EYYYY guess who's back at it with some weird emotional "experimental" garbage? Ha, ME! I love how I literally thought of this and whipped it out all today, and meanwhile it takes me several months to finish one stinking chapter of the Rosalina Project. Eh, whatever. I updated that recently too, so I don't feel guilty. YOU SHOULD CHECK THAT OUT TOO! #shamelessselfpromotion
Anywho, this is one of those stories where it doesn't specify which characters it's about. I made it with some different ones in mind, but let's so how you fill it in. Also if I come out with something angsty, ""experimental"", and done in all of one day, that usually means I'm going through weird emotional stuff. None of my friends have died, per say, but...it's complicated. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this piece about the loss of friendship, grief, fear, etc., thankyougoodnight.
When a friend dies, you don't know until much later.
The incident is reported, investigated, immediately shared by the police with any remaining close family: parents, siblings, perhaps the spouse and any children, great-great-grandchildren, et cetera. No one thinks to tell you, not until it gets to the point of being upsetting how long you've gone unawares. You didn't know for two and a half days.
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When a friend dies, you want to know everything. You also don't want to know anything. Tell me how, I couldn't bear to not die from hearing it. You want to know how this happened, why this happened, to you, to him, but then you figure you don't actually want to know. You don't think you'll be able to want anything ever again. Wanting takes energy, some kind of hope or desire, and mostly you've just sat staring at blank ceilings and blank faces and feeling blank. It's like he was the only thing written on you, and he has been wiped off to reveal that you have nothing at all.
You do hear about it all, though. Not from people close to him, like yourself, for they couldn't bear to talk about it, but from others who are more able.
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When a friend dies, everyone becomes a poet. People tell you how he was "a promising life, cut so tragically short". His sister says how his smile was like a blossom, his father hoarsely recalls a poignant, touching memory of him, and the people around him praised just how considerate and polite he had always been. Now that he was gone, everyone seemed to know him: everyone could say, "So sad, he was the guy who…" They each had a line or a stanza to say about him, something about his smile or his acts of kindness, small or large, or how his gentle encouragement could light up the dark side of the moon.
You aren't very impressed with their clichés. He had been a far better poet than any of them; he'd even made a few poems for you, in the past. People would sometimes make fun of him for having such an "emotional" or "wimpy" talent, but he never paid them any mind. He knew he was good. Now here they were, trying to steal hisskill which they had previously mocked, and in your eyes, they were failing.
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When a friend dies, you don't want to talk. You aren't much of a talker anyway, but even asking for something or saying "good morning" is too much. That takes energy, emotion, and if you let go even the slightest bit of emotion in any direction, your mask will slip. You don't want to know what happens when it does, because you know you won't survive the crash. Just like he didn't.
When a friend dies, you don't leave your house. Outside is fragile, dangerous. You might see his favorite color, and have to look away, simultaneously disgusted and unworthy of it. What if you see the park where you spent an afternoon three months ago, and recall how you almost fell and broke your nose, and when he tried to catch you, he smashed you in the face anyway? Or if you enter a restaurant, or a train station, and remember too late that you had been here on multiple occasions with him? You stay inside your house, the walls closing you in, suffocating, but all you hope is that they'll be suffocating enough to end you, stop you from thinking blank thoughts and staring at the blank, damning ceiling.
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When a friend dies, you can't help but think about After. Does he go somewhere? He was not the kind of person who would just accept doing nothing forever and cease to exist. He would be so incredibly disappointed and bored with it. If a greater force is up there, you hope he is there too. You can now see the allure of faith, because the idea of him being obliterated, never again to see or sense anything, never to remember or think again, to not be anywhere, sends through your heart the most agonizing pang of emotion that you have felt since the incident. You hope with all your heart that something happens to him, even if you just want him to remember you and everything you did together, just like you remember everything about him. Well, they'd probably cover all that "spiritual" stuff in the upcoming funeral. It was a bunch of garbage anyway. Hope isn't very much possible, to you. Not anymore. It draws out of reservoirs of positive energy that you don't have now. You've run dry.
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When a friend dies, you are nothing but ice. You can only wonder what the hell's wrong with you, because if you really loved him you'd be feeling something, saying something, anything at all. Not so. You are stone and ice.
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When a friend dies, people talk about you. It's only natural, perhaps, considering your current state. Words are whispered; "a shame", "wonder about him sometimes", "between those two". They talk about you, they talk about him, they talk about you and him.
Someone whispers to another: "Were they ever…you know…"
"No," the other affirms softly. "Just very close friends."
The first person nods, like that makes it less bad. Like that makes it okay. As though the lack of a different, "special" layer of feelings makes the blow a little softer and less meaningful. But what a load of bullshit. In reality, it only meant a lack of romanticism, a sheer lack of ability to make his situation into poetry about a loss of true love, between soulmates. The inability to make this something almost beautifully tragic. No, he was just a friend, simply ripped from you, straight, true, and harsh and leaving a gaping hole in you where he once stood but thank fucking God you weren't in love with him, right? He was just your friend, nothing really important, that makes it a little less of a god damn shame, right?
