To Live

I had a dream. 

You jumped. 

I was always afraid of this. That your hopelessness would one day overcome your rational decision making, and that bridge we often ride over would be your place of death. 

In my dream I saw you jump. I was trying to run towards you on the bridge and I was screaming your name. But my voice was muffled. My footsteps to slow. I was always afraid I would be to slow. 

To slow to text you back, to slow to block your way from an oncoming train. 
I always tried to protect you. But in this dream, it seemed it was all for nothing. 
I watched as you cling to the railing of the bridge. Eyes wide with terror. Confusion. Utter defeat. 

I screamed when you released your hands, falling backwards. You seemed to fall forever. Conversations of self-worth, pleads for overnight phone calls and arguments about reasons to live; extinguished with you last breath.

I had a dream my heart broke because you were gone in a moment. I could no longer tie your broken strings of sorrow back to my heart and remind you of joy and love.

It broke because I lost my beloved friend to a misconception that depression was an act which can be shed of like a snakeskin. 

I had a dream where I never cried so hard as I did then- peering over the edge, hoping the magical abstractness of dreaming would make you float back up on a cloud of candy cane, grab my hand and we’d fly together. Happy. 

In my dream I yelled at your parents, peers and bullies as miserable tears and ‘what ifs’ rose into the air suffocating me.
I reprimanded them for not understanding the chemical imbalance you so acutely suffered from. I screamed at them for not knowing why sadness and happiness came and went with the changing of the wind in a blizzard for you.

I asked them how they didn’t know that ignorance and close mindedness to mental illness lead to a jump which snuffed out the life of a person in a single blow.
How could I ever grieve with them? 
Society’s ignorance of mental illness is embarrassing. Their notion of depression, disorders and anxieties is infallibly laughable. Most don’t understand. Most aren’t excepting. Most try and ignore it. The strings from my heart snapped listlessly in the wind, lost and angry without you.

I remained on your bridge. 

I had a dream I was in a nightmare, that forced my deepest fears to fly out and face the obliviousness the world inherited. Humanity needs to dispel ignorance and turn towards understanding.
Suddenly the bridge broke with a horrible crack and I screamed falling into the abyss. I fell into the crashing waves that merciless took you and tumbled into nothingness.

I woke up.
My face scrunched up in grief and fury.

Your smiling face stood over me and laughed, “you talk in your sleep.”