Dearest Friend,

It is with this letter that I address the final part of my life that I have never told you. The story, if you do not remember, is the one I would mention during Freshman and Sophomore year but never tell you about. It covers everything, the good, the bad, and the ugly. See as we’re such close friends, I hope you find this a entertaining read, as you will get to see my writing style and my past. Before I conclude and let you on your merry way, I would like to inform you of one thing: It is my biggest fear to show people my personal life outside school, and by doing this I hope to become a better person, and also become closer to you as friends. Interpret this as you will, you know who you are if you’re reading this, you are the only one who will understand this….

I am forever yours through thick and thin

Sincerely ,

~ M.D.R.B

I walked into the there house knowing the truth: He was gone, and there was no getting him back. No matter how my silent cries rang throughout my head or the tears, carving small rivers into my face, glistening like rivers of gold through a mountain’s core. I stood still and slowly began to move forward as not to wake him, nor to lose feeling in my legs. With every breath, every shift of my mortal fiber, I felt my stoic guise eroding. Like harsh sea waves crushing stone, I could hear the crack and smell the spray of water slashing like a barbed whip, feel each piece fall to the dark depths of the ocean and expose the soft structure beneath. It all seemed like a terrible dream, and as I thought of the peaceful idea, I kept transitioning out of the environment around me into the times I had spent with him. The memories, the moments, the lessons, all flashed at once as if being shown through a kaleidoscope. Each memory teeming, frothing over with emotions. I could hear it all, the fading childish giggles, his deep bass voice, the swooshing swing of golf clubs, the lovely crack of the golf club head hitting the golf ball like a starting pistols shot, and the sound of his laugh echoing from pleasant past to the filthy future. It was beautiful sight to behold in my mind, like watching the Aurora Borealis; the bright flowing colors in the sky as if being guided by a hand, until the thoughts become overbearing, with each memory and every thought compiled into a giant pool of regret, turning the bright colors of blue and violet to a sickening shade of black. As I walked over and sat down on the couch beside him, trying to collect my thoughts, I only thought the following: Why him, why now, and what will I do now?

The giant black pool seemed to manifest directly in front of where I was sitting, and within it I could still hear the giggles and see the sunsets on the rising green hills. They all jumped at me, but they were not what I wanted, I wanted him back. After looking at my Great Grandfather, the withered version of the great man I knew, it terrified me. I looked back into the dark pool and saw the water churning beneath its surface, and I saw him. I jumped quickly into the lukewarm water, and swam after him. I was gone, surrounded, in a world I thought was my own. I swam to the bottom and took in the sight; I could see in the dark, I could see him in the water, and I no longer needed to breathe. I simply walked, and came so, close to him, but as I did, he vanished, and my world collapsed in on me. The light vanished, pressure stabbed my back and chest like an icepick breaking through ice, and the water turned bone chillingly cold. I saw the a Darkness manifest into something within itself, as it was more darker than the environment. I let the darkness walk around me, watched it observe me, and take me under its influence. The whole time it smiled sickeningly, as if watching its prey flail in its chamber was highly amusing. After, it stood there, just watching, before deciding to break the silence by leaving. Only after it left did my mind rush back to reality and what was going on around me. I quickly turned to see my Great Grandfather once more with only a few choice words to say, and only saw an impression of where he once lay. I sat confused, transfixed, staring at the imprint of where he once lay, It was dead silence, something I learned to hat. As I got up off the couch, I quickly walked over to the window, and only saw a long black car leave the driveway. I backed away from the window and kneeled to the floor in one motion. Then I lost control of everything as the darkness walked out from the window pane, and began to watch me again, only this time it was not smiling, but actually shedding a few tears itself. My head hurt, as if hot coals had been placed inside it. My only clear thought was the choice words I never got to say: I love you, and goodbye old friend....

Months went by and seasons changed. I began to match the world around as the trees became thin and frail. The water I had fallen into sealed itself, and black ice now covered its top. It was the beginning of my freshman year of high school and even after seven months of his passing, I still missed him deep down inside. I had, in the previous months, thought deeply about my Great Grandfather and what he meant to me, and what came out of that was something so unexpected that I refused to accept it as the truth, that there was no way on earth that was the reason for him being so close to me. But one day as I walked the hallways, covered with a guise I reforged from the depths of my firey and unstable mind, I awakened from the black pool I’d been in. That's when I saw her. She walked upon the black ice that now further encaved me in the pool, and had shown light into it. She gave me something I thought I had lost over the months, though they seemed like years in the ice: admiration and love. She was the hand to guide, the light in the darkness, a undying candle in the harsh winds of the world. I wanted to be like her, and I wanted her to be with me. What grew from friendship blossomed into something beautiful. For seven months, I had no one to talk to, but with her I could let things out, cast them away, and become whole again. It was with the motivation she gave me that I able to climb out of the cold entrenches of the dark void I had jumped into so long ago and once again feel the breeze and fresh air, regardless of its bitter cold.

Then the day came when the blossoming flower wilted, and our relationship retrogressed back to friendship. Our relationship may have caused the red rose to snap in two, but I was fine, happy, even, that things came back around. I felt motivated by the loss, that if I could survive this, maybe I could try more things, take risks again, learn new things, and make my Great Grandfather proud of me. Then the day came when she vanished for a week. A close friend was gone, and I had no hand to guide me, no candle to light my path, and last of all, I felt disgusted for feeling this way. As I searched for her, trying to make sure she was okay, I found the truth, and the truth frightened me. This may sound childish, and even looking  back upon it myself I chuckle a little, but it at the time hurt me in my weakest spot, my heart. She was in the hospital, and my life was put into a backwards spiral. The same thing had happened once before, and terrible things followed. What happened to my Great Grandfather happened to other people as well. As you can probably guess where this is going, I felt like she would become deathly sick, or changed by what she was diagnosed with. I wanted to keep her safe, away from something that I did not cause, nor could never predict ever happen to her. As I found and figured my emotions out, people judged me for my care. They harassed me verbally, and shot me hard with their words, each echoing of the tongue the gunshot and each word the lead bullet to sink into my flesh. I fell back into the dark pool once again, but something was different, something I don’t know nor could I explain. I could not tell whether i jumped in for her, or if I jumped in to somehow find my Great Grandfather again. Neither I found in the pool, only the darkness with arms outstretched, welcoming me as if I were his kin returning from a long and perilous journey….

