Misery

I made up a best friend all in my head.
He was Latino with giant puppy eyes that reflected the sort of hope that only a boy from the ghetto who grew up taking care of his mother can have. There's something about being raised without a real father that makes a man want to be the best he can be.  I made up a best friend all in my head and I gave him a name and a mop of black curls that framed his face when he was young, and as he got older, the curls slowly receded until he cut his hair every two weeks and tried to grow a beard. I invented a smell for him, that still brings tears to my eyes when I smell it on a strange boy who couldn't possibly understand the beauty of fiction. I gave him stubble on his face that prickled when I hugged him and when we pressed our child-faces together. Love love love.

I invented a world where he loved me. I invented a world where we were inseparable. On my bad days, I would turn to this marvelous fantasy and he would wrap me in his arms that got less pudgy and more muscular as I got darker and more self-involved. I heard everything going on in his head because I'd made him up, yet somehow I'd managed to obscure his screaming, and ignore his pain, just so I could be loved by a fictional character. We shared each thought. We shared our childhood until White noise drowned out a voice I should have heard, calling me to be the protector he'd raised me to be.

Teetering on the cusp of adulthood, we held hands, anticipating a leap of faith into the world of grown-ups. We never have to change. What will you do without each other in college? The answer was never important. The question, never significant.

My imaginary friend clawed his way out of my brain before I could formulate words, any attempt to answer the big question that plagued our relationship when we finally realized that not everything lasted forever. People died. Love was temporary. We both were scared, but he ran first. He scratched and scraped at the weak tendrils of optimism that held me together. He took with him my love and scrambled my brain. He revealed the monstrous fears that I concealed and he let go of my hand before I was ready to be on my own.

My imaginary friend is dead. I have killed our memories together and it's almost as if I'd never thought him up. Sometimes I try to recall specific times when we were together. I try to think of conversations that we had. I want to remember the feeling of being completely engulfed in the arms of someone else and leaving your heart in someone else's hands.

I can never be protected again. My little Latino boy is grown up and has left my head. Only on days like this, where the wind chill forces me to wrap handmade scarves tight around my neck, or on days when orange leaves bring back warm fall memories, when tears creep on the edge of my eyelids ready to spill forth, I think of him. I look back and I understood why he ran. He left a shell of a person who was once happy behind because he could no longer stand to see this wraithlike thing absorb a girl once full of life. I was growing into oblivion, and he couldn't stop me. Even if he'd held on tighter, I would have pulled him into death eventually.

I'm shaking.

I'm asking you what's wrong.

What's wrong?

Please.

I want to fix this.

I want.
I want.

Just talk to me.
Why can't we talk about this?

Please...
I want to talk to you.
I want.

Please be happy.
Please.

I want.
I want you to be happy.