Interference.

It's really hard to write anything right now without it coming across as a suicide note. Suicide is a running theme in my life, even if I have no intentions of actually doing it. It's not a feeling of wanting to die, it's a feeling of not wanting to live. Let's casually mention on an internet blog that when I'm downtown, it's near the river. It's a bustling little area of town and there's enough restaurants that the air is delicious to breathe in there. It's a good place to sit on the bridge over the river, contemplating to jump and end my life. I decided against it because the fall probably wouldn't kill me or even knock me unconscious, and at most would seriously injure me internally and then I would probably drown while in disorientating pain. At its worst I considered using my knife to dig the femoral artery out of my leg, but that sounded painful too. I have violent imagery of ending my life semi-frequently when I'm like this, and there's always phantom pain or wincing and grasping areas of perceived harm that dissuade me from considering it. A true sign of a hopeless coward is that they don't want to kill themselves if it's unpleasant or requires effort.

There have been many near-attempts at suicide in my life, but the only time tried to commit it, it was an attempt to overdose on vicodin and alcohol after I turned 16. My family got divorced and my mother was a psychotic alcoholic who blasted music all night and didn't do anything except desert us for the weekend and have random emotional outbursts that kept me in fear constantly, especially if the boogeyman of my father considered breaking back into the house to kidnap us again. My brother had to work 50 hours a week biking several miles to work early in the morning, we had to walk several blocks with our arms tethered with grocery bags from the supermarket, and yet were always hungry. My girlfriend and one of my few friends at the time grew increasingly distrustful of me because I didn't want to tell her that I got held down and teased by two girls while the third raped me behind a classroom. She grew more annoyed when I started talking to another girl after school who I felt more comfortable confiding in at the time because her personality was a bit more amicable and earnest and didn't judge me for looking like a goblin with face-deforming acne, much unlike virtually everybody else did at the time. Where touching my face firmly at a wrong angle would have blood and puss dripping down it at any given moment.

I was so lost in my own thoughts that the only friend I was confiding in with my problems committed suicide with me noticing a week later, and then my girlfriend got upset at me because she found out I was talking to said person instead of her, unaware of the fact that she took her own life. I snapped and got upset. She told me I was selfish and never asked her about her problems that often. I told her she did the same and that I desperately just wanted somebody to confide in and that she either needs to be that person or that we can't continue on like this. She couldn't because her own life was garbage, so I walked her to her house and we both said “see you tomorrow” and then nothing happened. I was failing out of school, people either bullied me and hated or me or wasn't even aware that I existed and needed help. Everybody important to me was too busy to care, too strained to help, or they were gone entirely. I was 95 pounds at 5'8” and was lucky to eat twice a day. A few days after mostly everyone forgot my birthday and my relationship ended, I tried to commit suicide by shoving handfuls of vicodin into my mouth like I was eating chalk and washed it down with cans of warm beer my mother left out. I threw it up a few minutes later after getting it down, and lied on the bathroom floor shivering for a few hours. When I got up, I was entirely numb, and most of those things that happened were shoved somewhere because I couldn't bear to confront it or acknowledge that it existed for most of the rest of my life.

Some of the only ways to motivate myself to stay alive nowadays aren't particularly positive emotions. One is hatred. I had a conversation with Mono the other day and she bluntly told me “You know the only reason you're still alive is because you hate your father so much.” And for a long time I've done my best to repress or convert the hatred and bitterness I've held onto my entire life. Anger is an ugly personality trait. It disgusts me. It makes me afraid to be around people. My father has never not been angry or bitter, and how he reflected this on his children has made me more and more resentful as time went on. I went from understanding my father's frustration with his life and inability to help things, to resenting him for it. It's like I'm going backwards for what's healthy personal growth. I have never been able to voice my own frustrations and self-loathing inadequacies in my personal life, now I feel that anger and toxicity has sunken in, corrupted the foundation. While I've been frustrated with my own weak piece-of-shit self, I was greatly frustrated with how people have always overlooked it, or how I had to put on a strong face and pretend that things were okay. I became angry at the fact that I couldn't help myself, that I was even denied the privilege to ask for it. That my father's boorish and frightening personality made him incapable of understanding the problems he was creating or made him unable to fix them, which led to his frustration bleeding out onto his children.

