It’s almost worse than dying. The agony of being alive weighed against the peace of death. It’s incredibly unhealthy, but how are you supposed to get better when the alternative is worse? The alternative sinking below both living and dying, weighed against experience and found lacking.
You never knew what they felt about it, never were able to assuage the fears echoing in your mind. You couldn’t let them go, even when your mind was screaming that they hated you. You couldn’t leave their side for a moment, not without every atom in your body screaming for them, without you wanting to scream. The distance between you stretching out across stars and cosmos, so infinitely big. You clung on like they were your only lifeline, holding you up above a roaring sea.
You couldn’t let them go, even when you tried to reason with yourself. Cold logic trying to douse the burning house, yet failing at every turn. You couldn’t help but feel anger followed by guilt, because you understood, you really did. You wanted to respect them, respect their boundaries in a way that you used to struggle with. As if crossing back over the boundary erased the tracks leading over them.
Even when you accepted that there was nothing you could do, that you agreed with them and wished the best for them, you still couldn’t replace your anger with kindness. The anger smoldered in you no matter how hard you tried to douse it. Your anger attempting to cauterize the hurt in you, trying to stop the bleeding before you left bloody fingerprints everywhere you touched.
It hurt so much, trying to argue with your emotions, trying to shove them in boxes, never to see the daylight again. It made dying a fantasy, the horrors of being alive too much to fight through.
And still, you couldn’t let them go.