I'll Never Forget Her

I’ll Never Forget Her

Some of you might know I suffer from some form of OCD, I hate missing anything, at all when it comes to my friends. I also suffer from massive guilt, not just from what I was before which I'll get to here in a minute, but now as well. I hate hurting people, in any way, and any time I do the OCD with the guilt just starts tearing at me, screaming at me that I really haven't changed from what I was, though I know that's a lie, and normally I can ignore that inner voice, but not when I hurt people, and what I’m about to tell you is something that haunts me every day.

Now, in all of my stories from now on I’m going to refer to the old me and myself as He, I, and We. The old me, we were truly terrible. We felt nothing, at all, except pain, fuck, this is hard to say. We didn’t feel love or hate, joy or sorrow, guilt or envy, we felt nothing except pain and that empty pit that was everything else.

Pain was everything, not just pain done to myself, but pain that could be inflicted on others, it was his obsession because there was nothing else he could feel, the rest was an empty void, and pain was the only thing that could fill it. We learned about pain in so many ways, and pain that wouldn't leave marks was what he craved most, because that was the easiest to use as a weapon while remaining unseen.

We… we went out to have dinner with our family, and our server was only a little older than I was, maybe a few years. I had never seen her before, but I assumed we went to the same school, I found out later she did. When she came to ask us for our order, we saw her eyes, and if only for a moment there was nothing but pure pain in her eyes. His interest was sparked and we continued to watch her. We'd see it every now and then, in a smile or covered glimpse of her eyes, she was suffering more than anyone else we had ever met.

I found out later that her boyfriend’s mother had called her just a day or so ago and told her he killed himself because he couldn't be with her due to the distance they were apart, she told her she was the reason he was dead. The boyfriend hadn't killed himself; the mother was lying to try and break them up. After we finished our food, our family got up to leave and I was last to the door, had to be a gentleman and make sure things were tidy and to hold the door open for everyone else, and she gave us one last glance before we left, with a sad smile.

We saw everything in that moment, all of her pain and suffering, and we knew that she had lost the only thing she had left, hope. We knew that she needed anyone to be there for her at that moment, even if just to say it was gonna be all right, for someone to just notice her and let her feel some kind of love, but he didn't care, she was already in as much pain as she could possibly be and we had learned enough already to know about it, we couldn’t hurt her more and she couldn’t teach us anything else. We knew that if we left right then, that if we didn't go over to her, or just even say it's going to be all right, that we wouldn't see her again, we didn't know why but we knew we wouldn't.

Two days later she disappeared with an I-pod her boyfriend had sent her, her favorite backpack, and her father’s gun. She was found two days later in the front cab of a semi-truck she had broken into. I've never forgotten her, I remember her face, her name, the way she looked at us, that sadness, and eventually that look of lost hope, one that I saw in the mirror every day for the past 7 years of my life.

There's a million things I can say about what happened, her family should've noticed sooner, her boyfriend's mother should've never said those terrible things, and so many other things, but that doesn't change what we did. We saw all that she was going through, and we knew what would happen if we left, and we did it knowing that full well, because she didn't matter to him, he could get nothing from her. There’s no sugar coating it, and while there’s no guarantee we could’ve saved her, we CHOOSE to do nothing, despite knowing everything.

Before you try to tell me that’s all right, it’s not, and I remember every single day. I know  that trying to go up to someone like that to help them can be hard but it wouldn’t have been for us. We weren’t hesitant about anything, we feared nothing at that time, she simply meant nothing to us, so we didn’t care about her. Now, I’m sorry if this hurts you to read this and I’m sorry if it scares you.

To anyone who wants to know if I’m all right, no, I haven’t been all right for 13 years. My body is in constant pain every day, and my mind is shattered into a million pieces both from a number of disorders and guilt, BUT; the pieces of my heart and soul have been put back together, and the glue is finally starting to take hold, so I’m fine and eventually my mind will catch up. I hope everyone has a great day/night, and I hope that this somehow helps some of you.