Status: Incomplete & Inactive... for now, anyway

Melancholy Romance

September 23, 2004

Today would have been Ritchey's 18th birthday. It's odd to think that the mass that once possessed such a complex soul is now nothing more than a pile of bones; packaged away in the a fancy box for the rest of eternity. He had an opinion on everything, a million ideas, and a million more sorrows that just vanished. The things that truley define a person mean nothing in the coming of death; once the carrier dies, the mind dies. A person could possess the most healthful mind you could ever dream of, but that person's entire body and soul could be destoyed by the uncontrollable dividing of cells. Someone else could be mentally decapatated, and their body and soul will still live on until that decapitation reverts itself over to the body. I guess you could say that Ritchey was the latter, since his mentallity led him to destroying his carrier; in turn, cutting off his soul.

My mom tried comforting me this morning with chocolate chip waffles and a speech about how Ritchey's "sitting on a cloud with Kurt Carbain" (yes, she referred to him as "Carbain"), figuring it would make me feel that he was happy, and, in return, make me happy. I just tossed the waffles into the garbage when she went up to iron her shirt, and faked a smile when she came back down.

I wish people would stop trying to understand, and just appreciate the fact that they don't. It's one of those things that you really have to expirence to grasp, and once you've expirenced it, you're days will never again consist of more than melancholy emptiness; leading up to the day you mangled body is found dangling from a local bridge, and your exterior finally matches your interior.

That's one thing that me and Ritchey always had in common: we were always trying to find a way to make our exteriors match our interiors; the only way we felt we could successfully communicate with the outside world. Ritchey would bleed because he felt his soul, personality, and ultimate sense of self were leaking out of him like the slow but constant blood flow of a cut. I would bleed so my body would be as mangled as my mind; scares covering what was once perfection. Ritchey drank to drown his brain in alcohol; the same way he felt his beliefs were drowning in their own ashes. I quit eating nearly in entirety so my miniscual body would get lost amongst the monsterous world; the same way my sense of euphoria lost itself amongst all nihilism in my mind. That's just the way we lived, and the only way we knew how to. Ironically enough, that's also proven to be the way we die. Something must have killed Ritchey mentally that night (February 28, 2003), causing him to kill his body in order to keep the symmetry alive.

I'll never forget that night. Even through all the grey clouds of despair and inadiquetcy that have fogged up my last few years, that night stands alone as the blackest smog I've ever treaded through... During the time period this event just so happens to fall in, I had been suffering from a spell of insomnia. I don't think Ritchey ever really slept, so I had been sneaking out to his place at night to escape from the mind-boggling isolation of my basement. It was fucking freezing that night. So cold, in fact, that simply being out in that weather gave me a nearly unbearable headache, and my legs became so stiff that I barely made it as far as I did before it happened: I was struck with a sudden numbness, and it wasn't from the cold, either. I went almost completely numb and I shook with a sense of fear so strong you'd swear it could kill. Every last bit of positivity had evaporated out of my body, and I couldn't help but be sucked into a state characterized by extreme paranoia and catastrophic fantasies. I guess you could call it a best friend's intuition, because I was absolutley convinced that something was wrong with Ritchey, and I hadn't seen or talked to him in more than an hour. I started walking faster once this feeling had settled over me; both to get to Ritchey's sooner to prove myself wrong and to avoid a panic attack in the freezing cold. I cut through a small park on my way, like I always did, and headed towards the puny bridge that connected the park to our pathetic excuse for a town square. I swear to you on all my memories, the feeling just built and built the closer I came to that bridge; the shivering grew more violent, the cold more numbing, and the knot in my stomach pulled so tightly it nearly snapped in two. The moment I stepped onto that bridge a sight entered my vision range that made me stop dead in my tracks:

It was Ritchey (or should I say, what once was Ritchey) dangling over the ice-coated river, as lifeless as a rag doll hangs from a little girl's grip. What was once a pale complexion was now the periwinkle grey of decay, except for a ring of violet as dark as night creeping out from beneath the ligature. The moment that image registered in my head I quickly switched into panic attack mode; no longer able to hold it back. Just as the hyperventilation started in, the thick white rope clenching ever-so-tightly around the neck of his lifeless carrier snapped from the cold, and his body plunged through the ice and disappeared into the water; at which point I passed out cold. I most likely would have died myself if Johnny hadn't woken up to a bad dream and ran to my room for comfort, only to find that I was nowhere in sight.

All that is now nothing more than memories. Hell, Ritchey himself is now nothing more than a memory, and boy does it ever kill me to have to admit that. We all seem to continue to personify the dead once they're gone, though, and I am no exception. Whenever days like this come around I find myself asking the standard questions "What would Richey want me to do about this?", "What if Ritchey were here", etc. Then it hits me: He's not here, and he has no mentality left to want me to behave in any way. It doesn't matter what Ritchey wants or how things would be different if he was here, because he doesn't even exist. He's dead, and that's the end of it; no more Ritchey. No more lyrics, no more talks, no more weekends discussing the mysteries of the universe in that rank pit of a basement, no one there to talk to, no more adventures... it's all as dead as he is.

Whatever. I'm sick of contemplating all this shit time and time again. Why continue to ask the same questions over and over again when the answers will always remain the same? Exactly; there is no good reason. I'm going to bed.
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Sorry for the lack of updates. I have a lt more written and simply forgot to get it uploaded. haha... Also, I realize there are huge gaps between the dates on these. I plan on filling them in before it's a finished product, and realize that posting what is here is kind of like spoiling later parts, I guess, but oh well. haha.