They're All Gone

Allen Wade

He is wearing a black hoodie, grey T-shirt, & ripped jeans. On his feet are black Converse All-Star shoes, which are dusty & worn. Sitting in the corner of his room, he looks just like an average teenaged guy, around fifteen to seventeen years of age. But under closer scrutiny, it is apparent that the subject of our current observation is, in a way, quite unstable in his mind. His head is drooped, resting on his knee. His right hand is being held to his head, while the other is down next to him, by his side; that hand is clenched into a tight fist. A closer look would prove that he is holding onto something small in his left hand. Some tears roll down his cheeks, but he doesn't bother to wipe them off his face. Clearly, there are so many things on his troubled mind that he fails to even notice.

It is quite obvious that he is undergoing intense depression; he is inconsolable, detached, & unaware of his surroundings. His personal universe is thrown out of orbit, & he seems to not care at all about his surroundings, people in his life, or anything.

Thoughts fly through his mind as he tries to make sense of his life's twisted direction. His brain is clouded by this one central issue that has thrown his entire life totally out of control. He thinks, "Is this really happening? How did it come to this? I shouldn't have made that terrible choice at that time. I wish I could go back & re-live through that decision; it would have changed EVERYTHING."

Now we see that the source of his confusion & inner conflict is due to regret. Sometime in his past, he made a wrong choice, & that decision put him on a path that he is obviously very unhappy with, regretting having chosen wrongly. He constantly broods over his mistake, & he now just wants to get away from everything. He just wants to be left alone, away from everything & everyone. His life has turned upside down, & with the mistakes of his past constantly haunting him, he doesn't see the need for anything. Even living.

His mind is constantly flooded with flashbacks. Every single thing he sees gives way for past events in his life to play through his mind, continually reminding him of his errors, his faults, his mistakes, his problems. His heart is shattered into a thousand tiny pieces, & there isn't a single chance in hell that he would be able to pick up all of the pieces of his broken life without a shard of regret piercing & slicing into his already shaky life, bleeding out raw emotion, which would cause him to just completely break down with no form of expression fitting his feelings. Insomnia plagues his nights; nostalgia afflicts his days, & even the smallest memoir will cause him to go into complete emotional shutdown.

He sighs deeply, while releasing his left fist to let the small object fall out of his hand. A gust of wind takes it flying away from him, & it is now clear what the object is. It is a small piece of paper, not bigger than half a regular-sized piece of notebook paper. On it, there are words written. If you look closer, you can see that it's a letter written to him. On it were the following words:

"Dear Mike, this is the hardest thing I have ever had to say to you. You know that I've loved you, & that I've cared for you. But I just don't see my life going the way I want it to while in this relationship. So, with pain in my heart, I must tell you that I have to leave this relationship with you, & try to sort life out by myself. Sincerely, Kara."

That was it. From this point, life went straight downwards, into hell. That was the straw that broke the camel's back in the problem-filled world of this boy named Mike. After this new development in his issue-filled life, he just caved in. His life was so tied up that he could barely see what was supposed to be present in the way a normal life would be. Everything was just one problem after another, after another, & over again. And Mike had it in his head that was his fault entirely. He tried to think back to other events in his life, but that just gave way to more unpleasant flashbacks going through his brain. One scene prominently expressed itself in the forefront of his thoughts. It was five years ago, when Mike eleven years old, & his parents were in the middle of a bitter divorce. The scenes drifted through his mind…

"Get away from me, you sick bastard!"

"Shut the hell up; you have no idea what you're talking about!"

The heated argument grew louder & louder as the two parents constantly yelled at each other. Mike, an eleven-year-old child, ran away from the scene, into his room, & buried his head under the pillow, crying. He was scared. He had no idea what was going on, except that his mother & father were very angry. He was only eleven; how was he supposed to understand?

The argument drew on, just getting louder & louder. The parents continued to scream at each other. Finally the mother said, "If you just can't put up with me any longer, why don't you just LEAVE ME ALONE!"

"Fine then, maybe I will!" The father shot back.

That was the clincher. Before Mike could make sense of anything, his parents were getting a divorce. His dad kept him, although he was never kind to him, constantly reminding Mike of the annoyance he was. So Mike just basically grew up with the knowledge that his father never loved him, & his mother didn't even want him. A lot of the time, he would just cry himself to sleep. The pain could still be seen in Mike's eyes for years afterwards, as the wound never really healed. More pain kept getting added to his life right from the start. He just didn't know what to do…

More tears ran down his face more freely as Mike remembered his parents breaking up. From that day onward, being at home was the worst part of Mike's life. His father didn't love him, & just considered Mike as something holding him back from being as free as he wanted to be. He drank a lot, & would occasionally beat Mike in fits of alcohol-induced anger, & his son knew that neither of his parents loved or cared about him at all. After a few years of him living with his violent alcoholic dad, his father eventually went out, got extremely drunk, & drove his car off a bridge, killing himself.

