The Sadness Will Never End

3

“I won't give up on you,
These scars won't tear us apart,
So don't give up on me,
It's not too late for us,
And I'll save you from yourself,
And I'll save you from yourself.”

“Jack why don’t you eat anything?” Alex asked. He was full of questions and he was determined to get every one of them answered. With every answer he knew that it would hurt Jack to retell the story but he needed to know, he wanted to help Jack and this was the only way the he knew how to.

“I-I eat. You saw me eat dinner.” Jack stuttered. When he was vulnerable and weak like this he was a terrible liar. The fact that his hoodie hung off his slim frame and his arms were like twigs weren’t helping anything. “The first time that a girl asked me out it was for a dare. When she told me she called me ugly and said that no one would ever love me and that led me to not love myself.” Jack sighed. “I stopped eating but my parents noticed that something was up so I began eating again but I’d throw it all up or do whatever I could to get it out of me.”

“But Jack, you’re perfect the way you are. You’re going to work yourself into an early grave and no one would want that to happen to you.” Alex spoke his mind. He knew that Jack’s parents would miss him and truthfully Alex would miss him as well. Alex has already lost his brother a few years back and he was not going to lose someone again. “About three years back my brother –he killed himself. In his suicide letter he wrote that he thought that no one cared about him and when I found him dead that morning before school every piece of hope inside me just broke. My parents wouldn’t talk to me or each other for that matter. Jack if you weren’t here anymore nothing would be the same. Your parents would drift apart; people would blame themselves and fall into what you have. Jack, I want to help you get better.”

Jack was taken aback by what Alex had said. Alex never seemed like he could have gone through anything as terrible as that. If he was hurting he surely hid it pretty well. “I want to try to get better but I don’t want to fail again.” Jack sighed. He feared failing but it seemed to be the only thing that he was good at.

“You won’t fail because I’m going to be here with you every step of the way, okay?” Alex said to Jack. It was more of a statement than it was a question but he needed Jack to agree with him.

“A-alright, I’ll try.” Jack was really going to give this a go. He wanted to feel wanted and happy again and Alex was giving him the chance for this to happen. Jack was nothing more than a walking pile of bones, he didn’t have any other emotion other than sadness and his thoughts were consuming him. Jack knew that he if didn’t do anything about it he’d be dead within a couple of weeks, maybe even a month. He couldn’t keep this up anymore. One day he’d cut too deep, he’d vomit up more than he intended to, he’d collapse from not having enough energy to get through the day or maybe one day he’d just find the courage that he didn’t have to swallow all of those pills.

“Can we start by getting rid of all of your blades?” Alex asked Jack. Jack let himself out of Alex’s arms with a sigh and walked over to his dresser. He found all five of his blades and handed them to Alex. He didn’t know what he would do without them at this point but he’d get better right? Alex left the room and returned to Jack.

“Alex can I ask you something?” Jack said as Alex held him in his arms again. It was kind of comforting to have someone be like this with Jack but his hips were itching as were his wrists. That’s the thing with fresh cuts, they take days or even weeks to heal completely and until then you’re stuck with the agonizing pain of waiting for them to heal. If you did so much as scratch one of them it would re-open and you’d have to start the healing process all over again and of course it would leave more obvious scars.

Alex nodded his head and waited to Jack’s question. “How did you deal with your brother’s death?”

Alex was expecting to get asked this at some point and that just happened to be now. “I feel into depression and that lead to self-harm. My parents found out before I really got addicted to it and sent me to a therapist. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I had walls built up around me and I just didn’t want to let anyone in.”

“So things got better once you let someone in?” Jack asked and Alex nodded. “If you want to get better someone’s going to need to be there for you when it gets rough, you can’t do it all on your own.” Alex explained. Deep down Jack knew that in order for him to get better he’d eventually have to let someone in; who that someone was he didn’t know but now he was sure that Alex would be that someone.

“Jack it’s getting late, you need to sleep, okay?” Alex said to the younger boy. Jack looked up at him with glassy eyes and asked him if he could stay with him. Alex nodded his head and slid his arms around the younger boy’s waist. He was careful not to bump the open wounds that were scattered across his hips. Jack pulled the covers over the two of them and rested his head on Alex’s chest.