Ryan, you idiot.
A year ago, I saw the most beautiful, intelligent, amazing man in my life. Happy, carefree, star in drama club, true punk. Love at first sight. I hoped, wished.....forget that, I dreamed....dreamt that maybe, just a little bit, I might be able to be a part of your life. Even just to be the friend that nobody knows you have. The one you call at 3 a.m. when nobody knows. Maybe.
The days were long and hard....not hard, they were gauntlets. Gauntlets of gossip and hiding from everyone, of withdrawal in hopes of going unnoticed, days where I felt strangely peaceful...it was the feeling of...oh yeah, there was nobody around. Not the apathetic, shunned kind of nobody around. The hushed, silent, whispering after you're gone about that slut that did this and that kind of silence. The silence that makes you think about your every action, that makes you realize that you will never win, that people will always say something. That doing nothing is just as pointless for two reasons: 1.Lack of productivity and 2. Somebody will say you're doing something anyway.
But those days were cool. Sometimes we went to a punk show, bumped into each other in the hall and hugged, just hung out watching matrix with our eyes glued to the screen, not holding hands or anything cause damn look at this movie no time to be like that, lookit! did he just do that!?!
It was good, in a rebuilding kind of way. I like rebuilding. Well, yes, anyway, it was good. Was.
I don't know when it started, but you've strangely resembled a skeleton, gaunt and shadowy, of late. hmm. Concern grows into fear. Have the stupid drama clubbers' insecurities of appearance gotten through to him? surely not, he's stronger than that.
And no, that wasn't it. Of course not, Ryan, you've never missed a meal and I loved you for that. We sat in my house that day snacking on TV dinners and watching....I don't remember what. It was funny, though. I believe it was Monty Python. Then we were at your house watching a DVD sampler of some hot new punk bands, back before anyone beside you had ever heard of Smile Empty Soul or Taking Back Sunday. No, it wasn't a lack of love of nourishment, for body or soul.
Oh, but it was. So much more intense than anorexia nervosa. You fell and you fell so hard, because you went out on a limb, and didn't even consider gravity because you meant it all. No taking this back. She grew to know you, and couldn't live with the hollow inside. The one that I wanted so bad to soothe, if I couldn't fill it with care. I didn't want to change the Ryan I knew, only to make him feel a little better. A lot better.
So there you were, empty, and your daytime friends called upon you. Have some, man. One thing leads to another, and there you are. Meth. Now you're wasting away, and I stopped you the other day in the hall, and I just wanted to say hi and hug you real quick. I ended up wasting tears and eyeliner on your shirt, because I felt the lack of Ryan beneath it. I miss the huggable guy with a reasonable bicycle tire around his waist. I found a hardened skeleton, not abs, but ribs.
So now you're wasting away. You're just disappearing, and I don't know where you're going, but I wish you could come back just long enough to know what you're doing to all of us on earth. We care down here. Some of us really do. Even that other girl. She still cries over what's happened to you. This girl cries, too. Please come home.
