12.20

For good, there must be bad. For comedy, there must be tragedy. For love, there must be loss.

The night of December 20th… the day and night had been written perfectly. Almost as if I had written it myself.

I could feel the doom. My thoughts were vast… touching on things like hospitals, what I did when I was sick, and death. I had been oddly vocal about my best friend to everyone. The breadcrumbs were there.

And then the husband texted me. Not my best friend. Simple enough: she’s driving, call if needed.

That was wrong.

I should have warned them. Something was wrong. Unsafe.

Also. We never called each other. Only in times of devastation.

I had been on the phone… wanting to get off it, about to lie that she was calling me.

… written perfectly.

She did call.

Car accident. T-boned. Ambulance. ER.

My person. My only person.

Alive. In pain. As someone… someone I once thought to be my only someone so long ago, reminded me.

But I could feel it. I could feel the loss coming in the silence.

I was alone.

Everyone asleep. Any other person I might once have reached out to no longer an option.

My person. The one I could talk to about anything. ANYTHING, EVERYTHING. Even the things that made me crazy. And now when I needed to talk OF her….

Very few times in my life have I truly, desperately, wished to die. Begged, even…. The pain, so unfathomable, immeasurable. My heart, my body, my mind incapable of withstanding it.

I had seen so perfectly in my head. Spring. March. They were to move. It was a fixed point. Unmovable. Real. They would be here. We would be together. We had adventures planned, nights in planned.

But I could feel the death.

…. so many times before I had seen “fixed points”. Believed them to be as unmovable and real as March.

So maybe this WAS Hell after all. I had never left. It was actually everlasting. Because, don’t you see? I was given the gift of seeing the future. A future that would NOT happen. Impossible to happen.

But that’s how they would torture someone like me. The tiny ember that is my heart and soul, the tiny little dying ember… keeping it alive with Hope. Too easy for them…. Let me have a friend, let me find a love, let me have passion… for however long. Long enough to made that ember roar with life. Make that ember Strong.

And then take it all away.

My eternal torment.

That’s what kept me alive all these years. Not the Knowledge that there is some magical soulmate waiting for me… for me to be loved, to be wed, to be a mother. But the HOPE. The hope that someone would finally find me.

And now I could see. March was a lie. March was a hope… the gust of air to keep me burning, to keep me going.

This was all a lie. This life was a lie. Like the episode of Black Mirror.

Which, com’on…. I was born out of spite. I was born too early. I was sick all my childhood until my parent's divorce. Then the depression to hold. Then the monster found me. This list not vast enough to cover everything, but the point: always just enough grace to give me hope. But look at all – clearly. Nothing ever really good happens to me, does it?

And how they distracted me well enough. With stories. With pretty things. With mild passions. But most importantly: hope.

I wanted to curl into a ball on the floor, hidden. But I couldn’t breathe, I had to sit. The crying was polarized with the impossible pain. The soundless, wordless, eyes closed, open mouthed, gut wrenching pain.

I couldn’t read. I couldn’t watch anything. I tried to remember what I had done when I was little. Eat and not think. So my mind continued: eat and not think, eat and not think, eat and not think. I kept repeating this for a while. Until I ate and managed to hold my gaze on a tv show.

A second call came. The death had come. But not of my best friend. But still a piece of her heart.

The best boy, I promised her. The very best boy had saved my best friend.

I barely held it together until she had to make another phone call.

The polarity came back. Her pain. I was feeling her pain. And I knew… no matter what happened, this was going to scar her heart permanently.

Earlier, before I realized I was in Hell… I had begged her them to take my heart. Take my heart for her. Take my heart, however long she needed it. TAKE ALL MY LOVE and give it to her. She needed it. I needed her to have it.

Many things happened on the night of the 20th, well into the 21st.

I knew next year… if I could even get that far, next year these days would bur the scar on her heart like venom in a vein.

… but the torment continued so catered to me. They gave me hope.

An image: I and him, her and her husband, all together in a crowded, warm living room. To be with her when her heart hurt.

Because that’s the problem. The hope… if there’s even the slightest, tiniest possibility, I cannot give up.

She is alive. I cannot give up.

So… I walk through Hell, with my head held high.