He has made me feel inadequate, like I never was trying hard enough even though I tried so much it hurt sometimes. He made me feel weak because I couldn't manage my mental and emotional problems like a healthy individual who goes through abusive relationships, drives away his children, and is thoroughly unsatisfied with his life. He has called me a loser who should kill himself on more than one occasion, usually provoked by something as utterly trivial as not mowing the lawn. I won't forget it either. Because in my fucked-up headcanon I win either way. I want to live to prove him wrong and I can live to see him die, or I can kill myself with a part of me knowing that I'll ruin the twilight years of his life. And that is a capacity for spite and hatred that he has instilled in me. That's what I won't forgive him for. A lot of things in my life are my own fault, but the anger is a product of what he's done. He turned a happy child who wanted to try his hardest to please people he cares about into somebody who's willing to commit suicide just to spite him. And it scares me that I have the capacity to hate somebody that much.

There was something else I was living for, and I don't even know why. It's water under the bridge now though. I think one of the things I'm never allowed in life is closure, especially on my failed relationships with people. It blows up and they leave, I drive them off, or they die. I will never get catharsis or closure on them. It can never be amicable, they just want to get out or they're taken from me. Everybody is gone in one way or the other eventually. Sometimes there's someone who you don't even know why you're so obsessive over wanting their empathy when it's been made abundantly clear that they either don't have it, or they're unwilling to part with it. I suppose that's a part of it, it's a one-sided friendship or unrequited love where you value somebody tremendously to the point that it hurts, but you'll never have those same feelings mutually reciprocated even though you desperately want them. Where you care about somebody even though you're fully aware that there's probably nothing on the other side for you.

Maybe there is. Maybe they're just as fucked-up and scared and cautious as you are and no amount of prying will work. Or maybe they look at me and see how severe my abandonment issues are that I need constant empathy and reassurance, and how volatile I get and how quickly to lash out I can be because my mind runs itself into the ground contemplating why they don't care about me, even though deep down I know they're probably just scared. Maybe they just leave because I guilt them and make them feel like shit constantly and they start thinking that they're the problem and they're not good enough to help me, even though I just want something as simple as hearing them say that they care. Maybe they just don't have the time or energy for all of it and they have to take care of themselves. I can't begrudge them for it because I understand it, but it's still allowed to hurt like Hell. Or maybe it's just observers guilt rather than actual personal concern. Maybe they don't actually care because all they've wanted was a superficial relationship and they've been looking for a way out, and they always thought I was some psychotic fucking loser to begin with and they were putting up too much of front to ever tell me. Because if somebody's known me for so long without ever really acting concerned, and they're so quick to just up and get out without saying anything with all intentions of not coming back, they probably never cared to begin with. I can't say, because I won't ever know, because I can't get closure. So thoughts like this will pull my head apart until I want to kill myself because microaggressions when I'm horribly depressed will drive me there and people are aware of that so they want to get out as quickly as they can.

And it really fucking hurts. I'm allowed to be. It hurts like Hell to feel to feel this way about people you care so much about, that you've known for such a long time and were some of the only company you had during a dark period in your life. To utterly resent somebody you love and cherish and worry about as a person, whether they want to be that person to others or not. Who you once cared about so much that you'd be willing to remove that person from your life just so they wouldn't have to put up with your bullshit anymore, even if it meant being unhappy yourself. Where you harbor these feelings of anger and abandonment even though in the back of your head you can't blame at all for it. Most of my close interpersonal relationships inevitably end like this. I've driven away so many people in my life because they couldn't keep up, because I get burned out on pleading with them and begging them to stay, to constantly remind me that I'm not fucking garbage, and then I start insisting that they leave because I become convinced that I'm not worth it. I'm not good enough. I guess it becomes reverse psychology, because it would nice if they told me I was wrong and stuck around and that they aren't going to give up on me. But most of them leave. Most of them give up.

