‘Cry…’

He whispers, his chest heaving and falling against my cheeks, a source of warmth that keeps me sane as the world around me eats me whole.

He has me in his safe hold, a tender one that will never hurt me. I have my arms around him too, a desperate hold, one if I were to let go will lead to a fall so deep that I would never recover from. He worries for me; I don’t stop but wilt away with time. I wonder how I am still here and then feel the hold around me.

I must be lucky, says my heart. Your luck always last only so long, says my head. I tighten my hold around him and I feel him flinch, not sure if it was my grip or my demeanor. Realization hurt the both of us, physically and mentally.

‘Look at me!’

The clock chimes, counts up to six. I am not sure if it is in the morning or evening though, it’s been a while since I saw sunlight or even felt its existence. Its cold around me, so I assume it is in the evening. Then again I realize, it is always cold around me. I don’t feel things anymore; it seems like a curse disguised as a gift. It is a gift because nothing can hurt me anymore but it is a curse because I want to hurt every time I see him.

His features are still intact; it is I who changed completely. His expression is different though, I can’t seem to explain it perfectly but it is something that can be termed ‘terrible’ by the people around you and be termed as ‘alright’ by yourself. I look at him sit there, in the place I generally love, dim white light filling whatever was there within those walls. Silence was deafening for a change, a clarity that I didn’t desire but he craved for. A clarity that made him do whatever he was going to, the same thing he did every day without fail at possibly six in the morning or possibly six in the evening, the same thing that he did, that I watched helplessly.

‘What did you do?’

Wild was a way of living that people don’t choose but it chooses them, or so that is what we believed. I was a lost cause while he was wild. Daewon was wild and I wanted to be a part of his wild exploits. We did everything known to man that was termed ‘wild’. We did it because it felt cool. We did it because those moments we were alive. At least I know for sure that I was. When the smoke filled my lungs and I coughed in pain, I knew there was something in there that helped me breathe and that somehow kept me ‘alive’. When the drinks I swallow settle in and I feel the burn, I knew there was something that helped me ‘feel’. Reasons were unknown; no one knew why the things in our body existed at all. Many hurt themselves, to push and find out the extent that we can be pushed. Some decorated themselves, art and piercings adorning their body, to preserve their gift and pleasure it the way it deserves. I took the wildest route yet.

I fell in love.

‘Oh my God…I… Please…’

Water flows seamlessly out the tap, clear and pure it seemed every day. It wasn’t warm, rather cold just like the atmosphere around us. He sits there waiting, watching it move, watching it fill the cracks and spaces in between, the clear liquid reminding him of reality, a grasp that he threatens to let go every day. I don’t move; I cannot really. I observe though, I don’t take my eyes of him. He is nothing short of beautiful. He is nothing short of angelic. His eyes are the only world that I got lost in without warning, his lips; a universe where every day a new discovery happens, the candy like curves acting as a gateway. His arms, the ones that always protected me, his fingers that held onto mine and settled comfortably in between mine; we were two puzzles pieces that fit together without difficulty.

The sound is distracting, speed hasn’t increased though. The echoes have and they were taunting me. The test repeated itself every day and I still haven’t aced it. Then again, I think that was the point. There was no success in this test for me because I have already failed. I confirm it every time he shudders from the cold and I stand there, watching him.

‘Say something!’

Time blended with whatever reality that was slipping away as we got tangled further, fell in deeper. I saw no one but him and he saw no one but me. He saw right through me, like my soul was a showcasing itself for him, in his presence it wanted to impress him. He played it perfectly and there I was in his hold, without any qualms or questions. It was sheer abandon and I didn’t regret. I was finally safe, finally in my long and lonely life.

Broken or destroyed, the definitions of my existence never hurt me as long as I had him. The things I did, the drinks I drank, the hate I received were all not something I bothered about anymore because I had him. He was happy with me for me. He was okay with the pathetic excuse that I was for a human and he took me for me. So when he held my chin and pulled me in for our first kiss, I let the rails drop. When he explored my body, I let my defense fall. When he took me wholly as he held me against the wall with no regard to time or space, making us one, I let the walls crumble to dust. He owned me and all my existence.

