents never told him that he was dying, they didn't want to scare him, but they didn't know him like I did. They didn't know all of his insecurities, his constant fear of being rejected, which made him try too hard to fit in. He was the popular, outgoing, hilarious guy that everyone wanted to be or be loved by. I was the shy girl in the corner. The one that isn't ugly, but isn't gorgeous. The average one, that gets overlooked by everybody. Everybody except for him.
He once told me that he liked me because I was the only real person that he had ever met. He knew that the person he was at school was just a character, a thought in the back of his mind that he had become accustomed to taking orders from. He said that I made him want to be real, no act, just him. The beautiful person he had given me the privilege to get to know.
I told him that he brought colour to the world. I told him that everything before was black and white, my life meaning nothing. But when I met him, when I got that first kiss, he brought colour to my world. It was the most magical thing that had ever happened to me and I will be eternally grateful to him for that brief glimpse of something more. Something more than the nothingness. He gave me somethingness. A purpose. A realisation that nothing was black and white. That everything was more complex and beautiful than anyone would ever be able to comprehend.
He kissed me the day before he was rushed to the hospital. I knew he was sick. I knew he was dying. But I refused to believe it. I refused to believe that if there was a god out there, that he could give me all of this somethingness just to take it all away again. I couldn't imagine that this spiritual being that was supposed to be this divine creature, that was kind to everyone no matter who they were, could give me all of this somethingness and just steal it back, just like that.
But it did. And everything went black and white again. My life meant nothing once more and this time he wasn't there to show me the good in everything again. I was alone once more with my book in the corner, trying so hard to just disappear and go to the far off lands described in my book.
I didn't cry when he died.
I didn't attend the funeral either.
I embarked on an adventure. I was determined to find the somethingness again. I travelled the whole world twice over in search of it. I didn't stop until I rested on a bench in a park somewhere in America, and watched the snow lazily float to the ground. I watched it slowly fall on the barren branches of the trees and on the rusted paint of the red swing set. I had just described the swing set as red. I was starting to see in colour again. I realised that the somethingness was coming back ever so slowly and I smiled like I used to at him.
The somethingness still isn't completely back, but I notice more beauty every day. I smile more often and I take longer to take in my surroundings and notice all of the colour.
He is my somethingness and the world is my oyster.
