To No One

Ch.1 - Dear No One

<B - People didn't listen to me. As much as I tried to explain how I felt, my words fell into deaf ears. They just kept on throwing the same nonsense at my direction over and over again. "It wasn't your fault", "you weren't in control", "everything will be fine". If only they listened for one second they would know that I was not fine. But no, either they couldn't manage to comprehend my situation or they were just "paying" attention for the extra pay, they just kept repeating the same thing over and over. I just needed someone to actually listen to me, to finally get everything off my chest.

One day I finally came up with something. If no one around me would truly to listen to me, why not express my feelings to a stranger?

It was a really stupid idea and it will probably end up going wrong, horribly wrong. Whatever happened, it would have ended either in public embarrassment or me dead in a ditch somewhere. Honestly, I think at that point I felt so empty and burned out that I had even happily welcomed death as a valid outcome.

Now with that idea in mind I just had to find any stranger to talk to. Unsurprisingly, this was easier said than done. I might have expected winding up dead, but I wasn't feeling that suicidal at that moment so speaking face to face with some random person in the street was out of the question. After few days, I found a solution to that issue. The problem would not arise if the stranger can't hear or see me. The only means of communication that accomplishes that is a phone, texts to be more specific. I just had to mark a random number and start writing my life in there. The person would probably believe that it's spam, but at least I would be happy if they read even a quarter of it.

I had already sent a "hello" to a random number when I started to question my own sanity. Just why was I doing this? I could've just move on, like everyone told me to do. I didn't get too far on that thought, though. Just a after a minute of suspense, I received an answer.>

A - "Hello? Who is this?"

<B - I know it wasn't much, but that simple response surprised me a little. I honestly hadn't thought that number would even work at all. A feeling of uncertainty blew through my mind at moment. What if the person behind this number was some sort of sociopath? What if they were someone with a blog and decided to write about my story? Against my better judgement, I kept on writing.>

B - "Look, I know only two things about you: We don't know each other and you probably think this is spam. I don't care about the second one. I do care about a request that I have for you. If you have the heart in you I only ask of you one singular thing: Let me tell you my story. After I'm done, you can delete my number for all I care."

<B - Again, an onslaught of doubts and questions invaded my head as I hit send. Was I too aggressive in the text? Too forward? Would mentioning that it wasn't a scam make them more prone to think it was? My train of thought was interrupted by the jingle of an incoming message.>

A - "You are welcome to do so. And don't worry, I won't delete it if that's what you wanted."

<B - "What was that supposed to mean?" I thought while I read the once again short sentence once again. Despite having a certain level of unease about their remark of not deleting anything I started writing everything from the beginning.>

B - "My hometown... while I won't give you the actual name of the place I think it is safe to say that is widely known in the artistic scene. It doesn't have much to do with myself per se, but hopefully you'll have at least a setting in your head now.

My early years seem fuzzy when I look back into them, and what little I remember of that childhood was my father leaving our house to never come back. At the time I thought it was fine since my mother worked enough to feed me and my brother. "One less drunken mouth to feed" is what my mother kept on repeating whenever I asked why he left.

During my high school years my mother started to spend less and less time at the house. While I found it sad to not see her as often anymore, I had my brother with me to keep me company. My brother... He wasn't perfect, but he was the only one I really had there for me when I felt alone. And let me tell you, it feels really lonely when that someone dies in an accident. I found it was strange how I didn't cry during his funeral. Maybe I'm just a heartless bastard.

Just when I managed to enter college my mother completely disappeared from my life. I don't mean "completely disappear", it's just that she could spend days without coming back home. It wasn't a problem for the most part, I guess, since she kept sending money back home and I learned how to take care of myself. The only thing that bothered me is that now I was truly alone in the house, which I hated.

The college, by the way, was supposedly highly regarded all around. If you ask me, I attribute my admittance into that place to pure, dumb luck.

Anyways, it was in that college where I discovered a sickness that ails each and every human being: Emotional attachment. I started dating someone, if you can call it that. I wouldn't say that I actually felt anything for him, since I just accepted his incessant requests to date out of annoyance, really.

After a year or so, might have been more, my mind started to fill with memories of my past. Even though I tried to ignore them, each fragment of my life felt like a knife piercing my very soul culminating in ceaseless pain. Month after month, the hollow pain that I felt didn't subside one bit. Instead, it was amplified by the second. I tried to explain it to my partner, but he only made the situation worse as my mind rapidly deteriorated.

Then, I finally snapped. I remember that day so vividly that it seems like it happened yesterday. It happened during a morning class. I suddenly stood up, full of pain and determination, and ran out of the room heading towards the roof of the building. I didn't even stop to contemplate the possibilities or consequences, I just jumped straight away.

While I was in the air, I somehow felt calm. It felt like the world had stopped for a second around me. For the first time, I felt at peace with everything. Then as sudden as it stopped time moved once again, and I fell towards the ground.

I wasn't alone during that fall, though. Someone had managed to catch up to me and grabbed me mid-air. When we made contact with the ground I felt an intense pain in my left arm, signalling that I was still alive. However, the person that grabbed me was just minutes away from perishing beside me. Now that we were on the ground and that he let go of me I could see who he was. It was him, my partner, lying on the ground with his head cracked open like an egg and legs mangled almost over his head. I asked him why he did it. Why would he give away his life for mine. Instead of an answer, he just smiled before passing out. I don't know why, but just then. Just then, after all the things I went through and all the stuff I had managed to endure. Just then I lost my composure and broke into tears. I want to say that I didn't feel anything for him, but branching from that I guess deep inside I did. Or he could've just been the straw that broke the camel's back. Later that same day I received notice that he had passed away due to his injuries, which only made everything so much "better" for me.

The so-called "help" that I started receiving after this ordeal was nothing more than a joke. The things they said passed as "advice" were just completely useless and hollow words that kept on being repeated by every single person I met. "None of this was your fault" they told me. "You didn't have any control over your actions that day" they tried to lie. They just kept saying that I would be fine from now on. They only had to stop for one second and listen to me to know that nothing was fine, and that I wouldn't be able to recover so easily.

Sorry about that rant. I think I got carried away by accident.

Anyways, now the only option that I saw as viable to get my voice heard (or rather, read) was to write to you, stranger. If you actually got this far I have to thank you for sticking this far with me. If you didn't and you just scrolled down here I still thank you for allowing me to write this in the first place.

So yeah, thank you... and goodbye."

<B - As I finished and send the message a sense of relief soaked my body like a cold shower. It took almost a full minute for the message to get sent. It was already three in the morning when I checked the phone's clock. It was ten o'clock when I started writing. Had I really taken that long? I decided that I didn't want to see if the person at the other side of the screen even answered. I connected my phone to the charger and left it on the desk as I threw myself on the bed, quickly falling unconscious. In hindsight, I could've muted the phone before leaving it in the table, but I was done for that night. For once in a long time, I slept rather peacefully.>