And it's not even like I know what I want anymore, either. Most of my ability to feel it has gone cold save a few delicate exceptions. An obsession over a few chosen people's empathy you'll never get makes you oblivious to others who could possibly help. There's a sense of frustration that there's something wrong with me because maybe a normal person would be more receptive, and a slight sense of anger towards others that they were too late to help. There are people who want to help but are on the opposite side of the spectrum of the people who aren't receptive enough. It's hard to appreciate the thought if they don't have the tact, they don't have the constitution or the prudence to make their effort feel like it's worth anything to you. Who are tone-deaf or too headstrong for their own good to realize that they're attempting to rationalize with irrational people, or they take drastic and blunt actions to get timid, distrustful, or easily hurt people to open up, not really aware that they might be a part of the problem. People like that remind me of my father; people with by-all-means honest intentions but are too far up themselves to notice that their obnoxious asshole personalities impede their abilities to empathize with others. Their frustration is understandable, but they should possess the awareness that they're ill-suited to help people with delicate constitutions. It's bizarre that some people I desperately crave their empathy because it means something important to me, and some people who are actually empathetic I can feel abhorred or turned off at their assertive tone-deaf attempts to connect. Beggars can still be choosers, I guess.

At this point I've felt like that the only reason I socialize is because it's expected of me. Because I have to. Because it's the right thing to do. Because they're superficial distractions from my problems. There are a minuscule amount of people who mean enough to me that I want to go out of my way to talk to. That I desire and appreciate their empathy from. Maybe they understand the significance of it, maybe they don't. Or they merely don't care. Mostly everyone else is just that; a superficial distraction. They hold little to no value to me otherwise. It's easy to drop or forget about them entirely if I don't desire using them to occupy time anymore. I wish they meant more to me than that, but I wish a lot of things meant more to me too. I've reached a point where I don't feel bad just dropping people out of my life, to sort of just stop “being around”. I think about it a lot.

My thoughts have a tendency to run themselves into the ground, overthinking situations and analyzing every personal interaction with people for every nuance, every trend, every weakness people could use to possibly hurt me or to run away and abandon me. I get lost in time obsessing over every single conversation I have with people who are important to me, in a perpetual state of anxiety when I'm depressed because all the conclusions I draw are the worst ones. I have entire strings of possible deviations in discussions I could have with people saved in doc files for conversations that I never even had a chance to have and are years old. Every conversation I have is watching a network of conversation topics blossoming in any given direction, and I'm the neurotic Batman prepared for virtually every possible outcome, except I don't have the added benefit of being rich or my parents being dead.

And when enough awful things are happening in my life at once, the entire system crashes and I can't take it slow anymore, I have to repress and outrun and forget everything. If I don't go catatonic and detach myself, it will drive me to very drastic solutions for my problems. There's so much noise occurring in my head when this happens that it's deafening. Just voices reminding me that there's nothing for me in life, that I'm alone with them for good because the real people left. Arguments with people I play out in my head that I haven't even had with them and I get upset for reasons I'm literally making up. There are sounds of nauseating, distorted guitar feedback and the nonsensical static chatter of indistinguishable voices. It's a mental tinnitus, and I can't stop it. I want it to stop, I know that some of these conversations I will never have, that I will never get closure on, but my head refuses to stop. It keeps going, it's still going. I'm still developing conversation strings for relationships with people that have long since gone cold and it's emotionally exhausting to play out every outcome possible because you start longing for the fictional happy ending that you're never going to get and hating yourself for it, or you're driving yourself to suicide over the self-inflicted malice that you believe people have for you.

I need people to disprove them. I don't care what people say anymore, I don't want them to give a shit about my feelings. You can say “I care and I'm worried” or you can say “you're fucking garbage, stop bothering me with this”, as long as they say something, anything so it can stop. The contemplating can cease, and the noise can be pacified for a brief instance. Because the longer the noise goes on, the more it starts to deafen me and have trouble hearing anybody at all through it. This is what's going to kill me. It's not a matter of “will it,”, it's a matter of “when”. That is the gamble people take making friends with those possessing mental deficiencies. It's managing a terminal illness. Every single day it's a fight to hold it off, I could commit suicide this year or when I'm 65, but it is what's going to overtake me eventually. Eventually I will stop caring about the noise and the attempts at empathy and it won't be able to be pacified anymore, and I will do anything to finally get the quiet that I desperately want.

