Life Can Be Beautiful

CW: Suicide ideation

***

The sun felt warm and sticky on her skin, the mountaintop encompassed the view of California in its entirety, the scenery was beautiful to say the least. However, on this particular day Rose couldn’t foresee a possible reason to enjoy it and felt immensely depressed. It is then that she is confronted by her inner demon, Bloom, who constantly gets her to contemplate suicide despite, the beauty and fatality of life. She’s not yet sure of what her choice will be but she knows it’s never easy, when talking to Bloom is literally, her fighting against her own inner demon which isn’t a battle you can fight, when you’re weak like Rose.  

“Ever feel like sometimes the world is just...conspiring against you?” Rose asked while simultaneously digging her fingers into the ground.  

“It’s not. It’s all in your head...it’s always in your head.” Bloom spoke presently annoyed. 

“To tell you that you’re not good enough?” Rose said still continuing with the same question despite, the annoyance it caused. 

“Yeah, probably because you’re not good enough, has nothing to do with the world and everything to do with you.” Bloom said in a nonchalant manner.  

“Will I ever be worth it? Will I ever look in the mirror and see something worth looking at?” She cried out. 

Bloom chuckles, “Don’t make me laugh now! I mean, look at you. You're plain...simple! You’d have to lose five pounds, before anyone could even look at you! You’re disgusting!” 

Rose began to raise her voice, “Shut up! I’m just as good as any other girl out there”, but then unsure asked, “Right?”  

 Bloom mischievously smirked as she spoke, “You don’t even come close. You're just a brainless, pathetic idiot. No one will ever want you...no one will ever love you!” 

“That’s not true!” Rose was holding tears. 

“Of course, it is! Why do you think daddy left? You think it was because he wasn’t ready? No! It was because he didn’t want you...because deep down he knew that you’d never be someone that he could love. And no one will ever think twice about loving you...because of him.”  

Rose pauses the conversation going on in her head and as if on stage, spoke straight ahead from the mountaintops, addressing an imaginary audience. “This is Bloom...she’s been here my entire life. Always calling the shots. Telling me how to be and who I am. Don’t dress like that. Don’t speak...just be quiet. No one will hear you anyways. You’re worthless or you’re not worth being seen. All my life, always there. Calling the shots and orchestrating the movements. Today...as I sit and rest on this mountaintop, I seek a way to escape her. To leave my demon behind... for good.” Rose attempts to go back to the previous conversation but Bloom interjects and takes over. 

“She can’t get rid of me. I’m always here. I’ll never leave her...I'm inside her head. Wherever she is ...wherever she goes, I’ll be there. I’m her. Doesn’t she know that? Everything she does, before she does it...I’ll always know. I'm not a monster...I’m her best friend. Her enemy. I'm everything. I can’t leave her.” Then the conversation resumes as it was previously. 

 “I hate you!” Rose starts back again. 

Bloom nods in unison as she says, “I hate you too! Something, we can both agree on!” 

Rose puts her hands on her head her temples throbbing from crying so heavily, “I can’t do this anymore! I can’t be you anymore... I don’t want to be.”  

“You’ve been saying that for years, what else is new?” Bloom shrugs it off as she rolls her eyes. 

“Why do you hate me so much?” She could feel her heart physically breaking as she said this. 

Bloom, in a condescending tone, “I don’t know. Why do YOU hate you so much?” 

Rose with an emotionless look, “I don’t know”, but Bloom was not buying into it. 

“Liar!” she shouted.  

“I’m not lying, I don’t know.” Rose screamed with fear. 

“Liar!” Bloom shouted at her again. 

Rose even louder this time, “I’M NOT LYING! I DON’T KNOW!” 

“Yes. You. Do! And you want to know how I know...because I'm you!” She proclaimed. 

Rose turned away, tucking her hair behind her ear, “It doesn’t matter.”  

Bloom emphasized as she spoke, “Yes, it does!” 

Rose appeared tired, a wave of pain in her teary eyes, “Why?” 

“Because...it’s the whole reason why we’re standing here on the edge of a mountaintop, instead of at home...curled up with a good book and some music playing in the background”, she so bluntly stated. 

Rose still in denial, shakes her head, “It makes no difference.” 

Bloom now, hurt, “How can you say that? After everything that we’ve been through...you still don’t get it do you?” 

“GET WHAT?!” Rose said flailing her arms aggressively in frustration.  

Bloom through clenched teeth, “You know exactly, what!”  

“If there was something to get, don’t you think that I would’ve gotten it by now? There’s nothing to get!” she cried.  

Bloom disapprovingly shaking her head in a matter of fact way, “You’re missing it.” 

