When I Go, Bring Me Back Again

I can recall everything, like it was happening once again before my eyes. Waking up to the loud, ear piercing sirens. They almost pulled me to my window, lit up in blue and red. I remember the moment I pulled the blinds up and saw the ambulance at Mikey’s I took off. I stumbled over myself as I skipped stairs and bolted across the street because my legs were still waking up and not wanting to move. So many people gathered around on the flashing street trying to see what was wrong. I heard them talking, bragging about how much they knew when they knew nothing. Then again, neither did I. I remember the older cop pushing on my shoulder, telling me to just stay back because I wasn’t allowed past the tape. It didn’t stop me though, the moment I saw Mikey I didn’t hold back until I was next to him.

He scared me honestly. I kept saying his name, but he just stood there like a statue. His arms pressed against his sides with his shoulder slumped forward making him look almost deformed. His hair was sticking up in random places and matted to his forehead. His face was pale and blotched in red from tears that now looked dry. I didn’t understand what was going on, I knew it wasn’t good, but I didn’t know the severity of the situation. I shook his shoulders, begging him to tell me what was wrong but all that moved was his dull and blood shot eyes. They landed on me for just a small moment before they looked away. I remember following his gaze, they were planted on the front door. It was open and black, looking like a tunnel with no light at the other end. I stood there watching, the faint sound of metal grew closer and louder till the fate that I had been asking on slipped out of the darkness. There on the stretcher was a black bag, a body bag, followed by his parents. The only person missing was Gerard, and he was missing because he was the one being carried away. I remember being stuck where I stood, my eyes unable to break way from the bag. Watching as they loaded him in the back of the vehicle and Mikey broke down.

I didn’t sleep for days, all I could think about was how it had been my fault. I could have stopped bullying him, but I never did and he was gone at his own hand. Mikey missed the rest of that week, I tried talking to him but it was like holding a conversation with a stone. I went to school though, and it was like he never existed. People talked about it for a day or two, but it was like he was never there after that. I would look for him in the mornings, walking next to Mikey but he was never there. In the classes we had been in together, his seat was left untouched, a cold reminder of what I had caused. Mikey had told me he had been depressed for a while, but he didn’t know it was that bad. The guilt consumed me as I watched my best friend whither away into nothing as he blamed himself for something he had no part in.

I often found myself sitting at his grave, talking to his headstone when I couldn’t sleep, it seemed that I hadn’t been getting any of it since the night he took his life. On those nights I would think back on what I could remember about him that didn’t involve me being an ass, which left me with only a few. The entire time I had known of him, he had never been one with bad things to say, he never fought back when people treated him like shit like I did. He would just absorb it and watch, he never spoke back unless he asked you if you were finished so he could leave. Now there was nobody to absorb the hate, the painful words that had left my mouth so many times. There was no Gerard to take the blows, just my memory of it all.

It didn’t take very long, I’d say two or three months for me realize that I had needed him. I began to ache with every breath I took when I would walk into our class. Praying that I would walk in and see that long haired hazel eyed boy sitting at his desk. Every day when I walked in, it was empty. Internal rage set in with every passing day, his vacancy began to mock me like the unknown knew what I was going through. It made me wonder, every night in bed, I would constantly ask myself what if? What if I had known before then, just how badly I needed him. If I had known would he still be alive?