13 Days

That was a week, well 13 days, I will never forget. Not just for the agony, but for the friendship. The way souls were laid bare on the bottle-riddled coffee table and poured out across the couch, the floor and into the very corners of that apartment. The way every brick we built up around ourselves over the last several years cracked, crumbled, and crashed so we could pour a new foundation. I remember every second as though it is on an endless loop in my mind, playing over and over to remind me, both out of callousness and out of care, that yes, that did happen.

There are two things I remember the most vividly. First was the darkness. The darkness of the parking lot and how several of the parking lot lights were out. I remember the darkness of the stairs as I climbed through the cold to your door. I remember knocking on your door and thinking I should leave. What good was I going to do? Hadn’t I been here before? Dropping food off, leaving it on your doorstep or counter and then slinking off in the hopes that you would eat what I brought. Or all those times I brought you home and watched from the car window to make sure you made it up the stairs in one piece.

But you opened the door and the darkness poured from within, behind, and around you. You stood there in your shirt and shorts …how many days in a row had you worn those? Your face, oh I remember your face. Scruff lined your chin and cheeks and crept over the arch of your mouth. That mouth that tried to curl up into a semi-half grin but remained instead in a grim straight line. And your eyes. Glistening with sorrow, but without tears.

You turned and walked back to your couch, every light in the place extinguished to hide your pain. You sank into the corner, trying to disappear into its suede folds. You reached for your only source of comfort – the bottle that always seemed empty and the tumbler that was never full enough. I stared at you for what seemed like an hour, but it was truly only a second or two. I thought of a million ways to save you, to make you smile or laugh, but none of them seemed plausible or possible.

And so, I did what I always do- pretend I had control. I flurried into the kitchen, and began to unpack groceries – food, snacks and, of course, alcohol. I knew your favorites, from the broccoli cheddar soup to mac n cheese. Maybe if you ate, you could see your situation in a bit brighter light. I knew I was talking too much, I always did. I knew I was mothering you, but then, when didn’t I? You had repeatedly uttered the slightly irksome phrase, “Thanks, mom.” Usually, as I placed food in front of you. Which I was doing. Again. I placed a cup of soup on the table in front of you, but you did not move.

“Come on, you have to eat.” There it was. I was mothering again. I thought to myself that I should just leave. I was failing. Miserably.

But then, you did something I was not prepared for. Not one bit. You threw your arms around me and cried. You, yes, you. You cried. I’ve seen you laugh, I’ve seen you rage on about random things, I’ve seen you tired and drunk. Never, have I ever, seen you cry. You wrapped your arms around me and buried your head into the curve my neck. You wept. More from relief I think, because at last you could cry to someone. I felt your tears trickle down my neck, over my shoulder blade, and dry on my back. I was acutely aware that once again I wanted to save you. My whole body screamed, Save Him! But I didn’t know how. Instead, I gripped your arm and held on as if I were holding you back from leaving this world. The hairs on your arm were raised as if some invisible electric force was trying to pull your soul from your body. I resolved myself to understand that I was not your mother. Fate had deemed me your protector. And I was not going to let you suffer without company.

That night, and every night after, I listened. I listened to your soul speak as your heart seemed to shrivel into hibernation. I would watch you as you lay against your cushions, speaking of the disappointment you believed yourself to be. The fear of rejection and judgment you believed you would face. Then you would lean forward and again wrap your arms around me and cry again. I think a part of you refused to believe that I was not judging, not holding your actions against you.

My heart broke, no, it shattered. It crumbled into countless slivers of pain and heartache. I could bear your jokes, your indifference, your steely persona, but I could not bear your agony. I was at a loss as to how to be your savior. I moved my fingers from rubbing your arms to your head, but nothing worked. You were like Achilles, wounded and fallen, with no possible hope of redemption.

And still, I wanted to redeem you. You told me things that to this day I must second guess that I heard them. Things so far in your past and hidden in the shadows that it must have altered the very structure of your being to utter them. In exchange, I told you my secrets. The things no one else knew. We began to understand one another in a way we never had before. Suddenly, you were no longer a distant creature, floating loftily in the distant parameters of my world, you were directly beside me. Vulnerable, apologetic, and genuine. And for all I believed in, I could not understand how life could be so cruel as to mend our friendship by stripping you to the core.

There were nights I would drive home and cry and scream and curse and pray all at once. I was furious with God, with life, with everything. How dare the cosmos do this! How dare they do it to you! I think I perhaps thought I was somehow to blame. I hadn’t been a good enough friend. Maybe, if I had been different in the past, you would not be where you were. I must have done something. I couldn’t fathom this happening to you. Any of it. I had never been so filled with such a gambit of emotions over anything.

We were two souls shattered, you and I. Unprepared for the way the world stripped us of any preconceived ideas about the lives we had planned. You faced a future you did not want, and I anguished over a past I did not know how to dispose of, and a present I did not relish. And yet, by exchanging sorrows, I felt as though we were finally somehow equal. By holding you at your weakest and sharing bits of my secret trials, I felt as though I had climbed the stairs to stand beside you and gaze over the trail of life we had already trekked. And to be equal with someone like you was something I thought I only wrote about in storybooks.

It was easy, somehow. Words that could never trickle off my tongue, sentences that hid my ugly existence. These things I could say to you. Words that otherwise would make me feel subhuman, ugly and degraded, melted from my lips like the remnants of the final winter frost. I could relive trauma with you because there was something about you that was safe. And all the ugliness, the shadows that reached for my arms to pull me back into darkness seemed not so present as we talked. And while I still sheltered you from the worst of the truth, I knew that if I had chosen, you would have born it like Atlas bears the world.

You have said that I fixed you… but you were never broken. Maybe a bit cracked around the edges, but never broken. And perhaps it is best to be cracked, because in our cracks we know that we are flawed. And in our flaws, we know who we are valued the most by because those people see past our chips and cracks. I know you will never see yourself how I see you, I know you will never fully understand why I spent night after night on your couch. And I suppose, in a way, that makes our friendship all the better – because we will never fully grasp why the other person is our friend. And in that remaining mystery, there will lie a necessity to always remain in one another’s lives.

I feel as though things will dim to a faded watercolor of a memory. Just how much pain and sadness were in those days will begin to numb and dissipate into the fog of our minds. But I will never forget how, for a short while, you let me grow guardian wings to surround you in comfort. How, in that brief period, I was the core of your universe, pushing you to spin ever onward in a blaze of light that was all of what was good in you. What is STILL good in you. How the walls built and covered in the ivy of doubt came crashing down to the thunderous roar of tears and conversation. How you let me be near to you, and held me there, even if only for a while. How, when I gripped your hand to keep you from letting go of hope, you, for the first time in our lives, didn’t let go.