After a long pause, Rose heaved a sigh and with a shallow voice asked, “Missing, what? What, am I missing? What is it that I could possibly be missing?” 

Bloom with a cruel face, “You’re nothing...you’re not anything.”  

“You don’t think I know that! Every day, that I get up and I look at myself in the mirror... I know that. I am nothing. I am no one. I’m worthless and idiotic. I know that, okay? So, I don’t need YOU to tell me that!” She said irritated. 

Bloom if not already, was now immensely angered, “Oh. God. You’re missing it. How can you not see it?” 

“I’m not missing anything! We’ve already established that I am nothing.” She spoke seemingly done with the conversation. 

“How can you not see it? The answer’s right in front of you. It’s looking straight up at you.” Bloom groaned as a sign of agony. Rose, after a moment, finally has the realization. 

“You want me to...to kill myself, don’t you?” her voice quiet.  

Bloom talking down to her, “No, I don’t want you to do anything. YOU want to do this. You’ve been meaning to for a while now, you’ve just been waiting for a reason to let go.” 

Rose for a while did not say anything, didn’t want to say anything for that would make everything all the more real. She didn’t want to die but yet she did, if that makes sense. How could she want anything less with how miserable she was? But Rose decided in that moment, that she wouldn’t yet say that and that she didn’t care how much Bloom already knew of it. 

“NO! I don’t want to do this!” 

Bloom tauntingly so, “Yeah, you do! Do it! Jump!” 

Rose pacing back and forth, between one end of the mountain until she stops, “NO! There must be another way, t-there just has to be.” 

“There is no other way Rose! There isn’t! This is the only way!” Bloom preached. 

Rose felt rage, “NO!”  

“Yes, Rose! Please, just do it for the both of us! Do it for me and just...free your mind!” she begged but Rose just cried. 

Bloom begged once more, “Please! This is the only way to stop our pain, I can’t take this anymore! This battle, this war that we’re fighting with ourselves...it’s not worth it anymore! Put us out of our misery, please.”  

Rose thinks about it briefly but then the sun begins to set and she looks up at the sky as it does. “Maybe, life can be beautiful? Maybe, the world still has time to see us, but we just can’t give up. Maybe in the end, it’ll all work out”, she spoke hopeful. 

Bloom gives into that for a moment but quickly dismisses it, “Yeah! And maybe pigs will fly! Or I'll be a freaking ballerina. Maybe life is just all sunshine and rainbows and everything nice! You’ve been trying to preach that mantra for years but nothing’s changed, nothing’s beautiful...at least not about life. Death, maybe but life no. 

“Well, maybe life hasn’t revealed its ‘beauty’ to us yet. Maybe we just got to wait it out. Enjoy the brightness of the sun, kissing and touching our skin. Or the chill of winter? The change of the leaves. How can we just leave that? Pretending like this beauty doesn’t exist, simply because we’re in pain now?” A thought that was an incomprehensible idea to her. 

“Why do you still have hope? After everything, after all the things that we’ve been through. How can you still have hope? Just let go...please! I can’t take it anymore”, Bloom exhausted. 

Rose stops the conversation once more to address her imaginary audience. “And in that moment, I thought...that maybe it’s not the hope that makes me stay. Maybe, it’s not this concept of beauty in the nature of life or that death has its own weighing and inflicting consequences. Maybe it’s not the search or the desire to one day be loved and understood, to find that one person that makes the world just a little bit bigger. But maybe...just maybe, it’s the principle of nature. The nature of the beauty that life is intended for”, as if being ripped from the moment, she breaks away and is back with Bloom again. 

Bloom sighed disappointed, “Can’t you do anything right for once? Can’t you just let go? You’re nothing! You hear me? Nothing. You’re just you. Plain and simple. No added or important features. Nothing but ordinary. Don’t you get that? Don’t you know in your heart that no matter what, no matter what you do or what you say...you will always be nothing. Invisible. An utter and complete waste of space that only exist to be filled by someone worth seeing.”  

“Ah, that’s not true! It’s not, y-you’re wrong. You don’t have a damn clue as to what you’re talking about!” Rose’s whole body shook as she kicked the ground. 

Bloom with a grin, “Oh really? I don’t? I'm you...remember? I know you better than you know you. I’ve been here all your life. Watching over you... and waiting for the day that you became so vulnerable...so broken, so beaten down, damaged and used, so that I could be here to be a voice that you could, listen to.”  

Rose’s voice cracked, “How did things get so bad? How did...we get, so bad? What happened to make us like this? To make us so...suicidal, so unhappy?”  

“NO. It’s not how did WE get here, it’s how did YOU get here? I only started talking...whispering in your ear, when you fell apart. When you lost it, when you became weak and decided that I was a voice that you should listen to...” 

