Fifteen, lonely and displaced.
Fifteen was the age that I found myself surrounded by complete self-awareness. It was the age in which my shyness transformed into plain awkwardness, the first time that I learned that snap judgment left lasting impressions. In addition, it was the age that I discovered comfort inside the shell that I was prompted by others to leave. But fifteen was when I also met him. He was fifteen, chaotic, and left unattended. A stark contrast to my bashfulness: he could go anywhere and become the center of attention. Yet somehow, in that weird time of adolescence, our paths crossed.
I wish that I could remember exactly what we spoke about. We would spend after-school evenings discussing our day — a colloquy of our emotions. I was always a little too afraid to talk, panicked to lose my allure with each word, but he never did mind it that much. He would walk around his neighborhood equipped with only an unstable connection and stories that always fell relevant to our conversations. And I’d be in my bedroom with my back against my pillows and my thumbs running across his contact picture in the middle of my phone screen. I was his shoulder, and for the times that I spoke about my problems, he was mine, too.
Though his world was much bigger than mine.
He was just a kid when he was indoctrinated into a cycle that most of us spend our lives trying to abstain.
A world enthralled by demons that left him craving a method to fill the void in which they left. And while I was juggling the life of being a high schooler, he was busy with hiding his substance abuse from his family. He was never one to care so much about his well-being. I’d tell him that he could start over if he wanted to, that being too far gone was a way of life that he could not possibly settle for. That every broken promise to do better was a manifestation in that he would get better. And although he would quickly change the subject, I never doubted that he listened to me.
I was fifteen years old when I believed that I’d know him forever. Though as I probe through the saved messages and old phone call logs, I have grown to realize that it could not have lasted that long. The great feeling of familiarity that filled the gaps of our conversations faded the day that I heard of his passing. I was miles away and still felt the shift in the pit of my stomach, my kindred spirit a casualty to the perils of the world.
I used to ponder the idea of us knowing each other in another life, that in one way or another, our souls were acquainted once before. Somehow in the back of our minds, we both knew of the timeline that always planned for the timid girl and lawless boy to meet again. He looked past my nervousness as I looked past his actions and for the first time, our characters were not compromised by surface-level judgment.
We heard each other when it was needed the most, and at fifteen, that’s all that mattered.
