I’ve never experienced such pain as that night. Not only physically, but I swear I could feel my heart rip into two. My body ached, it screamed with fright and every breath I took felt as if I was breathing in knives.
How can a day so perfect turn into the worst day of your life? Just like that. There are so many questions that I don’t understand. Why did they take away the only person in my life that I could talk to and love? Did I do something wrong? What did I do to deserve this? Too many questions made me hurt. Everything hurt these days. People gave me so much sympathy when the accident happened, but none of them really cared. They just knew they had to say it to seem as though they weren’t a bad person. I mean, they weren’t bad people. But they didn’t exactly care.
It is just me or do you hate thinking? Does thinking make everything worse for you? You just overthink every single thought, every single observation until it seems like the only thing you can think about. You can’t stop, sometimes you don’t even realise you’re thinking until you’re coiled over gasping for air. It doesn’t help when the only reason you have friends now is because they feel sorry for you. None of them were friends with me and Chase before. They all made fun of us. He was my best friend. The only one who understood me, now he is gone. Gone forever. It hurts me saying these words, a sick kind of hurt. But I guess it’s true. I killed my best friend and the only person I’ve ever loved.
“Accidents happen” is what they all said. But I still blamed myself. Flashbacks. Nightmares. You name it, I had them. It wasn’t just the regular nightmare or flashback when you wake up and your heart is beating a thousand miles an hour. It was more where I woke up throwing up, hardly breathing and crying. I stopped eating so I only threw up water. My bones started to become noticeable, but I couldn’t eat. It just made me worse. That’s when the bullying began.
“Eat you sick freak!” exclaimed Enya pointing and laughing at my limp arms. I have this theory that every person’s name reflects on who they are. Enya means fire. Oh, and wasn’t she just that. Spreading her evil and cruel words around like wildfire. She made me sick. I hardly knew her for a start, but she continued to pick out every flaw I already obsessed about. Flaws. I hate flaws, why did we have to have flaws. Couldn’t we all be perfect? Couldn’t we all be accepted for the way we look? I didn’t understand. I shrugged off her comment knowing it would resurface tonight when I was at my lowest.
Everywhere I turned, every hallway, every classroom held memories of Chason. Or Chase, that’s what he was to me. Chason means strong or hardy. Just what he was. The strongest person I knew and would ever know. It hurts to know that there will be no more kisses, or hugs, or road trips to anywhere, laughing and writing poetry. I still don’t think that it has sunk in that he really is gone. It just feels like he is away on a long trip, and soon enough he will return to me and we can continue our days together.
Everyone asks me questions. “How are you today?” and I give them answers. But nothing I could say would make them understand. What makes it worse was that I actually thought things were starting to get better. I started to get everything together again. I started smiling because I wanted to. But then something triggers it, you lose it all. You can’t control yourself any longer. Dizzy, dark, lost and hopeless. It all sounds too familiar. You’ve fallen once again into what feels like a bottomless pit, you can’t stop falling and all you can see is black. Eventually you snap out of it, but nothing makes you feel any better for a long while.
Chase and I planned our future just 7 months ago. We would work together at the corner shop and save just enough earnings to buy a van. We would travel north, east, west – wherever we found ourselves. Busking to survive, wearing our pyjamas all day, discussing our dreams, taking photos of every place we went and holding hands. Memories that would never die, that would live on through our children who would smile and be proud that their parents for living their youth. If I have children now and they ask what I spent my youth doing, they would be disappointed. Of course, I could always get up and go out and do something, but it’s not the same. It will never be the same. At the moment I’m just trying to get through each day without falling apart.