I just want to stop thinking so much.

People.

“Hah, so that's what this is about. You want to finally die, don't you? And letting the most important people leave is going to make it easier, isn't it?”

“Everybody leaves eventually. Tired of waiting.”

“It's easy to tell yourself that when somebody important leaves.”

“...I don't blame them. It's a lot to ask of someone to help a person with mental illness. It's exhausting, it's stressful. I... just can't convince myself to tell people that I'm worth it anymore.”

“But you wish you were.”

“Yes.”

“This is very similar to the last time, huh? It's all gone to Hell, everything's getting worse, she kills herself, you get dumped. All of this happening at once was enough to make you try the first time.”

“...I'm aware.”

“I wonder what she would think of you now, doing this.”

“Stop it.”

“You couldn't even say anything before, you were just content leaving. You want to die just like her.”

“Stop talking.”

“One of your close friends is dead. You saw her depressed. You saw her attempt to open up to you. You KNEW she wanted help. But you said nothing. You didn't want to upset her. You changed the subject. You overlooked what she was saying. She committed suicide, and then what? What were you going to tell her now that she was gone? That it was because she was unapproachable? Because you didn't know what to say to her? Because it was awkward? You can tell yourself that there was nothing you could've done, because you wanted to be a coward. You fucking failed and she killed herself.”

“I said stop talking.”

“And that's the ultimatum you want people to take. Try harder, or disassociate altogether. You would rather have them leave so there's less guilt for you, so it'll sting them less when you finally work up the effort to kill yourself. Because otherwise, with how things are going, you know that they're going to end up failing, just like you did.”

“Just stop, please.”

“All that person was to you was somebody to project your own guilt and failure onto, and now that they've given up on you, it just validates what you let happen to her.”

“They didn't give up, I told them to leave. What happened to Alice wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault.”

“Why are you still fooling yourself over that? They gave up on you. Just like everybody else does and eventually will. Everybody you care about leaves because dealing with you is too stressful, and the ones who don't are taken away because they're more fucked-up than you.”

“I don't want to have this conversation anymore.”

“Let's be real here; you aren't worth it. You aren't worth the effort of putting up with. You don't offer anything good enough to be worth sticking around for.”

“Sometimes it's just... not meant to be. There doesn't have to be anything wrong with me or the other person.”

“But there's still something wrong with you, and you know it.”

“...I don't know what's going to happen now.”

“And it won't matter. If you don't kill yourself, the depression is going to erase you regardless. It's going to rob you of your passion, your interests, your sense of purpose. Your friends won't have that person around anymore even if the body is still warm. It's just going to be an empty automaton devoid of any personality or sense of self.”

“That's... probably true.”

“You can feel yourself slipping. And when you do, whether you're alive or dead, you'll still be nobody. Nothing is going to be there anymore.”

“I. I just want help.”

“Thaaaaat's not gonna happen. What, you're going to take off work to go to the hospital? You can barely make rent. You won't be able to after spending time there, and you don't have health insurance either. When you come out, nothing will change except a cloud of debt hanging over your head and missed hours to make up time.”

“...I know.”

“And the longer this goes on, the more you become crippled by anxiety. It's not like you can stay out in public and work anything longer than 20 hours a week, let alone with people. Eventually you'll be working less and making less while it tears you apart inside even more.”

“I know.”

“And even if all those are taken care of, what's going to happen next? You can't afford to go back to school either. You can't advance your life while this owns you. Any appreciable skills you once possessed have atrophied. There's nothing you can do to improve things if this starts getting fixed regardless.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“That's why you're so attached to people. Because at least they're free. But you can't even feel validated by them anymore. Their empathy doesn't do a thing for you. There was the one, but that's dead and gone so now what? You're going to find somebody else who can make you feel validated? Who wants that job? That's how we ended up here in the first place. What do you have to offer now?”

“...nothing.”

“What the Hell are you?”

