Silver

LAST NIGHT, A CLOSE friend of mine did want to die. So did I.

She told me her betraying story. Same one I’d been hearing all those days she’d been immersed in despair. That she strolled someplace in this city and then, somewhere on the streets, in her sight registered a familiar face. A man clinging to someone else, a girl. The man she’d seen just some time ago, during which made her think she’d been over it. That the feeling was over, that she was fine. Only, seeing him with someone else this time made her realize the contrary. In my head I could hear something else as she talked. I knew there had to be another source of her panic attack this time. And she knew it too. She wanted to buy a property, a place of her own. A home. But the circumstances did not allow her. She’d planned to get a house three or four weeks ago, I guess. Or maybe she’d been planning all along. All her life maybe? Something out of my knowledge to grasp.

And her next words confirmed my intuition. It was about the home. About the man as well. And it was about something else neither she nor I could explain. Just about everything—those dreams that failed to materialize, wishes not granted, prayers left unheard—all the source of her solitude formed into a loop made to hang her to death…

Just the glimpse of her eyes—those engorged, teary, restless eyes—tied my stomach into a knot of painful memories. Those eyes that would fixate on a point at nowhere that I find myself trying to make out what she was looking at into the empty air. And I could tell by experience that it was emptiness. Though I was trying to cheer her up, wearing a masquerade of false delight, a part of me wanted to tell her to follow that voice telling her to end it up with a quick squeeze of the trigger of some sort. Because her eyes and behavior made me conjure up that same old feeling. Which I’d been through.  Had I chosen the same quick option back then, would have things been better for me? Maybe if she’s dead, things will be better for her. Better for me as well. In a way.

One, because it did hurt to see her like that: a close friend seeing joy as a stranger. I only wanted her to be happy. Find contentment. Two, because it did hurt to see her like this: a replica of someone whom I fear might remind me of my insanity. My own despair. Someone who might trigger the same attack on me again. This made me wonder, had I really been over my misery? Or had I just learned to live with it? This make-believe, golden world… had it been so real that even though a bit of that solitude had still lingered in me, it had too much competition to ever win out? Sometime during our conversation, across the table in the coffee shop where we had our dinner, I caught a small grin crossing her face. I then dismissed the thought. Because if there’s someone who should understand her, encourage her, it should be me. A friend. Who had been there. Once upon a time. There’s still hope, I realized. Which she must grasp. Something that will drag her into a day when good things do happen.