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Hamlet and I went to boarding school together. We were fifteen. We both thought we were “too cool for the rest of them.” We locked eyes when I heard Twin Size Mattress playing on his earphones. I knew then I wanted to be best friends. Our regular vice was sharing a single cigarette on the bridge at the edge of school grounds. We talked about inconsequential and desperate things because we felt inconsequential and desperate. Our biggest excitement was sneaking vodka into class. Biggest torture some idiot teenagers on the ice-hockey team that, in our eyes, looked less human and more hell-hound.
I would have liked to remember him well, but that’s not how these things work. Sure, we loved each other, tried to make life easier for each other—we sent each other poetry to tend to bleeding that only therapy can prevent. We were addicted to feeling out of place with the world, and we enabled each other. Stretched the limit of what ungodly things boys can do in the dark when they get trapped in the straitjacket that is a midwest boarding school. We cut each other with scissors stolen from art. It was the closest thing to love. Falling together, almost like two autumn leaves. It wasn’t spoken, but I think the both of us knew that it would end ugly. We are not built light like autumn leaves; we are pounds of flesh from a balcony, waiting for a hard concrete ground to embrace us.
At nights I still lie awake wondering if I could have saved him, but deep down, I know the truth is that nothing could have saved him. If I barely came close to saving him, no one and nothing could even fathom it because he pushed everything away and locked himself in a room with his own monsters.
Hours before he passed he asked if I would die for him. I said “in a heartbeat.”
“One of us has to take the fall.”
“What do you need from me?”
“I only needed what I just heard.”
“What do you mean?”
“...”
“Are you going to be alright?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“Are you at least gonna try?”
“Yeah.”
We’d agreed to smoke on the bridge again that night. I found him under the bridge instead, on the train tracks. I blacked out, but by the time I got there bruises had formed on my knees, cuts came out of nowhere. I was shirtless and freezing.
“Get away from there…you said you were gonna try!”
“I lied.”
“...Scoot the fuck over then. I’m coming with you.”
We stuck there together, freezing, awkward, silent, for a bit. It felt as though I had finally found peace. The metal started to rattle like lyrics of a song we found. The light flashed green. All there was was gentle waiting.
But then he started struggling in a panic.
“What’s wrong?”
A tiny spot peeps from the edge of the horizon.
“I know you. You’re not like me. You cannot die for me. You have things ahead of you. I don’t.”
It expands.
“But you know I wanted to do this for you.”
The train starts to look more like a train than a spot.
“I’ve hurt you.”
“That was love.”
The rumbling turns from whispers to the volume of my father’s voice when he’s angry.
“I know. I’m sorry that was love. If you love me then you have to live.”
It’s screaming, so we have to scream.
“I don’t want to.”
“I want you to. Is that enough?”
“It will never be enough.”
He pushes and urges me gently until I fall back on my own volition. The train howls like a wolf before both itself and him simply disappear. Pitch black silence.
I woke up in Highland Park hospital. I never got to see his body, but I imagine that he’s finally gotten good sleep and better dreams(he used to get nightmares all the time). I am writing this down so that maybe a few less people kill themselves when they feel trapped. I don’t know. We have to live with the reality that it won’t ever be enough. No amount of therapy or loving can save us from ourselves. We must live, despite, despite, despite.