Broken Words

I still miss him.

It's funny; okay, it isn't funny at all.  It's strange, I mean, that nearly five years have passed and I still think about him all the time.  I suppose I can't know if I was one of his best friends, but he was certainly one of mine, especially in seventh and eighth grade.  We were close friends as young teenagers, still a little lost and struggling to discover exactly who we were. 

And sometimes things were so very hard. 

I would talk to him in broken words, and cry with real tears and say, "I want to give up."  And he would stand stronger than me. 

Some days he would write me, hurting, and I would try my best to make things better.  He said it helped.  I hope it did.  

We were friends, he and I.  He was one of my best friends at the time; I didn't have many friends.  He had more than he realized.  That was made evident at his funeral, by the tears and the flowers and the hundreds of students that gathered to remember his life and grieve over his death.

It was his choice, his death.  That's what makes it still hard.  I couldn't understand why someone so loved and so talented and so special would take his own life like he did.  He was my friend; I was his friend.  How was that not enough?  In my darkest moments, even a single friend was enough to keep me strong.  He had friends even closer to him than I was.  His family was precious.  How did that not keep him from making his choice? 

I still dream about him.  I still regret not finding help for him.  I still regret not finding the strength to risk our friendship and talk to an adult.  Mistakes were made.  So many mistakes.  And he is gone.

I still miss him.

Today would have been his twentieth birthday.