Unfortunately, he did also the cracks and the broken halves.

‘You did not!’

His reflection was always beautiful, because his existence was. Even now it was shimmering, under the dim lights. There was nothing more beautiful left to compare. The tattoo on his left arm was so close to the surface that it reflected perfectly, gaining my attention. It was painful; to see the tattoo still be there, our names written in an obscene font that somehow contorted itself to form a heart. A cheesy move done when drunk until our senses were knocked out. It was special though, in its own way because it had a story. It was one of a kind because it was ours and there can never be another. A warm feeling fills me as I recall the day, the two of us holding hands and staring into each others’ eyes, despite the pain shooting up to the brain. When the two of us were together, nothing seemed difficult, except now, a mystery that is yet to be solved.

He turns, almost suddenly but also on cue as he bends to see the tattoo spreading across his skin. A faint smile picks his lips up from its slump, a heavy weight pulling it down simultaneously as well. He manages though, just like every day to sustain the smile as he traces his finger over my name. I see him draw the letters patiently and see myself spelling it out along with him, a name neither too short nor long but one that slipped off his tongue with so much ease that I fell in love with myself. When the name was complete, he shot up, his attention towards me or so it seemed. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn that he was looking at me or rather mine, a matching one on my left arm.

However, I knew better.

‘Spit it out!’

I was ‘broken’, a definition that I am still not sure of. It was messed up, the apparent life I was ‘living’ with the actual reason of the ‘circumstances’ unknown. I see the other ‘normal’ people around me and wonder why I could never be like them even when I fight so hard and try. It wasn’t a choice but all I experienced was rejection and judgment. I don’t remember a proper childhood; the parts I remember are where I cry endlessly. I don’t really term my teenage time as a part of growing up because I already had and lived with such extravagance doing the things that allowed me to get cash and allowed me to enjoy, that I was done with all my life aims. Then I found him, the best thing that ever happened to me. So life in its definition was done. There was no aim left, so I needed an escape from that reality.

So I took them, little at first and more as it went. Sometimes they were blue; sometimes a few yellow or orange ones would show. Once there was a pretty pink but mostly they were white. They were small and comfortable to swallow, also comfortable to acquire, one of the perks of my job. Apparently tending at a bar meant good contacts. He was rather in a sophisticated job than I was; he waited tables at a fancy restaurant. Although he lived high, he had responsibilities. I lived high and I loved him. I loved him and the round or cylindrical pills that helped me escape for a while. When I had to grow up and take up more ‘responsibilities’, I wanted to escape more.

And I took them more.

‘Why would you do this to yourself?’

The water was overflowing now and I shuddered almost as if it was a reflex. The ambience was undesirable and it was sending chills down my spine. I look at him as he sits there without any disturbance, without any awareness to things that would shake his attention but stare at the tap that was running, water filling and over flowing now out of the bath tub where he sat, legs held close to his chest, chin resting on the knees, arms hugging the shivering legs desperately. He was there watching the still Earth exist around him with no life in his beautiful eyes, the only sounds being the running water and the muffled sounds of traffic from outside and I think that maybe it is indeed the evening when he finally turns to see the floor next to the tub.

It doesn’t take more than a second for me to realize what he was thinking about and I close my eyes in guilt. The thought was painful and it would kill me if I could feel anything at all. I want to feel, that pain, along with him and destroy myself in the process. I cannot and I give up in defeat but I am pushed right back to wishing intensely that I did so as I see him submerge himself into the water with no second thoughts. I see him hold his breath and release something that resembles a sigh but the painful memory washes over me all over again and I see his fingers twitch.

All I could do was pray that it doesn’t repeat.

‘Talk! Scream! Anything!’

