a messy canvas

Us [Tronnor]

Leaving you is the hardest thing I've ever been forced to do; that's the reason why I couldn't offer you the proper goodbye. I'm sorry I had to leave you this letter as the final memento of the past five years of..well, us and what we stood for.

But as much as I wished life could throw in a guide book on how to handle a tragedy as heartbreaking as this, we just aren't offered that luxury.

If it did, wow would we have had it easy.

It wouldn't have taken me two and a half months to muster up the courage to get to know you our seventh grade year. If I'm honest, it intimidated me how effortlessly you fit into the popular friend group. Ten words hadn't even been said and Tyler practically took you in like a long lost friend he'd finally found.

Maybe we would've shared those deep conversations earlier, rather than using art mediums to get out our fears and worries.

Life doesn't give you hand outs, I know that and so do you. But sometimes I wonder how much less would've been pressed on to our shoulders if it did.

I wouldn't of had to realize that how my mom handled stress wasn't what happened in the average household. The occasions when I literally had to watch where I stepped to ensure my dad's pulse was still there wouldn't had to occur on a weekly basis.

You wouldn't of had to take me into the bathroom just as the bell rang for the beginning of our first class in high school to witness only the fourth anxiety attack I had in my life. All because I stupidly had my locker next to these two jocks that were screaming something about football, and that had reminded me too much of the volume that would be reached in my parents famous arguments that would begin at like three in the morning.

I don't think I ever expressed how much gratitude I had when you marched into Principal Chapman's office to demand my locker be switched to the one next to yours. This is my lousy attempt at it now, even though three years have passed since then.

You've always told me I'm the worst pessimist on the face of the planet, which is why you probably aren't surprised at my dig towards the universe itself.

Seeing as this serves as (at least in my eyes) a raw documentation of everything we've gone through, here's the good I've seen because life didn't give us the easy route.

I never would've known the real reason behind you insisting there be ice in your drinks. While it sometimes drove me absolutely insane when you would crunch on the cubes of frozen water, I can appreciate the fact that you partake in this act because it gives you a wave of comfort knowing that the control is yours, especially in times when your nerves tend to get out of hand. This I can completely understand, for everyone on this Earth uses some sort of tactic to gain a sense of footing in this weird world we inhabit.

The time our sophomore year when we slept in the treehouse you adored to pieces when you were younger wouldn't play back in my
memory like an old VHS tape. You came out for the first time just as midnight was about to strike, with tears threatening to splatter on the lenses of your clear square framed glasses. According to you, the hug I gave just as you were about to lose it made all the anticipation you conjured up over the past year melt away. I said it then and I'll say it again, it was the least I could do for someone that means the absolute world to me.

I never would've sang that first song to you at four in the morning to put the monsters usually stowed away inside your childhood journals back in their place for interrupting your slumber. We were on Christmas break at the time, and in your delirious state you had mumbled something along the lines of how the tune reminded you of an Oh Wonder song. I couldn't get the words out that they indeed were the creators of the work, because all I could focus on was how your cheeks were the most delicate shade of red from the bite of the cold getting its way to you from you removing the cozy duvet from your once sleeping form to meet me sitting at your bay window to properly hear my soft singing.

I couldn't tell you how much I wished I had a paintbrush coated in the most glorious colors in that moment. You had the most serene expression across your features that I'd taken witness of in the four year history we'd had as friends; all I had wanted to do was capture it so I could remember it forever.

If life had offered such a deal like I've been blabbing on about, all of this keepsakes wouldn't exist; instead they would be common knowledge where any second thought towards them would be rather insignificant.

I would never want that.

Now we're stepping into our present. As much as looking back has kept me sane these last few months, I can't grasp them any tighter to make my reality a state that doesn't seem to be happening. That went out the window the second my mom took matters a step too far; my sweet sister wailing that she didn't want to deal with our day to day anymore because the woman that brought her into this Earth believed that the birth of all her children was the cause for her breakdown.

That was two weeks ago, also when my father finally took a step to bettering our crumbling family by taking his wife to get the help she so desperately needed, whether she believed his plea of such or not.

So now what do we do? My dad thinks we need to take a step back from this blue neighborhood we've all been raised in and gain a fresh outlook on the world. Even with me turning eighteen in five months (right before we would've walked across that stage together to get our diplomas) he refuses to let us stick around for that. I understand his intentions, but he couldn't have worse timing.

I'm so deeply sorry Connor; I never would've thought I'd have to leave you just as our relationship was growing into something more. I know you're never going to see me in the same light again after this unfolds, which I understand wholeheartedly but..please don't let what we've had die.

I'm not using this as a cry for you to wait for me; that's not fair and you deserve to be set free. What I'm trying to get across is that despite how this chapter of our story has come to be written, when you're ready I'll be here for you to step back in time with. If after giving yourself the proper time and space to heal from this wound you still feel the same as you did before this tsunami broke the daydreams of our future, maybe our finale hasn't arrived just yet.

Love, Troye x