The world was so beautiful.
It was so beautiful out here and he couldn't believe it. The sky and the ground and the running streams and the birds and the trees. Like really. He was so thankful that this was his job. He still couldn't believe he had miraculously landed an internship at Ellison State park for the summer, through one of his mom's work friends, even if it was just for the summer. And he was lucky enough to spend most days out here walking through and working with trees.
Troye's love of trees led him to always want to work at a park. He really did love them, ever since he was little. He thought they were so beautiful and majestic. The way they stood in forests and in places like this with the sun was shining so bright. There was no one around and it was utterly quiet, except for the rustling of leaves in the wind and the distant happy calling of birds, making it one of the most peaceful moments Troye has had in a long time. But that's all it was...a short moment. Because soon enough his head was back in it's usual cloudy, dark place. He had come here straight from his therapist appointment. His mom was going to pick him up, like she usually did between her shifts at the hospital and classes studying to be a paralegal, since Troye didn't have his own car. But today he had offered to take the bus. It was almost an hour ride to work with all the stops the bus had to make, but he said he didn't want to disturb her, knowing today was a rather busy day at the hospital. But really he just wanted some more time before he'd have to face his mom again. He didn't want her seeing his tears, and ask him how he was doing today and then having to lie and say he was okay. His mind had felt too heavy for his head, and his head too heavy for his neck, as it was filled to the brim with self deprecating thoughts that his therapist was paid to attempt to remove. But Troye knew, there wasn't any hope. He was going to be a senior in high school soon. He had barely a single friend, he found it hard to talk openly to his mom, and his anxiety disorder made living life a thousand times more difficult. He had to stop his hands from shaking as he walked through the forest, so he placed them in his pockets, but occasionally reached out to run his hands along the leaves of the trees and bushes on his walk.
He didn't know what he was doing with himself, he just knew he needed an escape. Luckily there weren't many people around, as he was in a more secluded part of the park and he could have a quiet moment to himself.
He soon came to the end of the path he was walking on, and ran into a very strong line of very tall and intimidating trees. Most of them were maple trees, with some oak and pine mixed in the batch of big trees. Troye's shift was almost over and he was still in a horrible mindset. Troye's mind was aching and he was hurting and the last thing he wanted to do was face his mom or his boss or anyone in this moment. So he walked along the trees, passing the leaves and trunks with a sense of wonder in his eyes. He decided that there was nothing he wanted more than to hide away for a little while in the trees. So he continued his walk, and he soon started running, and then finally began sprinting...until he found an oak tree with a low enough break in the trunk where he could climb up it, so with a quick movement he jumped up, and grasped onto the branches as strongly as he could with his bony, thin and weak hands. He felt the bark scrape the skin on his palms roughly but he really couldn't give a shit in the moment. He smiled as he got higher and higher in the tree, happy that it was a tall strong tree and had lots of branches to hold onto.
He soon got up pretty far, to where he felt like his problems were so far on the ground that they couldn't be reached. Maybe the further he went up, the better he would feel. So he put his foot onto another branch that seemed a little thin, but he thought it will be sturdy enough. As soon as he placed his foot on it though, he realized that that was not the case, as the branch began to bend downward. So he quickly retracted his foot and tightened his grip on the branches that his hands were gripping like death. But he wasn't scared.
This didn't scare him. It was going home and facing his mom and saying that he cried in therapy again today. It was saying that despite her efforts to attempt to make him happy he still wasn't. That despite all the pills he was taking, he still didn't feel any better. He was scared of senior year, how was he going to survive another school year where no one cared about him, where no one talked to him and he felt so so...alone. Where he was an outsider and felt like dying every single day. He was going to spend another year being invisible. He always was, no one cared enough to even notice he was there. He always got lost in the in between's in everyone's lives. He was scared of how lonely he was. And that he felt he would be lonely for the rest of his life.
Troye doesn't feel like he deserves to be here. He's not doing anything remarkable. He has trouble connecting with people and can't catch anybody's attention for his life. He's just merely a passerby and a background character in everyone else's life and he knew he'd never really ever matter. To anyone. His therapy was supposed to be helping him to realize his potential. To realize that each day has the potential to be a good day, and that he has the potential to someday be someone he likes.
But Troye knew that it wasn't possible. His therapist was wrong. His mom was wrong. It wasn't going to change. And frankly, Troye didn't want to be around to watch him mess up his own life even more. He didn't. He wanted to be gone. At the same moment that he felt a tear roll down his cheek from his left eye, he looked down at the ground. He was up so high and the ground was so far away, and it looked like the drop would be so very painful. Maybe painful enough to kill him.
He scrunched his eyes up in pain as he let some more tears flow out of his system. His hands were shaking again and his mind was running in a thousand different directions. That was how his mind worked. His therapist told him he needs to work on slowing down his mind and focusing only on the present. But Troye couldn't do that. What was he going to do when school started? What was he going to do when no one would sit with him at lunch and no one would go to prom with him and when no one would ask him how he's doing? What was he going to do with the rest of his life?
He was a loser. He always would be. And suddenly hitting the ground didn't seem like such a bad idea anymore. He stared at the branch that he knew was flimsy. He knew that by putting his weight on it, despite him being thin and light, that it would be enough to break it.
He let out a shaky breath as he thought about his mom. The only person in the world who gave even the littlest of a shit about him. But he couldn't even do it for her.
But all he could mutter out was a shaky "I'm sorry" before he slowly moved, and forced his left foot onto the branch that he knew wasn't sturdy in the slightest, and in one of the quickest movements he's ever made, he moved onto it and jumped his right foot to the branch too. As soon as Troye's weight was placed on the branch, the branch starting giving way. And in the same moment, he let go of the branch his hands were gripping.
He felt it before he heard it. He felt his body start to fall a split second before he heard the snap of the branch, as both the branch and Troye went falling to the ground, hitting another branch on the way to the ground, hitting Troye right in the gut. He blacked out for a few seconds as he was heading for the ground, because soon enough, he felt himself hitting the ground in full force, with his arm directly under him.
It took him a second to come to, and to realize that he was on the ground. And he wasn't dead.
He felt like just staying still and closing his eyes, and maybe he would die eventually. Stay there until someone found his dead body. But as he tried to move his arm from underneath him, he felt it. He felt his arm go completely numb. It was then, when he raised himself from the ground slightly to look at his arm, and from the immense pain that shot through him from just attempting to move it...he knew. He knew the bone in his arm wasn't supposed to stick out the way it was.
Fuck. He couldn't even kill himself properly. But he knew that his arm was surely broken.
He resumed his crying from earlier, this time half of the tears were attributed to the broken bone in his arm.
He stayed there, probably for a good 10 minutes, not knowing if he had the mental nor the physical energy to get up, but with his body crying out in so much pain. If he was terrified of facing his mom before, he was sure as hell petrified now.
He had a lot of reasons to be scared. And now this was another one of them.
