Denial.
No.
She’s not gone.
I’m telling them, but they aren’t listening to me.
They didn’t know her, you know? Like how I did. I mean…I am her best friend. I’m sorry. Was. I was her best friend. She would have told me…I would have seen it. She’s gone right now…but she’s coming back. I know it. I can feel it. The universe is bending and when it’s straight and it’s all right, she’ll be here. This universe needs her. She knew that. She was happy…she smiled all the time. She knew how much she meant to people.
No.
She’s here. I can feel her presence within me. Everything about her was so light…it was like she floated. And if she could float, then she couldn’t drown. When the colours are gone and the whispers are here, her voice will be the loudest and clearest and she’ll tell me what she always does, “Oh honey, you wish.”
No.
She’s talking to me right now. She’s teasing me. She’s looking at me and thinking, “What? You really believed I was gone?” She was strong. She was strong and fierce and unshakable. The earth could shatter and break and burn to the ground, but she? She would be still. She would be still and silent and beautiful. I knew her and I knew what she would and wouldn’t do. If something was wrong…I could have sensed it. She’s sitting next to me, with her right leg crossed over her left, her chin high, her eyes flaming and she’s laughing at me. She’s here all right. She’s here.
No.
I won’t accept anything else.
Guilt.
I could’ve stopped it.
I could have held her hand and pulled her back up. I know I could have.
I should have looked at the light in her eyes and I should have seen it fading. I should have seen them become empty sockets. I should have seen the fire burn out.
How did I not?
I could’ve stopped it.
I should have spent the whole night making it better. I should have heard the silence on the other end. If only I knew. If only I saw it. All the things I should have done. And who else would have? Who else would have pulled her up? I can hear her telling me now…I can hear all the things she said and she quoted and all the things I left unnoticed. All those things I should have looked at closely. “And I would never want to see the light in your eyes burn out. Because without light, what would we have?”
She wasn’t quoting a book. She was quoting herself. How did I not see it? This is my fault. This is all my fault.
I could’ve stopped it.
I should have seen the dust and wiped it clean. I should have seen the shadows and been the sun. I should have seen the dark and brought a candle. I should have seen the fire and blown it out. How did I miss it? I was that one person who could have told her, “No. No, you are stronger than this. You can stop that voice in your head. You can control it.” And I didn’t. I let it slip out of my hands. I let her slip.
If only.
If only I had seen it. If only I had paid more attention.
Maybe she would still be here.
Maybe…I could’ve stopped it.
Anger.
How could she do that to me?
How dare she leave me alone in this stupid, stupid, broken world? We were in this together, right? We always had been. And then she left…she escaped…leaving me here to rot.
She was selfish. All she cared about was herself! She left and she didn’t look back. She didn’t even stop to look back.
What did she think? That after she leaves everything will be perfect?
As if the sun would still shine. As if the clock would still tick. As if the world would still be full and perfect.
How could she do that to me?
The ripple effect.
She always spoke about how everything we do in life…has a gazillion consequences. About how everything we do, good or bad, makes a difference not just in our lives…but in so many. She was the one who taught me to think about the ripple effect our actions and words could cause.
Didn’t she f******* think about what ripple effect she would cause?
Didn’t she think about the amount of lives her actions would touch?
HOW COULD SHE DO THAT TO ME?
HOW DARE SHE?
Who gave her the right to fly and leave me buried? Who gave her the right to swim and let me drown?
HOW COULD SHE DO THAT TO ME?
I’ve spoken to her about her bitchy impulsive decisions.
She knew. She knew she wasn’t thinking. She knew she would wake up the next day and feel better. Maybe if she ever stopped to see beyond her meaningless childish tantrums, she could have seen us. Me. Her family. Her life.
But that’s the thing. She didn’t. All her eyes could see was herself. Her view beyond that was dark and empty. Maybe if her f****** soul wasn’t as dark and empty as the rest of her….she would have thought about the people around her.