He shakes me with all the might he owns and knocks the sense that was long lost, within me. I open my eyes, vision all weak and blurry but clear enough to make out the distinct features on his face as he pulls me out of somewhere. I want to smile but I am unable to, my body falling onto the ground despite his hold on me. We both collapse and water splashes on my face, attributing to my awareness and I partially realize what happened. I had escaped far too much, far too long.

I hear him scream, words that don’t make sense to me but I hear his voice and I want to reply to him. My insides are burning but I want to scream to him that I am here. I was limp in his arms but I wanted him to know that I was still there, barely but there. I was failing though, rather terribly and I knew that he was hurting. He was hurting there because of me and I couldn’t do anything to stop it from happening.

I couldn’t stop it then and I still can’t stop it now.

‘Stay with me…’

He twitches under water, throws his body up by instinct when he gasps for air but refuses to come out of the water and I am helpless. He holds onto the edges of the tub, forcing himself to stay in there as his chest burns from the lack of oxygen. It was pure torture, for him to feel it and for me to see it without being able to do anything at all. I want to cry, scream his name and pull him by his arms and yank him out. However I cannot and I have never been angrier at the universe than I was now. I was relating to the feelings that I felt before to the present but now I just sat there observing the events helpless and it wasn’t the best feeling ever.

His voice echoes at the back of my head, screaming the same words that he did desperately as he held me with thoughts emerging from little closer to no hope.  His pleas that I was unable to comply by came back to haunt me and it was twisting a hypothetical gut that I had within me. The reason for him to go through, this was a mystery I was yet to solve but the core reason was no mystery in any way. It was the same thing that drove me to do what I did to myself and to him and what he is now doing to himself.

The guilt never left.

‘Cry…’

The 911 operator had told him that he they had dispatched help but it was already 20 minutes past that and we were on the wet floor, in each other’s hold, our breaths echoing in an uneasy rhythm and his sobs filling the cracks in between the breaths. His tears hadn’t ceased and my sanity hadn’t returned as well. For the first time I didn’t feel anything and it was odd that I wasn’t at peace. Even in my state, I had wondered why I did what I did. It didn’t take long to reach the answer that I was looking for.

I was guilty.

I wasn’t a person that could be desired or be deserved by anyone, or so I thought until he came along. He took me on a ride that I couldn’t explain with mere words. It was a whole new high, none the bottles or pills could give me. It was indescribable, which was why I couldn’t accept it.

For someone like him to want someone like me, an abandoned being in this screwed up world was nothing short of a fantasy. He was my Prince Charming, who was going to take me to the paradise. Only I didn’t want him to.

After three years of being in a relationship, I could no longer be a burden. I was incapable of holding onto a job because of my temper issues. He was the one keeping up for the two of us and it was nothing but unfair. Reality started to more and more with ‘real life problems’ creeping into the high life we were living and he was pulling two of us towards a possible safe place.

Until I decided it was enough.

I hadn’t intended to become addictive but that gave me a pathway to an alternate reality where in my imagination, they two of us were still happy and living high. I hadn’t intended to escape so often to that reality that I eventually fell in love with that more than what I had here. It was the same way that I hadn’t intended to take those pills when I went for a bath but I had just lost my third job in four weeks and I needed to escape.

I had to escape and I actually did well.

‘I love you…’

Scenes overlap in front of me as he finally pulls himself out of the water and flops onto the floor, weak and destroyed, the same way I had been when he pulled me out two weeks ago. As he coughs out the water that entered into his lungs, I see him trying to pump it out of me, the water and the drugs, his desperate cries of begging me to spit it out and wake up filling my surroundings steadily. As I see him fall flat on the wet floor, breathing with difficulty, pulling hard long breaths, I see him holding me against his chest begging with desperation that I do some action that lets him know that I am alive and how he jumped out of skin when I managed to tighten my grip around him. As I see his tears fall out of his eyes, I see him crying as he holds me and whispers his final words to me with such pain and remember how a part of my heart was ripped right out. As I see him curl up within himself and his tears, I see him pull me closer to his lips and whisper those three words that made my existence worthwhile before I drift away into the darkness, a fall that I didn’t recover from in the end.

