I'm Still Here

          This doesn’t feel real to me, it’s like I woke up in some sort of twisted nightmare. None of this is really happening and nothing’s real anymore. I’m not real; at least I don’t feel that way. It’s like I’m not even alive and I’m just a ghost standing here in the midst of strangers who can’t even see me. It’s like I’m standing behind a two-way mirror and through the glass I can see them. Their desperate cries are filling the room, come back—come back please! And their tears I can taste; tears I long forgot how to shed.

          They hold each other completely unaware of my presence among them and I wish the one I could be holding right now is you. But you’re gone.

          I sit here next to a girl who goes to our school but I can’t remember her name. She was never a friend of mine or of yours. I think her parents made her come because they know your parents. There’s a lot of kids here we never talked to who never even bothered to look twice. I wish there was somebody that I could just talk to who knows how much you meant to me. But they don’t know that I’m not really here. My body is just a shell like yours now because I died that night. I died with you, Anya.

          Your parents are sitting up front and they are in tears. I bet you never expected to see your father cry, huh? And I bet he never expected to lose you like this. Maybe they really did love you after all, more than you claimed, more than you ever really knew. I see the pain in their eyes and I wish I could do something to make it stop but there is nothing. It’s too late now, baby. This was your permanent solution to a couple temporary problems.

          Now you’ve caused a hundred new problems, opened a thousand new wounds. I would say something but there’s nothing I can think of. Besides, your dad never wanted anything to do with me. I’m sure this won’t change anything and I’m sure he has himself convinced that all of this is my fault, giving them reason to hate me even more. Maybe it really is my fault. Did you really do this for me? Or was there so much more to it than that? How bad did it have to get for you to completely let go and bid the world adieu and a fuck you too?

          You always said they never cared. I guess you’re wrong. If nobody cared about you then nobody would be here crying their fucking eyes out with their hows and whys and all the other stuff they cry out to the God you said that you didn’t believe in. I don’t know what I believe in anymore but here’s what I know: No matter how bad it could have got I would have always been there for you and even if you were right and no one else in the world loved you, you can be sure that I did. I still love you now and I always will.

          Maybe I should have thought twice before I left you with nothing but a goodbye, but one of us was bound to see it coming. We were dying together—we were killing ourselves with every hit we took. Maybe if I hadn’t have got out that could have been both us they found on your bedroom floor with a letter reading I’m sorry and a whole bunch of other bullshit you wrote down before you went and offed yourself. Did it make you feel better, to leave the world some solace after you were gone? Or maybe it was only solace for you while dying.

          I don’t get you at all, you know that? You were always crazy and how you drove me crazy! I would have done anything for you at anytime, whether I was your friend or your boyfriend or whatever role I played in your twisted life. I might have even taken the valium for you and the overdose too if I could trade you places. But you’re in a box now and you don’t look like yourself at all, at least not how I remember you. When did you ever wear a dress? I guess it doesn’t matter to you because you’re gone now. You’re just a body, an empty shell—just like me.

          So here I sit in the midst of a hundred kids I go to school with whom I’ve never seen outside of hallways and swarms of pretty preppy girls who all claim they were your best friend. But they never knew you, not like I knew you. At least I thought I knew you but I guess I never thought you’d be the one to go and take your own life. Then again, maybe I knew that all along and I just chose to ignore it.  Maybe you were calling out to me the whole time to reach out and save you from drowning and I just looked the other way and let you go under.

          The service is taking forever. Something about shepherds in valleys of shadows of death, but I don’t think anybody’s really paying much attention. I’ve heard this sermon before; the minister preached something similar at my dad’s funeral. I guess it’s the usual service for funerals. But everybody’s crying too hard to really take it in. Some woman gets up and she’s talking now. You’re eulogy Anya—remember when you said you wanted to write it? Well I guess it’s too late for that now unless you want them to read your “I’m sorry” letter. She doesn’t call you by the name I know you, she calls you Lisa. All of your family members do. I think it’s kind of nice but it’s too bad that Lisa isn’t here and Anya isn’t either. Nobody’s here. Not you, not me.

          An old lady sits behind an organ and she sings a song about a lighthouse. If you were here I think you would die all over again hearing this. It’s nothing like the stuff you would want to hear. It isn’t screaming blood lyrics about hate and love and suicide. I don’t think anyone’s really in the mood for the stuff that’s no longer heard blasting out your bedroom door. I guess we can take lighthouses and old ladies for now. Everyone starts crying more and now I feel awkward like I want to run just as fast and far away as I can to escape from this mess.

          I remember once you said that you hated funerals so much that you wanted yours to be a mosh pit with blasting music. I remember the hard rock that tore through us and ran through our bodies at the same time as we thrashed around crazily, shoving and knocking into people and raising hell and screaming at the tops of our lungs just because we could. And then when the music would slow down and everyone would raise lighters and sway to the band. I would hold you so close to my body and I wouldn’t let go of you until we heard the beginning notes of our favorite song. Then before we knew it we were jumping up and down and screaming again, raising hell again in a swarm of heat and sweat and noise and thousands of people moving to the beat and shouting out the lyrics.

          In my mind I’m there now, in the pit that your funeral was supposed to be. The lighthouse hymn has been replaced by a new song that’s inspired by you and the verses are the words that were in your letter and your meaning behind them. And the chorus—well, we all know the chorus. And nobody’s crying but they’re singing instead, the tortured lyrics of your song and the funeral candles are the lighters from the seats where your family sits to watch the band; but me, me I’m in the center of the mosh pit. And in the next lines a wave of anger rushes over me and I just want to scream and start punching things and whoever stands in my way and I’m in a battle that we used to find ourselves except now I’m alone and it’s me against a host of other funeral attendants crushing me against their weight and I’m fighting back, I’m fighting against the tears that never fall. 

          It’s over now and I find myself back here in my seat next to the girl I don’t know. I’ve fallen back to the reality that you abandoned long ago. A line has formed by your casket of friends and family members gathering to have a final look at your cold, stiff body before they throw you in a hole in the ground and cover you with earth. There’s no getting out of that one, not from six feet under. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out—you remember that old song we used to laugh to? Not so funny anymore, is it?

          You’re mom and dad just left your side and now they’re walking away together… they’re actually together. I bet that’s another thing you never thought would happen. And after everyone else gets their last look at you with their stupid mumbling “oh she looks so lovely” and “she’s at peace now” and all the shit nobody ever really wants to hear at these things.

          So it’s my turn to say goodbye for the last time. You look like you’re sleeping or passed out or something. But you’re stiff and you’re cold and you’re gone. But I’m still here and I’m not leaving. There are so many ways out than the one you chose. I look at an old picture of you sitting on a shelf beside a candle and a flower bouquet. You look a lot younger there and it’s hard to recognize you without the black makeup.

          Elisabeth Anya Davies is the name written on the roses you hold in your folded hands against your chest. It’s a hollowed name without an owner now. Empty like your body, like my heart. And before they carry you away to your final resting place I say my last goodbye by kissing the tip of my finger and touching the side of your face. Then I turn my face away from you not to hide my tears, just the lack of them. But the sting, Anya, is all too real.