Time became a endless void, as I was sucked in and out of my feral mind and the world. In my world, in my sleep, I could see myself walking in the dead of night in a massive storm I walked on through the storm, taking every icy sheet of rain as I got closer to a house. I’d been walking for what seemed like hours, I was exhausted and thirsty, and the water stung against my skin- I was so cold that the water was steaming hot. Though the scenery changed as I continued on the path, it seemed as if I never moved. The house I saw in the distance, I must get to it, it's the last safe place on earth, for me. I can get away from the darkness, away from my past, and away from them. The house is like a lighthouse to a shipwrecked sailor cast out to sea. I give my best effort to make it out of the storm without wearing his endurance any farther down, as I feel like a piece of leather being stretched to the thinness of a wire; contracting still, saying a silent prayer to myself so that neither body or sanity will snap. With every crash of the thunder I saw glimpses of my past, the things my parents did to me as a small child, the feeling of being alone in a world so much bigger than I at such a young age. It sent shivers to my spine. With every puddle I walked past I saw myself in the dark pool, clawing the ice around me, watching me work my fingers to the raw flesh as the ice turned translucent white to a sap like consistency of dark red blood. And with every look at the house I saw what could have been, or at least what I thought could have been. Suddenly everything stopped. I was at the front steps of the house. I barged in through the door, and was met by a bright wall of light.

I woke with a start as my eyes opened. I could still see the light, and it splotched slowly back into darkness. As I climbed down from my bed, my heart was racing. My ears rang from an unknown ringing source, and as I covered them, I lost control of my body. Blackness was the only thing I could see as I felt my body convulse rapidly on the floor. I felt cold and nothing else. Then my body slowed down, and I withered in pain on the floor as I felt each muscle contract and spasm. As I grabbed the frame of my bed for support and rose up from my carpet, I felt sick. I rushed from my room to the bathroom, hitting the walls (partly from the tingling in my legs, partly because I needed the support). It was clear that my body had reacted to my anxiety and stress. From that point on I would lose feeling in my legs throughout the day, blackout, and laugh maniacally. As another month passed, I found out that I had become the creature I never wanted to become, the manifestation I feared. Yet I felt so good being these things. I was the artificer of shadow, a veil of void in twilight. I was the darkness. I was the thing in the pool that kept me down. It was through the realization of it that I soon began to try and free myself through… indirect means to say the least. I came into the world by knife, so in my mind at the time, I thought I should also go out by it. And as that progressed, I came so ever closer to the goal. But it was not me that wanted this, but the darkness. It wanted me to take the easy way out, to admit defeat. It was so close. It was only when in my darkest hour did the light click on, and even though the light hurt my skin, I felt free again….

It was through a series of tears and some very loud voices that this dream came. I finally saw what was beyond the light-

“The room was full of light as the midday sun blasted brightly through the sunroom. The room was utterly normal, its appearance never really changing in the time my great grandparents moved in. The walls were covered with pictures and mesmerising scenic views, and the tables lay shiny and clean as if they had been bought that same day. The only thing that really did change in this room was the paint. It was like a sponge almost, as if it absorbed the noise that had been produced in this room, the laughter, the debates, and, last of all, the shadows that were casted upon it. One could stare at the wall and just see it as that: a wall. But I could stare at the wall and see a play by play of what happened as the sun created silhouettes. The wall that day was chipped and cracked, old and not as it once was, but still had something to share. But that day room had completely changed names. It was no longer a living room, but rather a dead one. My family members’ voices echoed in the hallway, but I could hear nothing. My mind was transfixed on one person, who made this room forever different, his last imprint on the house he so loved to be in as he they picked him up, and stuck him in a body bag.”

After the dream I felt terrible, but this was a new feeling, better then the one I had experienced before. After this I thought of not what would disappoint my Great Grandfather, but would make him proud. What my mind went to first was the thing I had so much trouble believing: the fact that I was practically his son! Since I never had a father, it was him that came to my aid, and since he never had a son, I was there for him when he was falling down. I missed him, I still cried for him, and I still prayed that his soul was in Heaven, but I no longer felt guilty doing it. As I came to realize this, I came out of my shell. I read my poetry, my journals from when I was beaten down, and only felt the peripheral waves of it, not the full force of the emotion. I had climbed out of the dark pool, and I had accepted Fate. I had slain the darkness, and my story and myself, are forever a living proof that light is to fear what love is to darkness, in the presence of the other, fear forever fades. And as I crawled out of the pool, I rose to find an amazing world I had forgotten. It was no longer the cold dead of winter, but the warm air and warm sun of spring. It was with the warm breeze that I came out of my shell, preparing myself for what ever came at me. It was by luck, Fate, and an english project that I met an enemy, but would soon realized that this person was friend. ‘Tis how I met you, and I will never forget. Though I may be dull at times, and I may be very incoherent and stubborn ( as are many of the young men I know ), I hope that you overlook that and see that even though I was in a very dark place when I first met you, I found a very good end for this story. And that ending, is my admiration for you.