Faded Colours

The swing had already faded, as if picking up on the tone of the neighbourhood, even after only a year of use and wear. The cherry red paint had already begun to peel off the sides of the metal, the colour contrasting with the faded blue and green hues of the frame. The reds, blues and greens seemed too bright, too colourful to fit into my dull world. Yet, somehow I took solitude in the cheap black plastic seats and the cold rusty metal chains that created indents against my palm. The swing set was colourful and tacky, out of place and awkward amongst its surroundings. Perhaps that was why I liked it so much. I took comfort in that something was just as faded and fake as I was. My pale feet scratched against the hard tarmac floor as my feet met the ground as I lamely moved back and forth, a pathetic effort in swinging. Deep in thought, I let my mind take me away to another place. My place. My world. A blank canvas of absolute nothingness enveloped my mind, passing through all the worry and all the pain, sprinting past the thoughts of discomfort, of abandonment and mostly, past the loss of hope. Here, I felt no pain. I felt nothing at all. Numbness was to me, like freedom is to a caged bird. My fingers brushed past the old and weathering piece of parchment paper I grasped within my half bitten fingernails. My fingers traced over the messy, almost illegible ink blotted words. I should tear it, feel the satisfaction of having the starch destroyed beneath my fingers…yet I couldn’t. Instead, I folded the coarse paper over itself with precision, as was routine. I shoved it deep into my pocket, as if the further I could push it down, the further I would be able to push it to the back of my mind…but the words played through my mind louder than ever. My mind kept, held on to those words like a seamstress would of gold threads. My arms fell limp at my sides, my feet stumbling forward, my fingers reaching out…but there was only emptiness, my eyes made a pathetic attempt to refocus, but the colours merged together into one messy wet blur of colours…my whole body slumped forward to the ground, as if I was a puppet and someone had cut off my strings. My body twisted in an awkward position, I was now useless to my creator. I let the salty tears escape from the corners of my eyes, making messy streaks down my sallow cheeks. I made no attempt to brush them away; instead, I followed the wet tears down to where they had fallen daintily on to the faint pink scars on my wrists, lines of reminders of the past, the present and the future. My fingers moved clumsily across the slight indent that had been made, no longer disappointed or upset with myself. The angry marks I saw across my wrist were no longer disturbing, just memories. Memories and moments. My mind flashed back, I was no older than 13 or 14 years old, my long nimble fingers threaded through that of my best friend, my love. Several notes of laughter escaped from my quaint, stark red lips, my tight chestnut curls bouncing off the small of my back as I ran with him through the playground, towards the new swing set. It was shiny and new, with plastic bits and hanging metal chains in a deep blue, with matching frames and soft rubber seats, the sight of an old memory playing before my eyes warmed the dusty crevices of the past, bringing back the once innocent, carefree childhood life. I looked with longing, envy and a certain jealousy towards my old self. I missed the girl with her chin jut out in defiance, a look of fiery determination in her eyes and perseverance coursing through her soul. I missed the beautiful and kindred spirit that I held inside me, infecting everyone around me with my loud, cheerful laugh that spread across my face in happiness. I missed her and I wish, with every waking moment that I could be her, the one person I know I can never be and will never be anymore…the old me. I looked up, broken from all those years of loving and living. Broken from all those times of hurt that let me loveless. Broken from all those times that I loved so much it hurt. Looking back on those two years of hurt. There was nothing worse than loving the person that was right next to you, loving the one person who needed you most, but would never love you in the same way that you loved him. There was nothing worse than loving your best friend, because with his constant reappearance, hour long telephone calls, weekends out to the movies and park, it was hard to get over him. It was harder yet, when he loved your girl best friend, who had already been dating steadily with a guy of her dreams. It was harder yet, to look at your girl best friend and be there for her, support her, love her, have fun with her and try not to pull her down. It was hard not to be a good best friend, to both of them. But most of all, it was hard to loose that hope, loose that little bit of faith. You’d think that after he had kindly let me down twice, I would have gotten the message and got over him.  But sometimes, you can’t choose the people who you love. “I won’t say I’ll never like you in that way, because nothing is impossible. But I don’t like you like that now. You’re my best friend and that’s the way it’ll always be, but I’ll always be there for you, I don’t know what else to say…” he trailed off, loss for words for the first time. He was my very own personal shrink, my rock. My rock who was always there for me despite the adversities, despite my dilemmas, my depression or my constant whining and complaining. He was there for me. He was full advice and he always knew what to say, always wanting to help me with my problems. But for the first time, he was loss for words, because although he had the utter and complete power to fix it, he also knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t help that he didn’t like me, it wasn’t his fault and there was nothing he could do and he also knew that this time, my problem couldn’t be fixed. So he sat in silence while my heart slowly shattered, falling to the ground like a lead weight. As the months had progressed, I slowly tried to convince myself that I had gotten over him. And along with the passing of the months, and the changing of the seasons, so did our friendship, as I distanced myself away from him. Just like that, I lost my best friend. I was baffled as to why I liked him in the first place, as to why I could still like someone who I knew would never love me back, who wasn’t that great looking, who was awkward, a show off and nothing like me at all. He was nothing like the type of person I usually like…so why. The question remained unsolved in the dusty crevices of my mind, unwilling to leave, present in all of my thoughts. I pulled the paper out of my pocket, attempting to tear it in half, once and for all, but to no avail. I glanced up at the navy canvas above me with faint splatters of silver, dotted amongst the sky, the moon a faded grey, creating a blanket of darkness. “Shit”, I muttered under my breath. I hadn’t realized how long I had sat on the swing, but my sore bottom confirmed that it had been at least several hours. I trudged home unwillingly, but fearful of my mother’s worried screams as to where I had disappeared off to. I fervently rubbed away my mess of tears, breaking in to a run until I arrived home. To my luck, mum was out, probably at some meeting or another and hadn’t left any messages on my phone. I breathed a sigh of relief and collapsed onto my bed, exhausted and emotionally drained. Throughout the night, I stirred in my dreams, tossing from side to side, unable to sleep. Just like every other night, as images of his perfect face flashed before me, taunting me, mocking me and leaving the memory of him imprinted in my mind.
I wish I could say that things turned out better after that. That by some miracle of fate, I got happy again, that life started giving me a fair chance again and a brighter outlook on living. Sometimes, it feels like there is simply no light at the end of the tunnel and however much you’re trying to believe, it just doesn’t seem possible. You try to convince yourself, that the tunnel has to end sometime soon, that the rain and thunderstorms will stop pouring down. I can’t tell you that it stops, because sometimes, it just doesn’t. I wish I could skip to the future and tell you that everything turned out okay for me in the end, just to reassure everyone that there is hope, but I won’t skip to the end because it would be too hard to explain how the end for me, was the happiness that I was yearning for. It would be too hard to tell you how much happiness I felt as my feet brushed the rough stone of the building as I jumped in to the empty darkness of the silver stars splattered faintly across the large expanse of the endless ink blue sky that, very literally, took my breath away. The last thing I felt was of numbness; and the last thing I saw was his serene face…and then there was nothingness.