I hate her.
This is all her fault.
She brought this on herself.
I know now how she could do it to me.
I was a nobody, why couldn’t she?
Depression.
Depression.
Depression consumes you. It takes over every part of your body till you feel yourself choke. Till you feel the air caught in your lungs, suffocating you, pushing you down, closing in on you, failing you. Just like everything else.
First you feel a rush of pain in every part of your body. Your bones, your skin, your nerves, every cell in your body. You feel miserable and all you want to do is sit in a corner, pull your legs close to your chest, close your eyes and hope to never open them again. You feel freedom in the darkness and fear in the light. You feel numb. Once the numbness settles in, everything fades out. Once the pain takes over you completely, the realization hits and you feel a rush of anger. Anger that blinds. Anger that’s so sharp you’re scared it will drive you insane. But, you let it wash over you. Because this is anger. And anger is still better than pain. Pain will weaken you. But anger? Anger will make you strong. And when you’re too tired to be angry anymore, you begin weeping. Weeping because you realize the anger did no good. You realize nothing became better because acting on your anger only makes things worse. You begin realizing things the hard way.
After swollen eyes, broken heart and all the tears drained out from them….you feel nothing. You feel absolutely nothing. When you’re at this point, you can’t see….you can’t hear. There’s only you and the world. There’s nothing before and nothing beyond and nothing in between. Depression isn’t anger. Depression isn’t pain. Depression is feeling nothing. Depression is the deafness and the numbness.
You’d think feeling nothing is power, and that it makes you invincible, but you’re wrong. Because once you feel nothing…there’s no coming back. There’s this big fat void. But you know what the scary part is? You don’t know how deep the void is. So if you fall…do you keep falling? Do you ever stop falling?
Do you ever land?
It makes me wonder…was this how she was feeling before she decided to…
Maybe it wasn’t the ‘everything’ that ended her. Maybe it was the exact opposite. Maybe it was the nothing.
She wasn’t depressed. The depression was her. It was her mind and soul and body. It was feeding on her.
The depression consumed her.
Acceptance.
I don’t get it.
And I don’t think I ever will.
She’s gone and she’s not coming back and that’s not okay. It wasn’t okay for her build a wall so high, that she could have never climbed over it.
Will I ever forget her? No. We weren’t just best friends. We were soul sisters. We were blood and bones. But then again, will I ever forgive her? I doubt it.
So how do you ever accept something like this? I don’t know.
There are a lot of things I don’t know. There are a lot of things I never will.
But the thing is that, it wasn’t about me. It wasn’t for me to understand. All this while I blamed her because I kept thinking…how could she leave me here alone to fix this puzzle? She’s the missing piece, and if she’s not there…how do I fix it?
But that’s the thing. When the rope was around her neck and the stool was cold below her feet, she wasn’t thinking about me or her family. She was thinking about herself.
No. There’s no moving on. There’s no erasing what happened.
There is what there is and I just have to learn to live with it.
If you think about it, that’s exactly what she should have done too. She should have learnt. She should have taken all her broken pieces and asked for someone to help her fix them. Ask for someone to help her mend.
She always told me, “I hate red roses. What’s so special about red? Black roses are what are special. They’re bold and fierce and final.” Bold and fierce and final. Just like her.
So now I’ve inked a red rose with perfect black. The kind of black which leaves nothing behind. The kind of black that takes everything with it. I can finally see why she liked black so much. Black is honest. Black isn’t doubtful.
I place the rose gently in front of her grave. Only one petal touching her grey stone. I read her epitaph which I had the honor to write. She would have loved it, and why wouldn’t she have? They were exactly what she wanted.
“May your eye go to the Sun, To the wind your soul…You are all the colors in one, at full brightness.” (Jennifer Niven)
She always wanted to fly. Always wanted to be amongst the kites and birds and clouds and even the tip of the trees. And now finally, she can.
~Naqiyah Hasan
