*Trigger warning- suicide and depression* Helena by My Chemical Romance would be perfect to listen to while reading this.
She lay on the floor, pounding against the orange hardwood. She wanted to rip them out, tear her fingernails along with them—but she didn’t. That part of her stayed buried. The anger she harbored in her heart.
When she was little, she used to let it out in uncontrollable bursts—feelings bubbling up to the surface and exploding. But now she kept them submerged, only allowing a fraction of the real anger to escape.
If she didn’t keep it contained, the TV would be smashed, the door broken, the windows shattered. The dogs would scatter into a corner, terrified. The walls might even run with blood.
But no. Instead, she sat on the floor, her legs too weak to hold her up, and cried.
A phone call minutes earlier had sealed the deal. She had finally gotten in touch with her sister, who answered the big question. The “what” was over. Now came the whys and the hows—and one sharp sword hung over her head as she awaited more answers.
Suicide.
Was it?
Did she?
For years—decades—she had been pulling her friend back from the cliff. Not just her, but many others. But the edge always existed. The darkness never went away; you just learned how to let in more light.
Did she let in the light, or did she succumb to the dark?
“She succumbed,” her best friend’s sister told her, then explained the hows. Now, alongside her on the floor, sat guilt—an entirely different kind of friend.
Guilt for not calling after the fight.
Guilt for ignoring the gut feeling to reach out.
Guilt because, for the last two months of her friend’s life, she wasn’t there.
And she never would be again.
Soon, the walls—the ones she wanted to bleed—began closing in. The warm, welcoming sanctuary she’d created felt like a prison. A dungeon. The air was too thin; she couldn’t breathe. She had to leave. She had to flee. So she put on the clothes her best friend had given her and ran out the door.
She texted her coworkers to let them know what happened. The only safe place she could think of—the only place where she wouldn’t do something reckless—was with them.
It wasn’t a permanent plan. Her mother and friends were already on their way. But it was somewhere to rest. Somewhere to be. Somewhere with life and noise instead of the sinking feeling in her chest threatening to tear her apart.
The drive was the longest she had ever taken.
She’d driven from California to Michigan. Twice.
She’d driven herself to the hospital in such pain that Tylenol, morphine, and two Dilaudids couldn’t touch it.
She’d driven sick, sad, and sobbing.
But nothing compared to this.
Her insides screamed. She wept. The road wavered in and out of focus as she tried to keep her eyes on it. The car was silent—and would stay silent for a long time. The thought of cheerful music or even a true crime podcast felt unbearable. Her own pain was deafening. Any other sound would be too much.
So, in silence, she drove the forty-five minutes to work. Uncaring. Heavy. Lost.
When she arrived, she sat at the bar and placed her tote bag on the counter, using it as a pillow for her head. Her coworker greeted her, hugged her—but she kept most of the turmoil locked inside.
It was one thing to lean on someone’s shoulder. It was another to spill your pain at their feet. To gut yourself open and let them see the raw inside. Was it still even there? It felt like acid was coursing through her veins. Maybe she’d already been hollowed out, replaced by the numbness that immediate grief brought—a drug in its own right, forcing you to move when you didn’t know how or why.
Why?
She still didn’t have an answer. And as she sat there, cracking occasional jokes to make her coworkers feel less uneasy in the proximity of her sadness, she thought about the why.
She could list the reasons she might do it herself:
A failed writing career.
Bills she couldn’t pay.
A life that felt lonely and unfulfilled.
But what was her friend’s why? What was the final straw?
She wanted to demand answers. But she knew she wasn’t the only one grieving. Hundreds of little lights across the country had dimmed that day. So instead—though her brain thrived on understanding—she let the why go.
For now.
The bar closed, but she stayed. Hours became the way she measured the time since she’d found out. Already, she had lived hours without her best friend.
Her mom appeared, and so did friends, in an SUV chariot ready to whisk her away. Food sat on the floor in a bag for her. Hugs surrounded her. So did questions. Her best friend was thirty-two—young, vibrant, and now gone. There would be questions for days.
But she just wanted it all to stop. Not the questions—they kept her mind moving—but life itself. The breath in her lungs. The turning of the earth. Because there was no way her life could keep existing without her best friend.
Would she break?
She wanted to. Desperately. But that wasn’t who she was. She was the one who kept going. One foot in front of the other. One decision, then another.
Even though she wanted the world to stop, she kept moving.
They found themselves at an underground bar, beautiful and lush, and then at another, loud and noisy.
“Helena” by My Chemical Romance came on, and the tears escaped. How many times had they listened to that song? How many hours had been spent with that album on repeat? Why now?
She had always believed that music was how your ancestors and guides spoke to you. Ever since boot camp, when she’d wanted to quit, and “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley—on a speaker that rarely played—blared out. Was this her best friend? Was she telling her something? Was she saying she was still here?
Because that’s what she needed. Everyone around her loved her, and she cherished them for it. But she needed her best friend. She needed her to laugh, call her by her nickname, sit beside her, and say sorry. Tell her she’d just gone off the grid.
But her friend didn’t show. She checked her phone—nothing there either. The messages were deleted after their fight. All she had left was the cropped hoodie and sweatpants she was wearing.
And as they left the bar and the reality sank in, she didn’t fully accept it—but she understood. What she was hoping for, what she was wishing for, wasn’t going to happen. She couldn’t accept the death, but she knew it was over.
Her knees gave out. She fell to the ground as her friends held her and she cried. For once, she didn’t care how it looked. She didn’t care who saw. She sat on the curb, begging for a miracle.
There was nothing in this world she wanted more than her friend back. She would give anything—anything—because her friend was her favorite person. Her north star. The one who knew all her secrets and held the password to her soul.
And she was gone.
Even crying on a warm curb in Ann Arbor wouldn’t bring her back.
Nothing would.
From the moment her best friend decided she no longer wanted to be here, everything changed.
Her life was no longer her own. It was marked—captured—by her friend’s death. And she knew nothing would ever be the same again.