You're a Fuck up! 

You're ruining their lives! 

No one really loves you! 

You've only ever been a plaything for unhealthy emotional outbursts! 

You're a judgmental piece of shit!

No wonder everyone you think loves you or cares for you ends up dying or hurting you more! 

They're screeching at the top of their lungs.

I can no longer hear the cars on the street beside me or the rumbling thunder in the distance. All I hear are the bitter and acidic voices in my mind telling me to just stop.

Stop trying to be this way. Stop fighting us. Stop using people. Stop hurting people. Stop ruining everyone's lives. Stop being selfish. Stop being weak. Just... 

Stop.

I can feel my feet abusing the concrete sidewalks through my converse. Any sense of reasoning I can muster tells me I'm running now. My eyes are still clouded from the tears and my head is still down. My hair is in my eyes but I don't care despite being able to barely see where I'm going. I know this path because I've walked it many times. Now it's time for me to walk it one more time, in her footsteps.

It's time for me to follow her example and finally listen to what she's been telling me.

Eventually I stop running, making a turn and sit on a support beam on the side of the bridge. 

I love to sit and look out into the rough sea, to look down at the jagged rocks below. I like to let my feet dangle from the edge and imagine I'm flying. I'll listen to the calls of seagulls and wonder what their life is like, not a care in the world. It feels so freeing being here but at the same time, I'm feeling so many emotions resurface that it's suffocating.

I bring one leg up to my chest and hug it with both my arms, letting the other hang off the beam. I remove one of my arms from the lonely hug and place it over the burgundy remains of my scorched past. To be honest I'm kind of surprised no one's cleaned the blood yet but I don't care anymore.

I use the same hand, bringing it to my bag to pull out my mother's journal. I've never read it and I guess I never will, not that it matters. She left me something else along with the journal. It was a blade that she made when she was younger since my deceased grandfather was a blacksmith. She put a purple gem that she found in the woods with her mother and placed it in the middle. The crystal was decorated with a unique symbol that I've never been able to link to anything (although it could be in her journal). I usually keep it wrapped up or keep it in my holster because when I see the crystal it reminds me of the one thing I remember about her...

her eyes.

I look down at it and rub my finger up against the sharp blade. I throw it up and catch it backwards, intentionally slamming it into the beam next to me. It jabs into the metal and screeches as I pull the knife down to make another tally. Once I get to the bottom I wiggle the dagger to remove it and inspect my wall. 

It's covered in almost a hundred jagged and un-even lines. I mark it every time I come here so I can remember every time I've ever hit a low point. Some are rusted over from years ago, others are fresher, albeit, the purple paint is cracked and peeling around all of them. That might just be from the occasional fog and sea salt applied by rising tides.

A few droplets fall onto my knife as I look into the blade that was once painted red. I want to paint it again. I want to bask in the colors and I want relief... I want warmth and freedom but freedom is too messy and complicated for this cruel world. 

I'm just free falling at this point aren't I? So instead of being pushed off I might as well... jump.

After rewrapping the blade I grab my journal. I write a message in there for Shiro to read when people discover where I jumped... not that anyone will care. Shiro will probably be celebrating the fact that he doesn't need to take care of me anymore. They'll probably dance on my ashes and throw my coffin into the sea (if I'm lucky enough to get a coffin, they're kinda expensive).

I rip out the page, date it, and stuff it in my bag along with my birth mom's journal, the blade, and my own journal. I place the straps of the bag on a rusty but sturdy nail next to me and sigh before standing up.

I take a deep breath... the salt of the sea's mist, the wind of a brewing storm, the comforting scent of gasoline, motor oil on car engines, and the other faint and subtle smells of this town. 

I take one step...

for my mother on the other side.

I take a second step...

For my deceased heroic father.

A third step...

For my big brother Shiro.

A final step...

for all those I hurt... may this act bring you peace of mind.

My knees bend and it seems like the world starts to pace in slow motion, as my converse leave the safety of the support beam. This act is a rebellion, it is a peace treaty, and it's another step towards freedom.

I can almost feel the polished silver gates of heaven... well maybe not heaven. I don't want to go to heaven nor do I deserve to go (besides it's not real cause if it were than god has had lots of fun fucking around with my life and we're about to have some words).

Then I'm pulled back... my body is flying backwards and I'm being pulled away from the grasp death holds on me. His boney fingers are peeling away, why is death abandoning me? I thought I needed relief... pain is my relief. 

Not even death wants me... I need it to end, I can't handle any of this anymore. The pain I'd feel the second my skull was pierced by the jagged edges of the rocks below, then silence. It's supposed to solve everything! I'm supposed to finally be happy, to go someplace better! Some place I'll be excepted and loved!  

I never felt the warmth love provides. I've wanted to but I never had the chance nor the willingness to find it. 

But this feeling around my waist... it brought me back to the beam. It felt like time was rewinding and trying to tell me there was something else I needed to do before I left this world. Then I realized that this tightening around my stomach wasn't metaphorical. 

Something was physically latching onto me and little did I know in those fifteen seconds I was suspended in the air and pulled between the realm of Life and Death...

This was the beginning of a whole new meaning to my much needed warmth, relief, 

and freedom.

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