Hallucinogens

I find myself wishing, once again that I could do drugs and see you. Which is a wild thing to say to anyone. But that is why I love ether, for the simple fact that I have this Freeform space to throw my little pity parties and talk to dead people. Like you. I think you would have loved ether too. How you can express your thoughts in the open, but still have enough anonymity for comfort. I bet your color would be a deep purple… I miss you. I took a long walk when I came home tonight, and all I could think about was how lonely I feel and how much of a void you left in my life. I’ve not been suicidal in a few years, and I wouldn’t even say I am at a point of passive ideation- I am safe. But I feel so tired, like, down to my bone-marrow tired, in a way I haven’t felt in a very long time. And I feel like I understand so fully why you ended it all. I have always understood, but it feels sharper and more poignant these days. I think we were both just dreamers and poets and wanted to believe, so badly, in the goodness of people. We weren’t ignorant to the cruelty of the world, but I think we both had hope.. until you didn’t. I feel like I am losing hope too. Hope that I can be good enough for the people around me. Hope that the good in the hearts of others outweighs the collective bad. Hope that people see me for my attempts at being good and not just for the times that I fail. Hope that humans can still come together by simply sharing values. Hope that underneath the filth of this world, there is still something worth saving in myself and in the rest of humanity. It’s exhausting trying to be the good and find the good. And even when you think you’re doing those things, somehow you’re still the bad in someone else’s eyes. Goodness is so subjective, and I used to genuinely believe it was a simple innate thing in everyone. That we would all just do the right things if we were educated or given perspective. But it isn’t that simple, and I am watching the world suffer under the complexities. I feel helpless in this life. I want to believe that death is kinder than man. I want so badly to believe you were able to take the weight of the world off your shoulders with that noose…and sometimes I just wish I could have gone with you, before the world had the chance to rape me of my belief in it. I promise I am not trying to crawl in the grave with you. I still see the good- I see people trying. I feel myself trying. I still find the beauty in simply existing. But there is an ever-present isolating heaviness, an ever present phantom pain around my throat. And when I feel it, I wish I could do anything just to see you again, and to know I am not alone in loving the world so much that it tears me apart.

I had a dream again. It didn’t make a lot of sense- it was sad and wrought with political horror. But I remember wanting to talk to you in the dream. And, like always, I could not find you. You’re always out of reach- always on the periphery. And when I wake up I’m left with a hollowed pit of loneliness. It was 3am. You’ve been dead for so long, but your absence feels visceral on my skin when I wake up from the dreams where I cannot find you. Where I cannot dream of you. I used to have such elaborate dreams of deep conversations and adventures with you- but the very last dream I had of you, where we could talk, you sent me a message that we would see each other again soon, and I texted back that you couldn’t because you were dead. I remember I woke up sobbing right after that. It was the night after you died. The first night that that the aching hollow found its home inside of me, in the shape of the shadow of you. Filling the place where you should be. I think the horrors of the world and another friend’s suicidal ideations have brought you back to the edge of my dreams. Brought me back to longing for the understanding of these things, that I seemed to only find in you. I wish those things had not stolen you. I hope they don’t steal my other friend too… What I wouldn’t do to see you again… in a drug. In a dream. In anything but a grave.