Rose shocked and perplexed, “What happened to us? We were happy once, weren’t we?” 

“NO. We were always just pretending, like everything was okay, remember? Brushing off every minute of unhappiness that we felt and pretending like it wasn’t something serious. As if we didn’t know that something more was wrong”, Bloom began in a sing song voice but then truthfully finished, just tugged at Rose. 

“NO. That can’t be true, we were happy at one point. We were. I just know it”, her voice attempted to be certain but wasn’t. 

Bloom a look on her face that said “you should know this”, shook her head, “We were never happy. Something, incredibly horrible happened and it changed us forever. It took any possibility for happiness. Something happened and it took a piece away from us. The part of us that was human and whole,” 

Rose now, covering up her ears, “Shut up.” 

Bloom beginning sternly, “Something happened that wasn’t supposed to happen.” 

Rose still covering her ears screamed, “Shut up!” 

Bloom increasing her sternness and becoming louder, “Something that we didn’t want to happen...but happened against our wishes.” 

Rose with her hands in fists, shouted, “Shut up! Nothing happened…nothing. You hear me?!”  

“But it did. Someone we loved…someone we cared about, who we trusted like family, took advantage of us”, Bloom spoke, the first sign of compassion in her voice. 

Rose cried with her voice cracking, “NO. NO! Stop it, shut your little mouth!”  

“We’re still that same. Scared…little girl”, Bloom was sad. 

Rose, out of breath and in pain, “Stop it. STOP. TALKING.” 

“We’re still that same little girl…waiting to be healed. Waiting for someone to save us. To stop us from thinking and from being stuck without a voice”, Bloom tried to be mean but could not, with this anyways. 

Rose just cries, all the misery and gut-wrenching pain in her chest coming through her body all at once, back and forth like waves crash on top of each other. Like they did in a riptide. 

“That night when we lost our voice…we lost everything. We’ve never been the same. That’s how we got here”, Bloom finished before her voice gave out. Ironic, huh? 

Rose sniffles and tries to stop crying but the tears and snot keep coming down on her face. Neither one of them speaks for a while, not having the stamina to keep this conversation going much further but mostly, because they didn’t want to speak. But unfortunately, as the saying goes, life goes on and so eventually, Bloom speaks again. 

“And that…that’s the real reason why we’re on this mountaintop right now. Looking for a way to escape. To leave our souls behind”, she said through the heavy silence. 

“It’s just too much to carry, this internal baggage…it’s too heavy”, Rose beating at her chest to demonstrate the pain felt. 

“So, then let go. Do us both a favor and let go. Let the world grow to be just a little bit bigger without us”, Bloom says extending her hand out and resembling peacefulness. 

Rose allows herself to think of the idea more than she did before, “Just let go and it’ll all be over?” 

Bloom nods, “Yeah, just let go.”  

Rose says her sentence, questioning for reassurance, “Let go and all the pain...the emptiness, it’ll go away?”  

“It. Will. All. Go away. Gone”, Bloom creeps up behind her whispering this in her ear. 

“And the world won’t miss us?” Rose trying to reaffirm that she should still do this. 

Bloom moves her head from side to side with a smile on her face, “The world, won’t think twice about us.” 

Rose almost ready to take the leap, “And all I have to do…is just step closer to the edge, and jump off?” 

“Just jump off”, Bloom now more softly and circling her. 

“Bloom...”, Rose scared and already remorseful. 

Bloom with a look of shock, gasped “Wait...no, I meant both of us. What are you doing?!” 

Rose with tears in her eyes, “I’m sorry...” 

Bloom trying to hold on, “No, don’t...don’t leave me!” 

Rose begins counting, “One…” 

Bloom begging merciful with terror in her eyes, “No... Please." 

Rose continues, “Two…” 

Bloom now shouting with hate, “Rose…I swear to God!”  

Rose finishes wincing, “Three!” 

“NO!!!!” Bloom cried out as she fell off the cliff. 

After taking one last moment to mourn, Rose again, for the last and final time addressed her imaginary audience. “It was in that moment, that I finally understood that I had to let her go. The moment, she became the instigator of my death. I had to let her go to get myself back. When she was with me, she forced me to leave every part of me behind. I hid from the world, letting it slowly kill me. Numbing me and stopping me from getting back up. Making me feel powerless and weak. But in that final moment, I could say goodbye because she was now background noise to tune out”. 

“I love you”, Rose said to a hardly conscious Bloom. 

“I can’t love you back”, she croaked as her voice gave out completely. 

Rose kneeled down next to her and softly grazing her imaginary forehead said, “That’s okay… because I’ll always love both of us, but today I let you go”, a final tear fell down her face and with that Rose walked away to leave. A hope of a greater someday.