A Time When

*This is inspired by the rain, naturally, and about emotional release and has some implications about loss and mental health.*

When I think back to a time when I didn’t know you, I can’t. My brain goes blank. There’s a physical barrier that I cannot push past, as if all my memories restarted when I met you. Things happened before you, events in my life that perhaps I don’t want to remember. Even now, I don’t remember what happens each day… I can’t even remember what I ate for breakfast this morning. And yet, I can recall all my favourite memories of you close to perfection. I can remember the clothes you wore, the food we ate and the vivid colours of the sky and the world around us. But most importantly, I can remember the way you laughed like you hadn’t a care in the world, like all your burdens were lifted, if only just for a moment. I’d wanted nothing more than to capture your laugh, your smile that day. To be able to see you happy and free from your burdens, even if only briefly, and if I’d known that it was the last time I’d see it in such a long time, perhaps I would have.

Before you, I lived in a world so full of colours, lights and sound, but I hadn’t seen any of it, I coudn’t. They had slowly faded, day by day as my list of ‘reasons why’ extended beyond thirteen. The colour slowly faded until all I had was a muted world of grey, everything muffled, hushed and beyond my reach. Each day became a drag as I pulled through the daily motions, the mask of naivety from childhood utterly gone. No longer did I see everything as it glittered in technicolour like a 4D film, everything new and interesting and something to explore. Those days were long ago, but in my mind the memories still sparkle with the coloured glasses I saw the world beneath the slight taint of my reminiscence of when life used to be so simple. It was a time when anything and everything could pique the interest of my young mind. A time when I would watch the crimson leaves falling from the trees in wonder, running around with my hands out trying to catch one in the hope of its supposed good luck. A time when I could pick up the white fluff on the ground and throw it in the air, marvelling as the snow sparkled in the morning sun. A time when I could splash around in the glittering waves and wiggle my toes in the sand beneath my feet. A time when I was enjoying all the textures and colours that I could feel as I ran through the world filled with joy.

Those fun-coloured glasses have long been shattered and ruined now, leaving me with just a dull, shrab world. The lenses broke into shards and were irreversibly crushed into the dust and grime of my life. And then my vision became blurred and dull. You know… perhaps it’s not because I couldn’t see the colour, but because I didn't want to. I mean, I had no reason to. Not until I met you. You came into my life shining with colours, splashing colour over everything wherever we went. You brought that sunny world that only existed in my imagination back into my reality. You made me happy. Even if you didn’t have that colour filled within you, even though your world was in shades like mine, when we were side by side it brought colour to you, to both of us. The colour made you seem alive, bringing life into your cheeks and it spilled over into the world around us. Together, we had seen the light in this world. Together, we had found joy.

Now, alone in my room, I wonder where we went wrong. I wonder about the time when we began drifting slowly until it became too painful to continue. I try to think of the exact date when you stopped telling me things, stopped putting trust in me and turned to others or suppressed it inside instead. It hurt knowing that you couldn’t tell me about what pained you, but I understood, for I too, had gone through what I could not share. The distance grew little by little as we matured and began to live our lives, we began working jobs, studying in different universities and moving to different cities. Time passed and you wouldn’t do anything about that distance. Maybe because you had your own things to focus on, but after all this time I thought maybe you would have noticed. I noticed. I noticed long ago, and I tried in the beginning to not let us slip away. But then I stopped trying. I waited for a time when you would try to reach me again, until you decided to care. And to this day, that time has never come. 

Gazing out into the distance of the city skyline below, the blurred neon lights and billboards make hazy patterns in the droplets that slowly make their way down the glass. There was a time when I would’ve seen little race cars in the raindrops, chasing eachother down the window, now all they seem like are grey blobs of water, warping my view of the world beyond my window. No longer a fascinating distraction, but a hindrance to my view and a reflection of the feelings within my head. 

We’re sort of like those droplets. They come from separate paths and at some point they join as one, starting to travel faster and faster, filled with the exhilarating joy and adrenaline as they slide down the window pane. And then? That combined droplet hits some dust or dirt, perhaps, blocking its path. It stops the droplet in its place, making it pause before dispersing the water and separating its path as the two droplets now split, one slightly larger than the other, and getting further apart as they fall down. There might be a time when those droplets will reunite, nobody knows, but for now as their paths seem to diverge. Slowly, slowly, the smaller raindrop is slowly left behind, as its larger counterpart still has the momentum to keep moving, slowly the small raindrop tries to catch up, but is only left behind as the other gets further and further out of reach. Perhaps one day, there will be a time when the larger rain drop will slow down, and will realise that it left something, someone, important behind. I’m waiting for that time when.

The window feels cool beneath my fingertips, the droplets seeming to call out to me, beckoning to feel the crisp chill of the water on my face, in my hair, without the glass protecting me, ensconcing my superficial warmth. Maybe I should go out and join those droplets for myself, see if this time I’ll be able to feel the rain as it nips at my showing skin, see if I’ll be able to feel the cold as it seeps through to my very bones. The steel beneath my palms is a steady sort of cool, as my hand slides down the rail to steady my flailing feet jumping down multiple stairs at a time. Seven flights of stairs to the ground floor, and I’m out, flinging open the door and hurtling into the rain beyond.

It’s been a while since I’ve been out in the rain without running for shelter. A while since I’ve let myself be free and enjoy breathing in the fresh air as the water pours down my face, little rivulets running from my eyes down to my cheeks, creating tears so that I don’t have to. I spin around in circles, letting the water play at my hands and my face, and making my clothing cling to me in uneven fashion. Lifting my head to the sky, I thank the rain as it washes away any sense of feeling, as it lets me forget if only momentarily as I watch the raindrops fall from the sky above. I stop, pausing to brush the wet strands from my eyes and laugh at the sheer ridicule, probably looking as mad as I feel, and scoff at what others must think of me right now if they were to look out the windows from their comfort high up above. Oh to be in comfort, what a damned lie. 

One day perhaps we could have had that comfort, we could have shared warm dinners as we talked about exciting updates from our studies, the new kid who moved in next door or even the latest person you were fawning over if that’s how it went. It could have been us together, healing and safe, yet for months upon months you never tried. All you had to do was just acknowledge it, maybe even let me know what was happening if you would go that far, anything at all to try and connect with me, but you let the final strands of what used to be a thick rope get pulled taut. There’s one thread left, and I’m so close to just snipping it off and dealing with that pain. Because you know what? Maybe that would hurt less than this constant uncertainty. But I guess we’ll never know, because I promised you that I wouldn’t add to your list of names any further. So until then, we’ll have to wait for a time when that final thread snaps, or perhaps for a time when that thread begins to strengthen, as you reach out again and try to reconnect, no matter how rare that might be. But until then, my friend, I shall be waiting. Waiting for a time when.