“Nobody important.”

“Your dedication to people finally died with your failure. One of the few remaining admirable things about you is finally gone, the only thing left is all of the garbage nobody wants to put up with. You're fucking empty. You really are nothing, nobody of significance.”

“Please. Just stop now, I get it.”

“No wonder you want to die. There's no way out for you anymore, is there?”

“I want there to be, but there probably isn't.”

“That's why we're having this conversation. This is best you can do before you lose your head again and then this conversation won't matter anymore. So there's some residue left in the bleak little corner of the world that we're inhabiting, so you can pretend to yourself and say you tried.”

“But not enough people will see this probably.”

“Certainly not the ones that should.”
“So what now?”
“You're going to sleep. And when you wake up, nothing will change, and you'll continue grinding away your pointless, unimportant life until something finally gives.”

“...and a few sentimental platitudes might be said, but nothing will change.”

“This has all happened before. Nothing has changed. The only change will be if you're dead at the end of it.”

“...I don't have the answer to that.”

“I don't either. We might find out soon. But what's the answer you actually want?”

“...I don't know anymore.”

“Neither do I. So go to bed. I'm tired of this too.”

Alice.

“So.” Remilia's tone was subdued. “You seem ready to talk about this now, huh?”

“...to this day, I still can't remember a thing.”

The author was in his room, sitting in his computer chair and fixated on his monitor while Remilia sat on his bed, leaning against the wall. Her eyes weren't fixed on anything, they lurked about the room contemplatively.

“This is something even I haven't really wanted to ask about.” she said, her glances avoiding the author. “I don't know much about it. Or when it started or how it happened.”

“I still don't, even now.” he muttered in a resigned tone. Denial was his shield, his protection to avoid having to peer through the gas-lit haze that dwelled over his head every November and December. He managed to avoid bringing this weight directly back into his life for well over a decade, but Remilia's subtle and meddlesome prodding was unearthing it.

“Okay, to be fair, it wasn't just me.” she interjected into the narration. “I think you had a few things go wrong to lead up to this.”

“Mmm.”

“Like worker girl setting you off.”

“I forgot she even did that.”

“I remember it because it made you paranoid and crazy again.” a bit of mischief made its way back into her voice. “A good set-up to what was sure to come after~.”

“I wouldn't use 'good' in that context.”

“And what happened with her.” she emphasized. The author didn't like the emphasis.

“...it always comes back to her, doesn't it.”

“Eventually, yes~.” The banter ceased and a silence settled back into the conversation. There was a steadiness to the anxiety that permeated throughout the room. The air couldn't be stirred without using words he didn't want to utter in a particular cadence. The author knew the moment he did, he couldn't pretend it didn't happen anymore.

“I lost an important friend a very long time ago.”

The tension eased a bit. And then it intensified for a moment before dispersing altogether. There was an unpleasant catharsis that came out of his chest as he spoke. The anxiety was gone, but it was replaced by grief. Remilia always knew, at least on a vague level. She loosely knew that the author held onto something he couldn't forgive himself for, that he couldn't let go. But the dark places in the author's head that even she couldn't get to kept it buried.

“You still think about it, don't you?” she asked timidly. “About her?”

“Always.” he answered. “I think about her more than almost everyone else from back then.” Remilia was careful about how to approach the author. Any missteps could drag the memory back into the dark, possibly further than it had been before.

“Even if there's nothing to really remember?”

“Always.” he sighed. The author couldn't remember much at all from that time in his life. It was a patchwork of incoherent thoughts and random emotions tangentially related to particular situations. The concreteness of it all was undefined. Any events he almost recalled he could only do so because of loose associations with how it made him feel at that given time. Nothing was certain; everything didn't quite feel fictitious but wasn't entirely settled in reality either. Whenever he expressed his thoughts and wrote, it always vaguely felt like a scenario constructed around his sporadic and unpredictable feelings in order to anchor them, to give them a justification. Subconsciously he knew they were still real, and committing it to writing forced him to own it. But he didn't want to own this. Even as he sat in that room with Remilia, he still wanted to flee. He knew Remilia wouldn't let him, though. She was already eased in, she wasn't going to let this opportunity leave.

