It’s Like...
By Cheyenne
Dedicated to Eddie Araujo , with much love.

It was like being smothered. I distinctly remember, it was like being smothered when I first saw you lying there because the breath in me disappeared and the life in me melted, and I just dropped to my knees and sobbed.

How could they?

You were beautiful. That’s what I first noticed about you... Your smile and your laugh and your way of caring for everyone and everything. And your way of walking into the room and making me wonder how anybody in the world could possibly ever be sad, and then I remember that -oh- not everyone has you. I was grateful at times like those. Who wouldn’t be?

I remember when you took me to the roof, and we looked out at everybody and everything, and I thought, ‘It all looks so small and insignificant down there.’ And suddenly it was so clear to me that all we needed to do was love, because that’s how simple it really was.

And you made it easy for me to love you. There was something in you that I never saw in anybody else, a realness and honesty that was curing. I formed an addiction to you, an addiction I had no desire to break, because you were the best thing in the world I could ever be hooked on, so why not?

I loved you so much, I spent countless moments of my day thinking of you, and wondering how anyone could not love you. But there were plenty of them, and they just didn’t make sense, but it was alright, because I had you and I was loving you just like my heart told me to do, so it didn’t matter what they thought.

Until their thoughts turned evil. I thought they were just people, I didn’t know they were so hateful, or else I would have protected you. I should have protected you. But I didn’t, and they hurt you. I can’t believe they hurt you. How could they?

Yes, when I saw you lying there in your casket, all dressed up like you were going somewhere important, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t even cry. All I could do was suffocate until someone, I don’t know who, dragged me from sight of your body, dragged my eyes from your poor lifeless body, and then I gasped and cried like a baby, and I kicked and shouted because I was so so so mad at them. I was so mad, baby, because you didn’t deserve pain. You didn’t deserve to have your head smashed into the sidewalk. You didn’t deserve to have your bones crushed by their blows, their slurs and laughter echoing in your ears until the final moment of your young, stolen life. You didn’t deserve it.

But that’s what you got, and why? Because of me. I chose to love you in front of everyone, and didn’t listen when you said they wouldn’t accept. And you trusted me the way you always trusted me, the way I trusted you. But you were right and I as wrong, because somehow our love made people hate, if that can even happen, and suddenly you were the subject of their hate. You, with your smile and laugh and caring, was the subject of their hate.

Don’t be hurt or mad at me for saying this, but I think I would rather have lived a miserable life without you in it, than to see what happened because you and I were together. I would rather have seen you with a girl, and watched you be in a relationship people wouldn’t reject, and maybe even be happy with her, if that meant you would have fit in. No, on second thought, I would never want you to be like them.

But because you were different, because we were different, they hated, and because they hated, they caused hurt, and because they hurt you, you’re lying there all dressed up - I can’t get over that - and people are getting their last look at you before you’re gone, because you’re already gone, and I wonder how I’ll live without you, and I wonder if it’s possible to miss someone so much that you really can’t live, because they’re not there to live beside you. I think so, because that’s what I feel is happening to me, and I’m not resisting it, because all reasons to live died with you, and the only thing left is a shell of life, and shells are no good.

I think of how you saved me from ending my life when we first met, and how you said, "Find something worth living for," and it just happened to become you, but now I don’t have anything, so I’m wondering why choose life? I know it would make your killers happy, but none of that would matter to either of us if I was gone too, right?

I hope your time here was worth it though, and that I made your life as beautiful as you made mine, because in the end, I guess who you loved and who you changed is what it’s all about, and baby, I know you knew that because you changed and loved me, and made me love you back. You know, the only substantial thing I have left of you is that knowledge and those memories, and even though it’s not much compared to having the real you, it’s enough to still be my reason to continue on, and one day we’ll be together again in a world where nobody will hate us and nobody will hurt us, and until then, I’m thinking of you and loving you in my memories, always.