I lost my breath, my ability to think. Everything was lost in the thick fog of surreality. My emotions inundated me and my chest tightened in an attempt to breathe. Maybe I was going crazy. Maybe I had finally reached my breaking point. Maybe I was trying to bury my hidden feelings under a lie of tragic dealings. Or maybe this was really happening. A familiar voice tugged at me and I felt my body move on its own. Or maybe I willed it unconsciously. I didn’t know. My mind cried out the thought: I DON’T KNOW. Hot tears stung my eyes and my vision was obscured by human contact, the likes of which I was unfamiliar with. I made out a few words. God, taken away. Better place. But one thought filled the broken fragments of my mind; DEAD.

Legs carried me upstairs to a room with sinks and stalls. In the mirror stood an unfamiliar person. Hair messy. Face blotchy. Eyes full of pain. I felt cold water on my face. The figure in the mirror rubbed her eyes and dried her face. Legs back to the bleachers. Mind on the edge of reality. Heart smashed to bits and thrown in a black hole. Hands shook and eyes looked around through foggy glass. Words spoken carried me the other side of the room and a little girl, soaked in pool water, ran towards us. Eyes squinted and a lost mind tried to pick up the fragments of a broken reality.

Then they came: the food and given water, tears and sympathetic words spoken from another universe. I wanted to be left alone, but I knew better than to say so. Body wrapped in a blanket, in the comfort of a bed, and emotions choked me in the eerie silence of the night. More tears. More heartbreak. Trying to accept. Trying not to fall apart. One thought formed in the broken fragments of my mind. HE IS DEAD.

A boy visited me in my dreams. Tall, always smiling. For once, it seemed, I was able to make sense of my surroundings.  The boy’s delicate, almond shaped eyes shone. Sometimes they blazed with anger, dark and colored with emotion. His boyish voice sounded and his multicolored jacket stood out amongst the monotonous gray. He wore the sneakers he always did, white and worn out. Headphones played music to his ears and he nodded his head to the beat. He wore darkly shaded sunglasses that gave off the aura of mysteriousness, an analogy for himself. The scene changed. There was a girl standing with the boy, laughing as she playfully punched him. The girl was me. Then came the last day of school. A hug and a goodbye never meant to be the last. Scene change again; a grave and a coffin. Figures obscured by black veils. The boy, locked in an immortal sleep.

More memories came, flooding my mind. I stood with my friends at our usual spot, the willow tree that stood in the back of the building in which we had classes. A picture was nailed into the trunk of the tree, marking it as a dedication to a long gone seventh grader. My finger traced the outline of the small picture and I looked back at my friends, as they were carelessly laughing. I looked back at the picture. I’ll probably never have to go through the pain of losing a friend, I thought. If only I had known. A thought formed in the broken fragments of my mind, back in my deformed reality. My dreamworld became a reminiscence. HE IS GONE FOREVER.

Morning came and with it a bright sun rose. It was ironic, funny almost how the sun never seemed to care how one felt. It just did its job no matter what. My eyes stung and my heart ached. I forced myself out of bed to get ready for my extra classes. It was a summer I had been looking forward to. A summer that meant a new beginning, change, all the things I needed. Rather than one of affirmative changes, it had become one of nightmares.

The girl in the mirror looked fine. But the girl standing in front of it felt broken. With a sigh, I began to go through my regular morning routine. Wash my face, brush my teeth, change. After I was finished, I stared into the eyes of the girl in the mirror. I closed my eyes. There was no denying it. It was time for me to accept it. I had lost one of my best friends.

Day consisted of crying in bathrooms with my one friend that had class with me. Crying for him. I exchanged emails with my countless other friends. The fragments of a broken reality ostensibly began to mend themselves. My heart did not. Extra work in preparation for an upcoming mock trial left no room for unnecessary sentiments, and the silence of the night left no room for unnecessary sleep. The crying did not help my feelings of impotence that were already buried deep within me. My initial obsession with my internal weakness grew and nothing seemed to get better.

Deeper and deeper I fell into an endless abyss.  My feelings were hidden beneath fake smiles, yet my anger and sorrow kept seeping through cracks in my wall of glass. A trembling hand was losing its grip on the world. On everything.

It took a while, a long while, before I was able to feel and act normally again, whatever normal was, I suppose. Normal was the last thing I felt like I would ever know, but it happened. The comfort of my friends provided a safe, pseudo enclosure from everything. It was my distraction.

I must have known, somehow, that my protective guard wouldn’t last forever, for my artificial happiness began to fade away, replaced with a level of melancholy I had not known before. It was a feeling I wished to never know. The tears returned, hidden behind locked doors and a throbbing chest. Or maybe they never went away in the first place. Maybe they were locked up inside me, refused the freedom to be let out by me and my fixation on becoming emotionally stronger. Weakness had become a fear, as did fear itself. It was something I thought would never vanish, the weight of a thousand morose hearts.

The return came suddenly; a smile.

A warm, tangible smile and a pleasant sound from the bottom of my throat, genuine and extraordinary. Slowly, slowly, the girl in the mirror began to feel whole again, miraculous and welcomed. A crack still traveled the length of her heart, but her broken reality and broken mind began to form into something new. Something that had known the pain of loss. The pain of the angel who says goodbye.