She wanted to die.
He wanted to live.
•••
A hand grabbed onto my wrist, yanking me back just as the train rushed past, before I'd even had time to comprehend whether or not I'd carry out the action. I stumbled back into the person's chest, my hear...
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I found that darkness was more exposing than light.
Sat here in the obscurely lit room with faint streaks of light fluttering across the walls, I felt more honest here in the dark with Cassie than I did during my regular routine of getting through each arduous day. From smiling with Tabitha and face-timing Theo, neither of those moments felt like I was being half as genuine as I was now.
The light cast shadows that helped hide the truth, and so I grabbed the opportunity I had to linger in the light for as long as I could. My optimistic front, which Cassie had first met during the night, was merely the better part of me that I wished people were able to see. In my whirl of trying to remain in the light, I had dismissed any thought of ever revealing my flaws to Cassie – especially not in the room that had nursed me through days I had thought I would never see the end of.
However, this version of me, who I was when I was Will and defined by my cancer, was nothing but a ball of burning darkness I had been too ashamed of to reveal. I felt more exposed in the dark – more true to myself yet more vulnerable. In the dark I didn't have to switch between identities and struggle to appear like everything was okay; in the dark I could be myself and still be seen.
Yet in the light, I was loaded with medicines and pricked with needles for IV drips; heard but not listened to; looked at but not seen. In the light I was a star that burned and burned until I burnt out, still trying to fan the flames and keep the embers glowing when all that was left were mere ashes.
Cassie saw me in the dark and still chose to stay; the same way I had seen her in the dark and discovered a part of myself that I hadn't been allowing myself to accept. Sat in the dark with Cassie while theorising about what it meant to 'live for the dead people', I couldn't help but feel a sanguine smile stretching across my lips at the irony of it all.
Earlier tonight, I had told Cassie that darkness could exist alongside light: it was possible to have both sadness and happiness together, the same way the dark sky and stars could interact and not cancel each other out. But, it was now as she smiled back at me - the recurring thought of wanting to tell her I loved her ringing in my head – that I comprehended how we both carried darkness and light.
We were just two broken kids unable to see the light reflecting off our fragments; too entrapped in the darkness enshrouding us to see that the shattered shards were sparkling as they fell, emitting soft rays of silent hope.
We could see the light shining in the other; but as for our own?
We both seemed to think we were incapable of being saved, and yet all the two of us wanted to do was help the other save themselves. Her hazel eyes seemed to glow with an ethereal beauty as she looked at me, yet she would never believe that was true; she described me as a light that made the darkness bearable, but I would never be able to comprehend how she could view me that way.
