"I don't really know the situation well enough to throw out my opinion and not sound preachy," Bryan said. The coffee house was dead in the mid-Sunday afternoon. The three lit cigarettes provided more motion in the place than it's inhabitants did. Smoke danced forth from my lips and drifted toward the ceiling.
It seemed like Sunday was so long ago already. I began to wonder what day it was. I had been sleeping in my room for so long. The last thing I remembered was writing the letter. I hated Chris when I wrote that letter. I needed to talk to him, just to hear the sound of his voice, but he kept turning me away. I realized that I had carried around a sick feeling of stress with me all my life and that every day it only got worse. If it weren’t Chris tearing me apart, it would have been someone else. I wasn't made to survive in this world alone and I knew it.
"That's alright," I said.
"No Bryan, you always have really good advice. What is it?" Kate said. I really wasn't in the mood to hear what Kate's new best friend had to say about my situation that he knew nothing about.
"Well I can't leave him. I'd only feel worse. You guys don't understand," I said. I removed my sunglasses that had earlier been placed over my eyes to hide their tearstained redness.
"I know exactly how you feel. You remember when I was like that," Kate said. She was making reference to her terrible boyfriend John that she was with for two years. That relationship almost ended our friendship.
"No, it's just really fucking hard to talk things through with someone that won't talk to you," I said in response. "I just can't believe how he turns everything back onto me. Chris said he called last night, but nothing showed up on caller ID when I checked it. He just went up to the chamber without me and somehow that was my fault." The chamber used to be a much better hang out, but it had changed and so had the people that went to it. I missed how it used to be.
"Fuck him Sarah, you're gonna have to get over this. He almost tore us apart last time you got like this. I don’t want to lose you again," Kate said. She was a nihilist so her hatred wasn’t taken too harshly.
"Sarah, you're far too beautiful to do this to yourself over one guy. He's a guy that you hate anyways. As bad as you think you would be alone, it can't be worse than when you're with him," Bryan said honestly. He was unfortunately the only optimist out of the four of us. Matt sat quietly smoking his cigarette and enjoying his large coffee.
I got up from my desk and walked around my room. I thought about what happened earlier Sunday. I remembered being at Kate's house waiting to go out for coffee. I was doing everything I could to talk to Chris, but all of our phone conversations turned from me being mad at him to him being mad at me. Nikki did everything she could to console me, but I refused to let her help. She did know how it felt; her last relationship was just like my relationship with Chris.
I had felt like shit for long enough. I got up and walked into the bathroom. Upon opening the door, vomit almost leapt out of me. In the tub a body rested. Her wrists were cut across the vein. On the floor, a few empty bottles of pills were scattered mindlessly. I looked at her long black hair and thought for a moment.
"Sarah, you're far too beautiful to do this to yourself over one guy," I said as I kneeled down next to the corpse. I realized I must have strained my willpower trying to talk to Chris. I hated myself more, knowing that I had trapped myself for eternity now. Suicide was not a release from life. Those who kill themselves cling to something in this world and are forced to relive it over and over again. It was a cruel torture for those that have already been through so much. The world turned grey as I realized my error. The color seemed to pour out of everything.
“It wasn’t worth it,” I thought to myself. I prepared to relive all of my worst experiences. I drifted through the air as the damned soul that I now was and understood that I could never escape the world I hated so much.