o1

Dear Kurt,

I hope you never read this letter. It was my shrink's therapist's idea, not mine, to write letters to you. She told me that I shouldn't send them, which is good, because I'm not good with words. She wants me to forget about you move on. Everyone wants me to move on, but I don't know how-I don't even know what the date is. I stopped keeping track of days and months after we broke up and you stopped talking to me. Mornings to me now are just times when I wake up, and nights are for insomnia sleeping.

Nothing feels right without you, Kurt. I know I screwed up but I miss you. Everyday feels like I'm drowning. It's dramatic but I just don't know what I'm doing anymore.

It was Sam who first noticed something wrong me. He's not good at talking about feelings like you are, but he came over to my house after we broke up. I can't really remember how long after it was, but he asked me what was wrong. I didn't think anyone actually cared about me. I told him I didn't know what he was talking about. He said that he'd noticed that I had been acting really emotional and I thought of when you said the same thing that one night asked if I was feeling depressed. I told him 'no', because at the time I didn't know what depressed felt like. Or maybe I did, but I just didn't know I knew.

"Blaine," he told me, "you are depressed ever since Kurt...you know... I've been worried about you. All of us in Glee club are. You don't eat, you don't look like you've slept in days. That signature Blaine-esque glimmer in your eye is gone. We don't want to see you hurt so much."

I was still shocked to know that somebody cared enough to worry about me. I don't really remember what happened after that-I think my dad told Sam to go home-but a few days later Ms. Pillsbury called me into her office. I didn't know why I was there. The last time I'd been in that office was when you decided we needed couples' counselling. She asked me questions about school, about Glee club, about my feelings. I told her I didn't know what I felt. I told her that I missed you. I told her that I ruined everything. Then I cried and she told me I should start seeing a shrink therapist.

My shrink therapist is nice, I guess. She gave me medication to control my moods; it's a blue pill that reminds me of the colour of your eyes. Everything reminds me of you.

I don't know why I'm still writing this letter. You're not going to receive it, anyways. I guess it was just nice to speak to you again, even though I'm not really talking to you and you're not really talking to me. I looked at the clock just now and it's one in the morning. Maybe that's why I'm rambling.

I'm not good at goodbyes, Kurt. You know that. And even though you're never going to get this letter, I just want to say that I think about you everyday, and that I go to the Lima Bean and sit in our spot when I'm sad, and I listen to Teenage Dream at least once every day, and that I miss your laugh, and how your eyes crinkled when you smiled, or how dark and alluring they got when we had sex, and the way your skin felt when we had sex, and I miss you touching me.

I love you.

Blaine xox.

x x x

It's funny how life keeps going after tragedy strikes. It seems to force everyone around you to speed up, move on, be oblivious to the bigger picture, while you lie there unable to keep up and begging for it to slow down. But it won't slow down, not now, not ever, not for anyone. Life is both a gift and a curse, a dream and a nightmare.

It was something Blaine had noticed. He wondered how people did it, how they moved on and forgot about the bad times. His life felt like a nightmare and he wanted to escape from it. But how? How could he escape from something as confusing and constant as life itself? How could he turn everything around and go back to the start, when bad times were just times that were bad, and when they weren't part of his daily life?

Of course he knew an alternate escape path, the highway that guaranteed all life's problems would disappear. But Blaine wasn't ready for that yet. He wasn't ready to jump into the fast lane just yet; that was why he had took his doctor's advice and began to write the letters. So far, he had only written one, but it somehow made him feel closer to Kurt and feel closer to sanity. He also knew that the point of writing the letters was to help him get over Kurt, but he somehow felt that they were helping him do that. They were helping him deal with the isolation.

But how much, he thought, is too much for me to deal with and send me over the edge?

"Blaine, you there?"

He quickly looked up when he'd heard his name. He resembled a deer in headlights, looking dazed and confused as he tried to pinpoint where the noise had come from. Blaine realized it had been Sam sitting across the lunch table. He and the rest of the Glee club members waited for Blaine to answer, trying to mask their sympathetic concern with encouraging smiles.

"Uh, yeah," Blaine mumbled, sitting up and trying to recompose himself. "Sorry. I was, um, thinking."

He picked up a celery stick from his lunch tray and nibbled at the skin. He had hoped his feelings would go unnoticed today, but knew it wasn't the case. The New Directions were all very concerned about Blaine, always wanting to make sure he was alright and happy. But to be honest, he found it tiring being babied by everyone. They always asked if he was okay, or if he wanted a breather. He didn't want or need a break; all he really wanted was somebody that would listen to him.

"So, what do you think?" Tina suddenly asked him.

Blaine took his celery away from his mouth and picked at the rest of it with his fingers. "What do I think about what?"

"About us celebrating," Sam announced. Blaine raised an eyebrow which prompted Sam to elaborate. "Two weeks from now will be your six-week anniversary since you've been seeing your therapist. We decided that we should celebrate that week. Therapy has been doing you good, right? I mean, we all see a difference."

Everyone at the table nodded and muttered incoherent agreement. Blaine kept his eyes locked on Sam.

"We're going to celebrate you, Blaine Warbler," Brittney chimed excitedly. "It's going to be a night dedicated to you, and only you. We'll have a party with cake and balloons and I'll even wear a bow tie and hair gel if you want."

Blaine didn't respond. What was he supposed to say? Yes? No? What would Kurt do? he asked himself. A mental image of an excited Kurt, probably already planning the venue of said party, drifted into Blaine's head. He quickly squeezed his eyes shut, trying to shake away the pang of anguish in him.

I need to get over Kurt somehow, he thought. He can't control my life forever.

"It's alright if you don't want to," Artie explained.

"It's all up to you," Sam added.

Blaine opened his eyes and looked at the people staring at him. They were his friends. They had gone through ups and downs together. They had gone through wins and losses together. Blaine should have felt much closer to them, but he felt like they were strangers.

But they were strangers who cared about him, right?

If they really cared, a little voice in Blaine's head said, then why won't they listen to your pleas for help?

"Sure," Blaine finally murmured. "Let's celebrate."

x x x

There was a clock ticking somewhere, but Blaine didn't know where the sound was coming from. He didn't even know where he was. Everything was an overwhelmingly luminous darkness and when he tried to step out of bed, he found himself falling into the starless abyss. He tried to scream for help, but his lungs were suddenly caving in on themselves. He couldn't breathe and he just kept falling, falling, falling, hoping someone would be there to catch him. When he finally saw the break in the darkness, he could just make out somebody standing at the bottom of the infinite pit. He fell closer and closer, hoping the person would catch him.

And he realized who it was.

It was Kurt.

Blaine wanted to slow time down, run back to the top of wherever he had fallen from. But life and time don't slow down for anyone, so Blaine continued to fall towards his safe haven that would surely kill him one way or another.

He was almost there, almost at the bottom of the darkness. Kurt was there, too, so close yet so far away. He was close because Blaine could reach out and touch him, plea in silence for Kurt to save him. But just as Blaine reached the bottom, a place where he was so sure to crash into Kurt, the image of the boy disappeared and Blaine found himself being swallowed by an icy cold sea of darkness.

He was alone again.