i found her. you never really think it’s possible until it’s there, before your eyes – blue-lipped and cold and nothing but the jerky scribbled words and the weird splotches that you know were the last tears.
i didn’t even know. that’s the part that makes me angry. i knew her better than anyone and i didn’t even know. i can’t decide if she was just that good at hiding it, or if i was just that lousy a friend. i never bothered to really ask, never bothered to really listen, never bothered to really care.
fuck. she was the rock. everyone said so. hell, i said so all the time. whenever there was a crisis, whenever you needed someone you could REALLY count on, whenever it was redline, lifeline, all on the line time… you knew you could call her and she would fucking BE THERE.
i sit here and read the note again. and fuck me if it isn’t clear as daylight. i’ll never forgive myself for not seeing it, and i’ll never forgive her for not bitch-slapping me and shoving my nose in it. wasn’t her way, of course… and that was the problem. she just took it until she just couldn’t take it anymore.
then, like she always did, she didn’t scream and she didn’t pout around waiting for you to ask and she didn’t swear and she didn’t threaten, and she didn’t do anything that might put you in the uncomfortable spot of having to think of her. she never wanted to impose. and you know what? she never did.
i see the cop reaching, but i’m not quite willing to hand it to him just yet. i look up and he’s all blurry. i ask him if he can just wait a little bit. maybe he gets it that i need to hold this stupid fucking note long enough to feel like when i let it go, i’m not part of the reason she wrote it in the first place.
he nods and goes to talk to the CO. i hadn’t realized i’d wadded it up. wiping my eyes on my sleeve, i carefully unwad it and read it one, last time….
“my heart hurts. they never care. same story. every time. i am insane. it is certain. there is no other explanation possible for the manner in which i refuse to change my own choices and actions when i know the outcomes will never differ.
i feel helpless. unable. i don’t even know how to begin to try. and the act of thinking about doing so hurts so bad that it’s instant weeping. crying, now, here. as usual. i have fought my entire life not to shut down, close off. i have insisted on hurting because i refused to believe it impossible. didn’t want to. needed to have that hope.
sad, stupid, silly, moronic part is, i know i’ve lost it. i just haven’t allowed myself to admit it.
until now.
last. straw. the last time. the last try. this was it. and frankly, i was surprised at myself that i could do it.
i’m done. undone in truth. tapped out.
i sit here and think about ripping my entire life up by the roots and just going somewhere else. changing my number. changing every point of contact. just… severing it. clean slate. go somewhere that no one knows me and build myself and life over again, ground up, and this time — no more ‘just because’ and no more open heart and no more ‘it’s ok, i forgive’ and no more ‘everyone gets what they need but me.’
after all, i could be this miserable without the “help” of others. never reason enough for them to give a damn beyond the end of their noses, maybe it’s time i stopped caring so much.
i don’t have to cancel or delete things. just… let them sit. untouched. abandoned.
fucking abandoned. like i always am.
i am the fool, of course. no one else is stupid enough to think someone will ever care for them more than themselves. but when they find someone who does, they’d rather suspect it into the grave. and do.
i’m tired of standing in the graves of their shallowness. but if that’s all that life is going to send me, let it be something more than a shallow grave. let it be a real one. for once in my entire fucking life, let one thing be real.
at least this, i can do for myself.”
her phone is ringing. the cop looks at me as if he thinks i want to answer it. oh man. i know who that is and i can’t be the one. i walk to him, wordlessly, hand him the note and turn to leave, trying not to hear the words he’s saying as he answers it. trying not to know who he’s saying them to.
trying not to think. she would have laughed at that. mostly because it’s the one thing she never could manage herself.
oh god.