Dear Friend,

We're both here again.

I know it's been a while, there's a reason for that. In truth, I thought it was over.

I think maybe we both did.

So much has happened, so much in fact, that I won't be able to describe it to you. It's pretty complicated—but there's a good reason that I can never say what it was.

You'll just have to trust me.

That isn't the reason I'm reaching out. I know it must come as a surprise to you, we haven't exactly spoken since high school.

It's been over ten years. It's felt like a lifetime. A lifetime of minutes, hours of moments—a part of me always knew that side of me was still there even when it felt like it wasn't. There were years where I felt like a completely new person. I think we both became new people. That's what happens after all. Whether we realize it or not, with time—we all change. We grow up. We leave things and people behind. There were people we said goodbye to that we never wanted to, but we always knew we would.

Nothing lasts forever.

Nothing.

I don't know if this comforts or terrifies me.

It's strange—wanting the very thing that scares you the most.

It's a feeling I don't think anyone could describe to someone who had never experienced it for themselves.

I know you will.

That's why I'm writing to you. You always understood. To you—I was never 'Barry Allen: the weird kid whose mom was murdered by his father and spent time in the hospital over the summer.' To you—I was just Barry.

And you were just you.

I had a birthday recently. Twenty-seven, if you can believe it. I won't repeat myself too much, but I still can't believe how quickly and yet how long this past decade has gone. It definitely makes you wonder how fast this next one will come—if it ever comes at all.

If it ever comes.

They say the more you have to live for the more you'll want to live. I did, eventually. It took a long time. Wanting something that will ultimately kill you.

I thought with the more power and responsibility I found the more this part of me would fade. Sometimes it faded to the extent I stopped noticing it. Instead, I became hyper vigilant. I over analyzed, my brain apprehended, and fairly soon I found myself fighting an entirely new battle in a war that I never asked to fight.

Like all wars, it dragged on.

There were good days and bad days.

That's what they always say-'there will be good days and bad days.' But what they don't want to talk about are all the days and all the hours in between.

The days you don't know what to feel.

The days that move on without you, time, things, people, jobs, school, errands, events, parties…it all just happens. Whether you want it to or not—it just keeps coming. And coming.

And coming.

And pretty soon it moves faster than you can keep up with. These days happen more often than I'd like. They don't make me want to hurt myself or even end it all. They just make me wish I had never existed.

Your therapist may disagree, but I think we both know that there is a big difference between wanting to die and not wanting to exist.

I spent a lot of time thinking about this through college.

I'm a CSI now, I don't know if I told you. I'm not what you would call the best but I'm definitely not the worst—but it depends on who you ask.

I'm not the same kid stuck in the bathroom ten years ago. Spending countless nights wishing and dreaming of the day that I'd finally make it out.

To tell the truth, deep down I never believed that I would.

I felt immortalized in that bathroom, stuck on the shower floor, believing in the burning sensation far more than empty promises or shaky daydreams.

If I had the option to go back and change what I did I wouldn't.

I would let things be.

Doing what I did let me survive myself.

It let me survive that house.

It let me survive that night.

But after all these years, that night, that house and that bathroom all faded away. I met people, I made friends, I found a great job—ran into new opportunities.

Whether I had liked it or not, my brain had created a failsafe for itself. A failsafe that protected itself from the very thing that it had always intended for me.

Irony.

Death became a source of fear, humming away at my subconscious, while always perking the tiniest morsal of my human curiosity.

Those days don't matter anymore.

As a scientist, I've always had a rather logical and quantitative perspective of the universe. Barring that night. Always that night. Recent events suggest that as scientists, there are things about the universe that we don't understand. Bigger than all of us, in fact.

How that led me, here now, to you—I can't understand.

I don't know why I'm here.

All I know is eventually, the days became better. There was chronic stress, worrying and fatigue of course. That was pretty normal at this point. The good days became great. So great, in fact that I felt like I could run anywhere, forever, and nothing bad would ever happen again.

I felt invincible.

But eventually, as you predicted, when the good days become too good pretty soon—the bad days get worse.

Much worse.

Don't get me wrong—I've always known what I have. But I think you'll understand me when I say that sometimes it felt like 'I had.'

There were times where I thought I would have had it. And not have it. That's what they want you to believe, isn't it?

'It's a mental illness, it's a disease, you'll get better. You won't have this forever.'

Well, I'm here to say that after surviving my adolescence and mid-twenties I'd like to say I'm not here 'for forever.' I'd rather not die actually, if it means obtaining forever. And yet.

Here we are.

If death didn't mean dying, I would have died a thousand times over by now.

I don't want to speak for you or others, but I think I will speak on behalf of others that I don't feel wanted to die they just wanted it to end. They didn't want it to come anymore.

Sometimes as humans, with our limited perspective on things—have limited options.

The universe is a raw, untamed, unflinching example of nature. How we prescribe meaning to it is tragically subjective. If the meaning of life weren't subjective, I bet there would be plenty of people who would find a way to see it their own way. They just don't feel comfortable being given that freedom.

They don't like feeling like a tiny blip in billions of years in time.

Time becomes intrinsic to value. But value is strictly a human condition.

I think what I meant to say is that I thought it was fine. I thought the war was over. Not over, per se-but an infliction that becomes so natural war would be an understatement. Life became my diagnosis. Yet my diagnostic made it harder for me than others. The good days did happen—and they still do. But what I think bothers me the most is the realization that happens when you start to feel like you're going under again.

And you feel yourself keep going.

You become crushed under the weight of the cosmos and consumed by your own existence.

And in that moment, it finally dawns on you: Ah. One day this thing is going to kill me.

I thought out of anyone, you would be the one to understand.

So please, tell me what this all means.

Tell me that all these years haven't been wasted—they won't be wasted. Because I am determined to carry this thing out until the end.

However long that will be.

Your Friend,

Barry Allen