 ‘I will not let you go…’

He picks himself up, face still stricken with tears and strength nowhere to be found. He stutters and slips, I throw myself in front towards him but I cannot move. He somehow holds himself up avoiding a nasty fall and closes the tap, bringing back the deafening silence in between us. His breath hitches in his throat but it echoes louder in my ears, tearing me apart. He stands there looking out the ventilation, the only source to the outside world in this dull room and the clouds welcome him with a small streak of sunlight that brightens up his face. I am not sure of the time anymore but he shines bright no matter the hour of the day.

He walks out, slowly and steadily, trying to control the tears that threaten to fall further. I was arrested to my cold corner as I watch him leave after another day of self torture. I was only hoping that he will be okay out there, that he was living properly, that he had people who cared for him, that he was going to his job and making sure that he is not spiraling further. His dark circles give me the worst sign but I was left there, stuck in between with a sense of hope that I was praying will not be false.

‘…forever.’

Farewells were overrated, I have always claimed that. It is especially way too hard to exist in between loved ones because you can never really let them go as long as either of them existed. So when he did see me slip away, he couldn’t accept that I was gone and he tries to feel the same things I felt in my last moments, hoping that it would give him a sense of my existence in his life.

Farewells aren’t true in between loved ones because you will never really mean it with them, because you can never stay away from them. So when I did fall, I got back up. If not in my complete self, I did and I didn’t leave because I couldn’t leave him. I love him way too much to leave him in this world, a reality that I should’ve stayed in and accepted.

Farewells are not supposed to be temporary between loved ones though and that is always a fact. However, here we were hurting in our own way, even if he was still alive and even if I was nothing but a mirage, the same smoke that we inhaled so happily in our glory days. He cannot seem to let me go and I am no exception either. However he should, I should too. Only then will I be able to see him stop doing this to himself out of unnecessary guilt and only then will I be able to leave. Leave this infinite loop that I go through, watching him hurt himself from the corner of the room where I breathed last, the same corner that I am stuck and for some reason cannot move away from. There was no feeling anymore, I don’t feel anything but I want to feel him one last time and accept the end. That may not happen if he doesn’t let me go, just like his final words to me. The thought didn’t seem so bad, staying around him. Then again, if he was going to be hurting himself this way, I should leave. I should have left before falling for him all those days ago. I should have not come into his life and ‘broken’ him the same way I was already.

He will not though, not so easily. I was going to have to wait and watch him repeat the atrocity, watch him be in pain. Until he does agree that it is time, I will have to wait, exist as the translucent being in the corner, stuck in between time and space. I will have to wait, wishing that I felt pain, so that I would be okay through this ordeal but I will have to wait as I observe all this heartless and painless in a twisted fate that I inflicted upon my own. I will have to wait and pray that he moves on quicker because he doesn’t deserve the punishment for my mistake. Then again, I will get to see his face every day, a twisted form of comfort in the messed up situation. I will get to see him walk out of the bathroom, feeling a little, a very little better and I will see him stop right at the door, before he left the room completely and turn around in my direction, like he saw me there. He would stare at me or rather the wall from his perspective and let his gaze rest there for a while, like he knows that I needed to get lost in his eyes all over again and drink in his beauty to get high, to stay alive in this existence, until he decides that it is enough and he would not come in to put himself under anymore to walk out a little better than before.

I will wait until that day he would finally say ‘not today’ and leave the room with a smile on his face, solace finally filling his heart. I will wait until that day when he would say ‘not anymore’ and leave this entire apartment and the memories that involved the two of us to get a fresh start. Then I will leave, like I am supposed to, leaving him to live the life he truly deserves. So I will wait, for another day, wondering if it was six in the morning or six in the evening.

That doesn’t seem so bad, does it?