She Ran...

(A poem Inspired by Shane Koyczan-dedicated to my truest friend)

She was only of the age of 14 when she stopped skipping happily to her class to get the best seat. She ceased sprinting to the cafeteria line and instead ran to the the handicapped stall in one out of the seven cramped bathrooms on campus. She ran from the the people who bombarded her with their rehearsed, sarcastic, complements that sprayed her with an array of silver bullets. The grenades of sneers and laughs that hailed down on her penetrated through her most sincere smile. The glass that separated her from the reality of life became thinner and thinner until it finally broke. That’s when I came in to save her from deepening the battle scars from a rusty piece of metal that popped out of a handheld pencil sharpener. That day was the day that I jumped into a similar battle of hers. We would fight to see who can stay sober from that metal piece for the longest. We would see who would be the first one to drop that flimsy bloody metal razor into the grate of the concrete pit. Which was located behind the teacher’s bathrooms almost like a place to hold them captivity till she found an alternative way to inflict pain. Those were the days leading up to battle we would be fighting on the same side. The red handle that would stick straight out of the tin box like a declaration of war the end of a battle and the start  of hell. “kill yourself” written in curly handwriting with a felt tip pen stained with the color of her blood was I need to read. She pulled her alternative way of releasing her pain and set the note ablaze. Sparks flew off into the wind along with dandelions and glass that i pulled from the earth beneath. She stood up and began to run, she ran faster than she had ever ran before. Away from the stabbing pain of a knife pressed against every sliver of happiness and joy left in that little body of hers. The body that she thought was God’s most ugliest creation. But to me she was the definition of beauty. She had the personality of a Lion but the vulnerability of a newborn cub. She was like a piece of paper, thin, fragile, burning, smoke rising as a hot air balloon at its breaking point. Just like her personality which began to consist of test and pills. A tsunami of anti depressants and therapists who thought her mental state could be fixed with the contents of a first aide kit. Of those terrible doctors who blindly diagnosed her with anxiety, ADD, bipolarism, paranoia, OCD, insomnia, depression, and anorexia. But I knew her better than those mindless people shoving pills down that poor girls throat.  I knew her as a loving sister, a daughter to parents who would cover her in bruises and cuts from water glasses being thrown at her angelic face. I knew her as the perfect friend who stumbled across bad luck as if she were a magnet. A girl who runs from the lies yet believes them. An angel that was always on the serving plate for demons. A little girl lost in a sea of needles, pills, abusers, and scrubs, hospital beds, iv’s, and that beeping noise that played a song with her beating heart would fill the room getting faster and faster. The sound that matched up with the pitter patter of her size 7 doc martens running through a matrix of laughs and scoffs. Running from her blood stained sink, her breakfast that was lying in the handicap stall next to a toothbrush, her parents that didn't accept her for being bisexual. I always knew her as the girl with the bandages layered onto her left arm, but I was wrong to do so. I should have remembered her as the girl who put out the fire that was burning my whole world to pieces. I should have ran with her dodging all the obstacles of life. I should have cut the rope that was hung from her ceiling fan. I should have stopped her from ending her spirit, the only only spirit that gave me hope that life would stop being so damn terrible. She was the definition of hope and love combined. I can still picture her purple glasses raising as her puffy cheeks smile. I can still imagine her obsession with heavy metal and her woman crush on Demi Lavato. And I can still see her expression when I told her that I got my first boyfriend, then showed her a picture of a Chipotle burrito. These memories that I want to relive with her once again. If only she were still here so we can jump in a mosh pit and yell at random people we don’t know and give old people crackers. But most of all I just wanted someone who I can trust to fight all the battles of life with. But none of that will happen because she ran to the marble stairs, leading up to the skies. Where she can run freely without worrying of the battles and wars that would ambush her in her most vulnerable state of mind.