Humans logo

Toxicity

A Short Memoir of Friendship, Mental Illness, and Learning to Find Your Own Freedom

By Alastor KommerPublished 6 years ago 7 min read
Like

You exhaled. Your face is sunburned and freckled. I watch as the wind whirls your blue hair around, hitting your face like microfine whips. You smile at me, ripping grass out of the earth and watching it fly away. We are family, more like sisters than my own flesh and blood. Laying on my chest feeling roaring heat resonate on our skin, I have never felt more alive than when our hearts beat to the same rhythm.

I first met with you so many years ago now, my skin vibrating with fear of the unknown. We crossed paths and did a double take. One heart in two bodies, you appeared in the world as I did. Young, naive, practically fledglings to the world. We stood across from each other, needing no mirror to stare at our reflections.

Months passed and our bodies, once completely separate bodies, merged as one. I inhaled, you took a breath. My hand rose, you rested your palm against mine. I engulfed you in my arms, and you melted into my body, bones fusing, blood running in the same direction, muscles contracting at the same time and propelling our bodies forward into the brush of unknown.

We explored the world together. Setting our feet in each other’s uncharted territory, we tried to hack away the haze with machetes. Unearthing soil with our bare hands, it was more like mud damp with water and far more. We ripped up worms out of the slop and threw them into nearby streams to drown them from our minds. We replaced the bugs with ashes and decaying leaves, hoping to fill the gaping hole in the ground but never quite being able to seal it up properly.

We ignored the concept for a while, moving forward with our lives as though the worms were still alive and the dirt was as dry as bone. Every once in awhile, I would revisit the hole and you would follow, together digging it wider only to patch it up again with more death and pretend it never existed when it started to cave in.

And I fell through the hole that we dug together. It seemed as though one minute, we were trudging through the muck, slowed but successful, and the next I was in a freefall, wondering if I would ever fall low enough to hit the ground. Would I bounce? Or would my bones all shatter? Guts splattering the walls, brain matter leaking into the soil. No one would ever know it happened because I would be thousands of feet below the surface.

And rainwater would pour on me and rot my body. Or they would cover me up in hopes of preventing others from falling through? But instead of all of that, you dove in after me. And as we were shared a body, you floated across from me, head first, in a spiral. Circling each other, we called out to one another, arms outstretched attempting to grab each other, only to find that the other was just out of reach.

And at some point, after an eternity suspended in limbo, I came to the realisation that I was not falling at all; I was flying. And you were flying too, but it was concept that you couldn't comprehend. I ripped my wings open from the skin hiding them away. Erupting, spreading from wall to wall, I did my best to utilise them, and I rose an inch.

But you were still descending into darkness. You fell like a bomb, and I was waiting for you to explode. Again, as you did me, I dove after you, struggling to pull you up while the weight of both our bodies was too heavy for my fresh wings to carry. I dropped you. As I flapped as hard as I could, as my muscles tore apart, you slipped through my fingertips.

In slow motion, I watched your descent. I screamed after you, begged you to follow me, but you just stared in my direction with a hollow look in your eye. I hovered down deeper into the hole, knowing in the back of my mind that I could fly away at any time. I wanted to strengthen my wings before I took you up with me.

But when the life came back to your eyes, I saw you had no intent to follow me upwards, but rather to keep cascading into the darkness. You pulled me down with you, sang to me that your fall was my fault because I fell in the first place. It was as though it never occurred to you that you chose to jump in after me.

I wanted to keep on with you, but the pressure of the depths of life was suffocating me. Although my conscience was perhaps the most torn, I knew that I had to ascend alone. I dug my hand into your heart and grasped onto my soul which lay dormant in yours. I was afraid of living alone again, lost in the world. I remembered not a time without you as my doppelganger.

As I flew towards that shimmering light, I kept you in the back of my mind, waiting for you to return to me on your own terms. I imagined that, as I saw the world with an ever-growing sharpness, yours dulled. It became increasingly bleaker as you were content with falling deeper into the haze that we had once tried to hack away. What had happened to make you like this? Had I truly been the reason that you had ultimately given up on moving forward?

And so I blamed myself for your curse, and my wings weakened, became tired. I stayed stagnant for awhile, as though I was hovering through an air vent. At times, the breeze holding me up stopped blowing. I would fall steadily back to you until I remembered that the last thing I wanted to be in the world was like the person you had become — an empty shell of a human being with not a single feature reminiscent of who you used to be, poisoned by the tragedies of life, unable to escape the torment which you suffered everyday.

At some point for which I cannot recall, I grasped onto the ledge of the pit with my fingers. I pulled myself up onto the surface. I realised the mud which had once soaked us (me) to the bone had diminished, leaving grass and tulips in its place. The sun blared in my eyes, but I was content with it. I set my bare feet in the foliage and began to walk away from the hole; I walked away from you.

I was consumed with as much fear as the day we first met, as existing in my own form was unfamiliar at best. I waited not for you to follow my inhale, or to walk behind me. I simply moved on, no longer needing a partner to cut away the evil contaminating my mind. I was, as always should have been, autonomous.

You are now but a memory, a chapter I have written in my ever progressing Book of Life. There are times when I wish you were tangible once again, manifesting yourself on the corporeal plane, but you shall find stability on your time. I must let you realise that you are free to make your own decisions, free to realise your faults and the realities of your past, and free to fly with no one pushing you down. You are your own worst enemy. While I loved you, and after all this time I find myself still loving you, I do not miss what you became and I do not miss who I was because today I am free. Today, I am happy. Today, I am my own human being.

literature
Like

About the Creator

Alastor Kommer

Author-in-training, history buff, attempting to make it out alive, and overall jack of all trades

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.