You are now in your home, your stupid cowardly hole where you crawl to ignore the disgusting continuation of life, to sleep and stare and not eat and deny the temptation to saturate your brain and your liver with alcohol until you vomit. Your suffocating, awful home, with all the furniture and objects sitting there, looking like they always have, like the way he must have seen them whenever he came around, sitting there so fucking nonchalantly instead of withering away to dust like you are. Your fingers are tensing, your throat is closed. The objects look so mocking, and also so breakable.
When a friend dies, you get angry.
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When a friend dies, there's a funeral.
You don't want to go. You expect this to be it. The part that shatters the ice, takes your mask and cracks it in half, leaving you broken. You expect this to be the part that finally seals it, where you feel something in your heart that you have denied. The ice that was now your soul had thawed only for a moment, two nights ago, when you broke half the things in your home. You don't miss them. They deserved to be broken, for not feeling anything. You start to wonder if you deserve that, too.
The funeral happens. It isn't really anything. It just happens. You don't know why, but the sobbing people, the deadened silences, and the dull gray sky didn't do what you thought it would. The words of the pastor performing the ceremony just seem to drone, like an old vacuum. She uses the word "pulchritude" in her speech, making your mouth twist. That was his least favorite word; he always said so, every time he heard it. What kind of idiot would let that be his death speech? Someone ought to run that good-for-nothing preacher out of here.
People talked about him. You pay little heed, starting to feel afraid of your own numbness. There was something wrong with you. Were you broken? If the feeling never came, that would show either something about you, or your relationship. You don't want to think about it.
Your friend, your friend of so many years, is buried. Many begin to cry anew, feeling like their hearts are being freshly entrenched alongside him. You expect this to do something, but it doesn't. Your heart is already buried deep.
You stand there, until nearly everyone is gone. Many "Goodbyes," and "I'm sorries" and "Good lucks" come your way. Even the pastor stops by you, clasps your shoulder, and says "Best wishes, sir. May God be with you."
You want to say something real. But nothing in you works any longer. You can only say, "Goodbye."
You aren't sure to whom you are speaking.
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When a friend dies, you have to return to doing things. You hate doing the things. You are given some leeway at work after returning from the service, but you aren't sure if you want it. Do you want to have life go exactly as usual, or to be turned loose from everything? God, you can't decide anything anymore.
You have to return home. You hate that too. You walk back inside those close walls, staring at the partial wreckage. It stares back, tense. But you can't find the anger in you destroy any more. You walk over to where a drawer lay, having been ripped out of a desk and smashed onto the floor. Your phone buzzes in your pocket. You ignore it yet again (it's not him, anyway, so it matters little) and start scooping up the papers scattered everywhere like fallen leaves. They all look blank to you, like the walls and the ceiling and the world. Except, though, for one worn piece of paper that seemed to pop out at you.
With numb fingers, you unfold it and find a tiny poem. A haiku, written in ink, in a familiar elegant scrawl that shakes your brain. It takes your eyes a moment to find their focus, and then you read.
Look up to the skies,
My favorite star watches you
So that you won't fall.
It's old, quick, probably made to cheer you up sometime long ago. Not even one of his better poems; one could even debate that "favorite" was one syllable too many. But still something rises in you, constricting your throat. Your eyes go fuzzy. You want to check your phone for something to do, you know your other friends have been texting you. Concerned. Because there's something wrong and you've kept it inside. But you don't check the messages because you can't take the thought of them, wondering about you as you wither away over someone who was once a part of them.
You stare at the poem. The thing has risen in your chest, making a huge knot. His hand had been here, on this paper. His hand was now so far away and his heart, who knows? A little poem, yet so touching. You probably gave it little thought at the time, while he must have been quite happy about it. He felt enough for you, thought of you in his own time, that he wrote a little poem, just for you.
Then he died and he won't feel anything ever again. Did he even know that you were continuing on, numb? Would he even be aware that everything, every person's happiness and normalcy, hell, even his poetry, was living on, and would continue living on without him? Was he aware that one day, you would know joy again without him, and your grief for his obliteration would be over, as though all those years and pieces of paper were nothing? He always strived to make you feel happy; he wanted to be the friend that helps. Did he ever think that one day, to find your happiness that he valued so, you'd have to let him go?
Something breaks in your chest. Your worst fear thunders out, free from its icy prison, wracking your whole body.
A promise that he would keep you from falling.
That you were strong.
That you could get over anything.
And one day, you'd be over him.
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When a friend dies, you finally, finally cry. Not because he's dead, but because he's gone.
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...
. . .
. . . IF YOU LOVE ME LET ME GOOOOOOOO
'CAUSE THESE WORDS ARE KNIVES THAT OFTEN LEAVE SCARS
THE FEAR OF-
Yeah no srry I'm not going full P!ATD right now, but I felt the need to say that. Anyway, I'm impressed you made it this far down the page. I hope you..."enjoyed" might not be the right word. I hope it moved you deep in your soul. There.
I'm curious what characters you thought of while reading this. Tell me in the comments! Thanks! Your face is beautiful, bye now~!