“...I'm right here, Pa. I know what you're saying.” She slumped over onto her side and looked up to see the back of the author's chair. He rocked back and forth in it a bit. It needed WD-40. The creaking was in sync with every other tic on his analog clock.

“What was her name?” Remilia asked. The author hesitated. It was the only thing of her's that he kept, that he remembered.

“...Alice.”

“That's a good name.”

“She was a good girl.”

“Yeah?”

“I talked with her about a lot of things.” he said. “A lot of things I couldn't talk about with my girlfriend at the time.”

“Like what?”

“Well, my deteriorating relationship with her, for one. And the thing that happened to me that I didn't want to tell my girlfriend about, either.”

“Why'd you find it easy to talk to her about that?” she asked.

“Don't know, really. I felt comfortable around her.” The author leaned back in his chair. “Girls that age treated me like shit a lot. I didn't trust most of them. Especially after the rape business.” Remilia rolled onto her stomach with a cautious yet curious look on her face.

“What made her different?”

“Can't really remember. She had no reason to be nice to me. She was just mutual friends with people who lived in my apartment complex. I bumped into her on my way home and she ran her mouth and managed to get me to actually talk a bit. Initially I was uncomfortable as Hell but I felt like she was lonely. She would sit on the curb with me and she'd just talk about things and I would listen.”

“I can't imagine you doing that with anybody at that age, to be frank.” Remilia said. She was a bit perplexed.

“She also brought me pizza one day while we sat there.”

“Okay now I'm no longer confused~.”

“She was just a nice, chipper girl. She had that disposition that my girlfriend had where she could notice what my mood really was, but she was a bit more headstrong and curious to ask about it. Eventually I just told her that one of the reasons I stayed outside with her was because I didn't want to go into the house with my mother, and then things just sort of went from there.”

“I figured you would be deterred by people from that.”

“I know, right?” the author agreed. “But, I guess, my girlfriend was always that detached person who never said much. I knew she cared, but she never really went out of her way to express it. And after what was happening, I guess I eventually just wanted to talk to somebody who acted like they cared. And she had ideas about it too, she always seemed depressed herself. There was just some comfort there that I wasn't used to having. It was nice to have somebody who was invested and tried their best to empathize.” There was a bit of silence after he said that. The author knew what Remilia was going to ask. Remilia didn't want to ask the question. It was a question that she dreaded the answer to, because she knew how everything fell into place afterwards.

“...what happened to her?”

“She committed suicide.”

“...oh.”

“Yeah.”

The tension came back into the room. The author's voice strained itself answering the question, the matter-of-fact tone undermined the stress. Remilia didn't know how to continue the conversation. The girl who normally had such a good read on the author was at a loss for what to say.

“I mentioned she was also clearly depressed.” the author stated.

“Right.”

“She never really outright talked about it. You could tell, though. In her mannerisms during her conversations, making vague allusions and references, almost as if to provoke a question of concern. I never asked, though. I couldn't.”

“Why's that, Pa?”

“Was being a stupid teenager wrapped up in my own problems. There was that thought of being selfish, or that thought of not knowing how to approach her without fucking it up. I didn't know how to talk to people back then.”

“You still don't, Pa. That's why we're here.”

“Fair.” He let out a deep breath. “And it's not like. It's not like I even found out or saw her do it or anything. I just didn't see her around for a week or so and I saw my neighbors she used to hang out with and I asked her where she's been. And they had to awkwardly tell me and that was it. She was just gone. That part was done. It was left there after all it happened. Didn't talk to her friends anymore after they told me and I gave a few condolences to them.” The author stopped rocking in his chair. Words became difficult. “I was numb from everything. Everything in my life was imploding at that time, it all just blended together into a cacophony of nonsense I've tried my best to stop thinking about.” But the author didn't. He never stopped thinking about Alice. That was the name he associated with her because it was the only thing even vaguely familiar to him. He couldn't remember anything but the name he clung desperately to, still unsure if it was actually hers at all while he was drowned by the mire of thoughts during the winter. It was a name that pulled down everything, tied to baggage of immeasurable weight that couldn't be discarded or forgotten. Before he noticed, Remilia was leaning against the chair behind him.

