It’s never really clear how things like these start, really, friendships, or, any relationship, for that matter. There’s usually something like a first meeting, maybe an acceptance or acknowledgement of a shared reality of an existential plain. Except that never happens, not for me. I can’t quite recall meeting any of my friends; they just happened upon me one day, and have slowly, heartbreakingly faded ever since. It always hurts when they go. In fact, my brief existence is comprised of a sort of youthful tiredness, in emotion, in stature, in will to live. I never have time to comprehend what’s going on. That was what life is, right? The constant struggle to remain alive in the maelstrom of chaos and hatred and love and everything in between until the inevitable grasp of death overtakes the aforementioned being and urges them to a place unknown? There is no space for comprehension; there was too much pandemonium involved with living that it doesn’t make sense to take the time to initiate a friendship, or, for that matter, even merely partake in one.

The sharp, soft, violet, colourless void is seeping into me like water rushing to fill a sunken, punctured capsule of air as the latter quickly fled; depression and meaninglessness replacing the feeling of wholeness and breath and life. It didn’t matter, I reason with himself, floating, ever-floating, in the abyss to which I’ve confined himself. “It” was an interchangeable and infinitely differing variable, in this case, at least, regarding what did and did not matter. I was an “it”. Family was an “it”. Love was an “it”, friendship was an “it”, life was an “it”. Everything and nothing can be “it” at once, worthless and meaningful at the same point marked in the fickle continuum of time.

I’m fairly sure- certainty was rare and, in honesty, dangerous- that weed is what keeps me from completely sinking into that rift of giving in to the urges of his abyss of nothingness and everything. It makes me feel. It doesn’t make me feel good, but it smooths the numbness I feel under a metaphorical carpet of emotion, forgotten, until I sober myself and it comes crawling back like a mosquito with its wings torn off and all but one of its legs missing; pathetic, ugly, useless, yet still hunting for a way to still be. Still looking for a way to exist, to consume, to overtake, and to survive.

I would have been guilty of a falsehood, had I suggested that I didn’t envy those who had the resilience to survive in such a cruel environment such as life and, atop that, desire that survival. Over time, I’ve grown to adopt the theory that those such people did not exist, and this existential plain was comprised entirely of people like me, that felt the same way I did about the universe, but that managed, somehow, to be so much stronger and to keep living. Perhaps, I offer myself, as a scenario which was more engaging to me, they had just managed to put themselves on a sort of auto-pilot that I haven’t yet figured out how to activate.
I withdraw myself from the darkness of the recesses of my mind and, hazily, engage in attempting the recognition of my auditory and visual environment. There is a boy, long hair and sad, angry eyes -my brother, my mind supplies- shrieking in my direction, words that I am incapable of registering. Another voice, I instinctively know it to be my mother’s without being able to immediately locate her visually, sounded concerned, gentle, even, as she speaks to my sister for me in the apparent absence of my understanding. Speaking, or at least, speaking in the distorted human sense of the word, was amusing in the way that it was a mere collection of sounds bearing meaning through association. It was always mentioned as if speech and thought were two in the same, despite their obvious differences that proved vast. Speech was for another; a mean of communicating an idea or a need, whereas thought was so… private. Thought was for contemplation and hiding away the crude work-in-progresses of half-baked ideas and acknowledgements of various things which were to be shared with no one. Thought was so much more sacred, yet overlooked so often.
I shake myself, not visibly, of course, so as not to arise concern, but mentally. I am drifting again into that over analytical state of being which urges me to stray further from human contact and behavioral standards. I absentmindedly wonder what primal instinct made that concept so unmistakably terrifying, to not be able to communicate. Maybe that was what made speech such a highlighted and worshipped topic. I blink, once, twice, gathering my surroundings again. Yes, my brother and my mother still remain around me; it seems that only a moment had passed in this latest bout of dissociative thought. My brother and I are seated at the dark mahogany of the dinner table ironically being used for breakfast, whereas my mother stands, protectively, hovering over my shoulder and staring my brother down with her soft, yet insistent, stare and stern voice.
I look away from the direction of my brother like it will block out the sound of his criticisms, which, as I am far too aware of, it will not. It will merely spare me the shame of having to look at him. I don’t deserve to be in this family, not with my mother, who works herself too hard to take her of us, or with my brother who honestly seems to have problems and skills beyond my very comprehension. It disgusts me, sometimes, the guise under which I’ve categorized myself; I treat myself like I’m special, like I deserve more than I am being given. I, in turn, receive more attention and more treatment, whereas those tending to me obtain more stress and more problems that, honestly, aren’t worth the struggle. I wonder why they haven’t yet left me behind. They should, I remark silently. I’m not worth them.