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“Was?” he asks. Without looking, I can see the curiosity laced into his cautious tone. He treads carefully as he waits for an answer that I’m not sure I want to share.
I lower my face, tucking my chin towards my chest. “He died when I was twelve. And after he died, I started to pretend that if I closed my eyes long enough, then everything around me would disappear and I could go back to how things were before he died.” My breath catches, a shake rumbling through me as I say words that I’ve never said out loud. I’ve never said anything about my dad and his death to anyone beyond the simple “my dad isn’t with us anymore” vagueness.
“I thought that if I kept my eyes closed long enough, I could shut out the world and pretend I didn’t exist in it,” I continue. I look back at him, the crease between his brows deepening. “It felt easier to pretend that none of this was happening around me, like my dad dying or the grief that I never got over. It felt easier to think that if I didn’t exist… just, anything so that I didn’t have to carry all of it with me.”
He clears his throat. And for a second, I fear that I might have unloaded too much. Regardless of if it felt right, it also felt too raw and naked. Until he speaks. “I’ve always considered what it would feel like to stop existing. To let all this fade away.” He pauses, as if to mull over what it means to disappear, to stand on the other side of chaos and look in instead of standing in the center of it. “It feels… freeing.”
“Do you almost feel like if… if you didn’t exist… maybe it would be easier?”
I see his throat bob, a deep swallow rolling down the center of his neck as his shoulders square.
“You mean, like if you were no longer here, then everything that was weighing you down in the first place would just disappear?” he elaborates. “And… you’re left wondering what was holding you down in the first place?”
I nod and take a deep breath, my eyes slightly closing to let the possibility of freedom skim over me. “I know we’re supposed to fear death, and I do, of course. I’m not going to go base jumping to play with death. But, when I look past the actual dying part, the fear seems to disappear. And I feelcalm.” My insides twist as my voice fills with an eerie sadness knowing that while I don’t necessarily want to die, I don’t want to live either.
“Death being a comfort,” he affirms.
We stay silent. An instant passes where we have a moment to absorb the idea of death being a comfort, a solace. I feel a sense of dread cloak over me. And for some reason, that makes my heart feel even heavier. As if on top of this sinking feeling, a thousand-pound anvil was placed on my heart, telling it,I know you’re already heavy, but here’s some additional weight you need to carry. And that heaviness shifts into a familiar aching pain.
“I guess dying isn’t really the scary part. It’s living,” I finally say, my throat constricting through the words. “It feels easier to die, to pass all of your problems on to your loved ones and leave unfinished business for others to work through. But living…”
“Living…” he says, repeating my last word. “Maybe if there’s something worth living for, it would make a difference.”
“Maybe,” I think out loud.
He keeps his distance while he looks at me, his eyes serious and thoughtful. I notice that this whole time we’ve been talking and I’ve been looking out into the city, he hasn’t looked at the view once. He’s been looking at me, listening to me, hanging on to my words like a compass directing him away from oblivion. And I finally feelseen.
THIRTEEN
RHYLAN
Beauty isn’t always blissful. It isn’t always happy, full of rainbows and butterflies coming from every direction. There’s beauty in things that are sad.
It can be a dusky sunset on the horizon of the sea that paints the sky a hazy orange and purple. It can be a string quartet, humming along the doleful sounds of “Clair de Lune.” It can even be the light rainfall that takes over the day, keeping away the bright sunshine behind a curtain of dark clouds. Beauty isn’t always full of joy. It can be twisted and woven with pain. But it doesn’t make it any less significant.
Ellie carries that beauty on her shoulders. The same beauty that emanates through heartbreak. Her pain doesn’t make her dull or mundane. It makes her bewitching. It’s what pours out of her through that pain that leaves her beauty shining through. And I’m completely enamored by it.
I watch her lean forward against the wooden posted fence that separates the tumbling hillside from the flat graveled dirt we stand on. She closes her eyes as she takes in the air and allows it to heal her, to absorb the pain so that it can feel a little less heavy. I disappear in her moment of healing. So I don’t disturb it. Instead, I watch as she cleanses away everything in her heart that causes it to ache.
I slowly sidle up to her, our arms not even touching. I can feel the heat coming from her. She must be able to feel it too, because she opens her eyes and looks at me. There’s no smile, no anger, no sadness. Her face is expressionless, enervate and weak. I look back at her, mirroring her expression because I feel the exact same way. I’m spent. So completely exhausted trying to work through my emotions and attempting to come out strong in the end. But I’m so fucking tired of trying to be strong.
We don’t say anything. Only silence stretches between us before Ellie shifts her gaze straight ahead again. Then, as if she, too, is acting on impulse, she tilts her head to the side of my shoulder. Her eyes close again. And while I expect her to relax with her head lying heavily on my arm, she doesn’t. Instead, her brows furrow, causing the creases between them to deepen. Like her wounds are just beginning to heal, inflaming into a hot, swollen mess to signal the start of the healing process when it’s most painful.
I still, my fists clenched, tampering down the urge to circle my arms around her and wrap her towards me. Because every bit of my insecurities is telling me that I’m too broken. That I would never be able to take on any part of her pain and replace it with a warm solace.
So I stand there, minimizing my movements, so she doesn’t move either. So that she knows she can stay leaned up against my shoulder as long as she trusts me to do so. While I do that, I let all of my self-doubt and reticence sit in the pit of my stomach where I feel I could bury it deep. And the illusion of me being more than a figurative shoulder to lean on is no longer just an illusion but a reality. I do it even though I know it’s temporary, and I hold on to that thought while I inhale the scent of her hair—roses and another floral mixture that I can’t place—as the steadiness of her breathing calms my racing heart.
When she shifts her feet, her shoe hooks on the loose gravel, and it causes her to miss her step and lose her balance. Her hand immediately wraps around my forearm for support while her warm skin grazes mine through the thinness of my sleeve, and she suddenly stills. She must realize that her hand has subconsciously moved there, her actions having been played out before thought through, because she slowly moves her hand away. But I hold on to it. I carefully thread my fingers through hers and look down at the tangled knot of our hands. In the dark, I can’t tell where her fingers start and mine end. Her hand feels so small in mine, enveloped and caged in a protective armor that my long fingers seem to have created.
This is it. The fallacy that I want so badly to be true but know that it can never be. I want to protect her heart, bubble wrap it and place it in a large wooden box labeled Fragile. And it sounds crazy when I’ve never had an inclination to protect anyone, to keep them from every harm and hurt that the world had to offer. But it’s because we are the same. Every puncture of hurt that poked through her heart, I’ve felt it. We both know what it’s like to feel as if there’s no other choice but to yield and sink into a deep void. For the first time in… ever, I don’t want to feel like drowning. Death feels terrifying, and living feels hopeful.
We stay up on the hillside for a couple of hours with the occasional words passing between us in the long stretches of silence. We don’t need to keep talking. Instead, we stay in the hushed silence of contentment with an air of understanding that I don’t want to ever leave.
Just after two o’clock in the morning, when I turn my wrist to check the time, I suggest we head back down the hillside.
“It’s getting late. Can I give you a ride back home?”
She looks down at my watch, her eyes adorably squinting to see through the dark. “Wow, I hadn’t realized it was this late. Yes, please,” she answers softly.