“You always said that you associate feelings more with what happened rather than the situation.” she said.

“I did.”

“What feeling is associated with this?”

“Guilt.”

“And why's that?” The question made the author let out another sigh. His breath trembled this time.

“I feel guilt that I don't remember anything about this person. Even now, I can't honestly believe for sure that it happened, if that was even her name.”

“But it's her name to you, that's what matters.” she reassured.

“And I feel guilt because I saw something wrong and I wanted to help. But I didn't for whatever reason.”

“You were young and going through a lot, you can't expect that from yourself.” she argued.

“And I feel that guilt again every time I see one of my friends or anybody going through a crisis, and am too paralyzed with fear to say anything or ask because I'm taken back there whenever it happens.” There was a somber bitterness to his voice. No tears, just exhaustion. “There is always that guilt that I wanted to do more, but I didn't. Or I couldn't, because my capacity to help others is admittedly low. Everything you say is correct, Remilia. And logically, I know all of that, but—”

“But the feeling won't leave regardless.” she resigned. “I know, Pa.” The author knew everything she was going to say during the conversation, he rehearsed it in his head, with the darkness enough that—despite talking about it—it still had a firm grip on his conscience. It was resilient, and normal words wouldn't loosen the guilt either.

“Lucas.” Her voice made the author's shoulders curl.

“I told you not to use that name. It makes this shit real.”

“You know what I'm going to say.” She wrapped her dainty arms around the author from behind and rested her chin on his head. “You gotta let this go.”

“Don't know if I can. Feel like I'd lose something important if I did.”

“You'll never know if your intervention would've changed anything regardless. That's the thing about depression, and that's the risk anybody takes when helping a depressed person. That it still might not mean anything. You know this, your friends know this.”

“I know I do.”

“But—”

“But I didn't even try.” he choked out. Remilia felt faint drops onto her arms while she was embracing the author.

“What would you say to her if you had the chance?” she asked. “If she was here?”

“...that I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being a bad friend. I'm sorry for never talking to you about your problems when I knew you always had them. I'm sorry that I always came across as indifferent to them when I was just scared to inquire. I'm sorry for how oblivious I was to how much you cared about me. I'm sorry for trying so long to pretend none of this ever happened. I'm sorry that I can't remember how any of this ever happened. I'm sorry for wondering where you might be if you had somebody help you. I'm sorry that I haven't forgiven myself for it. I'm sorry that I probably won't. You were a good friend and a good person nobody could reach in time. I love you, alright? I'm sorry.” Remilia let him breathe for a bit. She tightened her arms around him.

“Do you really think you can never forgive yourself?” she asked.

“Can't say. I probably won't.” There was a cease in the conversation while the author attempted to stifle himself. There was still a lot to unpack for Remilia. Her associations with the author, her relationship with him being so closely tied to this girl she'll never meet, that she probably won't hear any more stories about. But at least, now it happened, and the girl she would never meet had existed at some point, and it gave Remilia a bit of reassurance. She let out a bit of a smile.

“Nah,” her endearing voice reverberated on the back of his head. “I think you will eventually. Not now.”

“God no, not now.”

“But I would think she would want you to, if she was any good of a friend.” The author scoffed at her remark.

“She was a great friend,” His tone was adamant. “Much better than you.”

“Oof. Brutal~.” Remilia let out a coy smile. “So... did you sleep with her~?”

“NO. JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU.”

“What, WHAT? I was curious~! Was she cute~?”

“Oh for the love of God, we were having a moment and you fucked it all up.” He broke her embrace and stood out of his chair, muttering expletives to himself. Remilia grabbed his hand and turned him towards her.

“It's going to get better now, right~?” She had a cheeky smile on her face. “It's out there, and there's nothing to say about it further for now. You won't get better now, and you won't get better quickly, but you probably will. Right?”

“I'm still probably going to feel like shit about it.”

“I don't expect you to forgive yourself soon, Pa. Lord no, not you of all people. But eventually.”

“Eventually.”