Completely Scattered

Our story begins with a 16 year old boy. He fell in love with a girl his age, and she fell in love with him. The thing is, she was her parents' princess; he was the guy from the wrong side of the tracks, who wore his hair too long, who was too adventurous for daddy and mommy's little girl. But they were all each other had, as cliche as it sounds. The way he made her smile, the way he'd hold her hand, the way he made her feel like she wasn't just the family princess- he made her feel human. He made her feel like her disease wasn't real, that the depression and the schizophrenia were just clouds passing through her life. That one day, the crystal blue sky would come out, her crystal blue sky would come out. And on some days they were together, it did. In fact, it always did in one spot.

There was this little park sprinkled with blooming oak trees and a view of the small city they lived in. That park was where this boy and girl became more than best friends, where they fell in love, and it was just right. It was the one place where the only voice in her head was his, where there weren't seven billion other people in the world, and it was just them. It was them escaping from the judgmental eyes of the world. They were free.

But it's often said that freedom isn't free, and it wasn't. Despite everything, despite the unconditional love this boy showed this girl, her disease slowly ate away at everything she had. The incidents got worse, the depression reached all time lows. The red button appeared everywhere for her, in her shower, in her room, and it even started to make its way to their park. She stopped trying. She just never felt like she could win. But he didn't stop; he never stopped loving her. And she never stopped loving him, but in the worst of moments, her darkness was stronger than their combined light. And he felt weak, defenseless, and utterly helpless. So he pulled away.

It was March 5, 2012. It started as an ordinary day in the life of a recently turned 17 year old boy. And it ended as the day that has come to define him; that was the day the voices were just a little too loud, that day was the day the darkness won, that day was the day she took her life.

Stunned, he pulled back even more. Not wanting to be blamed for the death of their princess, he avoided her parents. He recoiled, retreated into himself, bottled it all up, and threw it into the water. But that bottle never went anywhere, its message stayed as stagnant as the water in which it floated.

He was not welcomed at the funeral. He lost touch with everything to do with her. He forced himself to forget her. He pushed on. Or at least he tried to. Life was hard without her, but he had his good days and bad days, like we all do. However, even on those good days, the thought of her always lingered.

Two years later, he had new friends, a great new life. He felt better than he had ever felt, but all that came crashing down when his friend's sister died. He wasn't particularly close to that sister, but he felt something missing. He didn't know how to deal with death. He felt empty, like his feelings really didn't have weight to them because he just couldn't accept death.

He never accepted that she had died. No one ever received his bottled up thoughts, so he wanted to try and send them again. It was a foolish idea, but he wanted closure more than anything. Opening up his email, he found her parents' email. "They hated me," he thought, "They probably won't even respond." He asked where she was buried. He told me that visiting her grave would give him closure, and I told him to send the email, to bury the past, and fully step into the present.

Today he finally heard back. He told me he thought that he didn't do enough, that he wasn't good enough to her, that he needed to make peace with pulling away from her. He dreaded opening the email from her parents. Maybe they'd tell him exactly the kind of horrible boyfriend he was around the time of her death. Maybe they'd say nothing and brush his request off politely. But they didn't say any of those things.

Instead, they told him that he couldn't bury the past and face her grave. She was cremated.

It was her dying wish that she be cremated, her ashes scattered in the place that meant everything to her. She asked her parents to scatter them in that park, with the blooming oak trees and her crystal blue sky, where she met an amazing boy, where she fell in love with him, and ultimately, where she felt most at peace.

As he paused in between streams of tears to tell me this, he said that he had never felt so whole, so complete, that he wasn't just some guy who came into her life at the wrong time. I could just see the bottle begin to float, just as I could see the doubt that he wasn't good enough, that he didn't treat her well when it mattered most, wash away.

Instead, a new realization hit me just as it hit him, and then I, too, began to cry as I felt the weight of the words, that here also mean this story is over. He was, and always will be, the love of her life.