After that, Mike moved in with his aunt & uncle, but they didn't really love him either. At school, he had no friends whatsoever. He was just the weird loner kid with no parents. He would get beat up, teased, & mocked by bullies every day. As Mike was sitting against the wall of his room, more bad memories & events of his past flashed across his mind…

"Get up, wimp!"

Mike moaned in pain as the bully standing over him kicked him in the ribs again. He was smaller than most, for a thirteen-year-old kid. Consequently, he was the brunt of a lot of bullying, & this was just another day of being the regular punching bag & bully magnet.

He tried to stand up, but was met with another kick, this time in the arm. He fell to the dust again, prompting another round of laughing & mocking from the students around him. None of them were his friends, for he had none. He was alone in the world.

Mike grit his teeth & rolled to the side, pushing himself up. He dusted the dirt off of his clothing, but was met with a punch in the cheek by the bully. He fell backwards, & got slugged in the eye by the grinning bully. He fell again, clutching his face. The bully & his crowd seemed to have gotten enough laughs out of this for now, so with a last kick to the ribs in passing, they departed.

Mike got up, limping along, holding back the tears in a last attempt not to look as much of the wimp that everybody thought he was. He walked slowly home, dreading having to meet his uncle at home, who would yell at him, & possibly hit him around for not being tough enough. He was never enough, no matter how hard he tried. Every day was a total nightmare for Mike; his life completely sucked. He wished that he could just have a normal life, but he wasn't afforded that option. He continued to slowly limp home; tears that he couldn't hold back anymore finally running down his cheeks…

Mike clenched his fists again in anger at everybody that had a hand in ruining his life until this point, & there was a mile-long list of people that Mike hated. He hated so many people. He hated his parents, his uncle & aunt, everybody that made him feel like a wimp in school, his teachers that never believed in him, even his ex-girlfriend, Kara.

Kara. Mike winced as he remembered yet another very painful memory, pushing still more tears from his reddened eyes. Around halfway between being thirteen & fourteen, he changed to a different school, mainly because he failed too many subjects in his old one, & the teachers didn't want to work on him anymore; basically they gave up on him. So he changed schools, trying his utmost to fit in & adapt to the usual way of how the "cool" kids acted. He still got teased a bit, but he managed to not be seen as badly as before. Life was still hard, but Mike tried to be strong.

Then, into his life walked a girl named Kara. She seemed to be the only one who thought he was actually worth something. She believed in him, it seemed. They met when Mike was fifteen, & Kara was fourteen. They hit it off right from the start, it seemed, until Mike got that letter from her, two months ago. Two months already, but the pain was still as sharp as ever. He could still feel the agony of her breaking up with him just as strongly, if not more strongly. After receiving that letter, all the pain & aching of all his previous problems came rushing back in like a dam had just broken. He was just so depressed, his life just started to slowly shut down. He stopped caring about anything.

He now considered letting Kara into his life a major mistake; she was a huge regret to him now, & he thought that if he had not gone into a relationship with her, his life would have been so much better. Now, two months later, he was just as messed up as before. He had dropped out of high school, even though he was still sixteen, & only in the tenth grade.

He looked around the small apartment room where he now stayed in despair. Despair, then depression, then hatred, then anger flew through him. All of it coursed through his body & the extreme anger burned within him until he could hold it in no longer & burst out in a rage, yelling out, "WHY ME!?" He grabbed a table in his room & flipped it over, hurling it across the room in anger. He picked up a chair & started smashing it on random things in the room, whatever was in his reach. He could tell that he was just totally going crazy; the inner rage was driving him over the edge. He just kept smashing & smashing & smashing & smashing some more; he vented all of his anger in a moment of sheer violence. No one cared about him. He had no friends, no family, no one cared. They're all gone; nobody is left for Mike to hold onto. He's alone, & now simply wants the sorrow to end. Fast. The pain is too harsh for him to handle.

He stopped beating his chair against things & stood in the center of his now-demolished room, breathing deeply, his chest rising & falling with his anguished breaths, the anger still there within him. This was driving him totally crazy. He let out a large cry of exasperation & smashed his fist into the window, shattering the glass, & in the process cutting his hand badly. But Mike felt no pain. His whole life was numb. He didn't want to live anymore. He wanted to just end it all, to be away from this endless suffering that everybody else called life. He wanted…to die.

He ran out of his room, tears flying down his face, his heart heaving with huge sobs as he ran, weeping towards the elevator. He took it straight to the top floor. There was no roof that he could go up to, so he just ran towards a large window. He opened it, & a nearby guard saw him do it. The guard yelled out at Mike to stop as he approached him, but Mike was too far gone to care. Nobody was going to keep him in this hell any longer, so he responded to the guard by picking up a metal stick on the floor & smashing it into the guard's head. The guard crumpled onto the ground in an unconscious heap. Now Mike was alone in the corridor, facing the window; the decision of his fate was solely in his hands & in his hands alone. No one was there to stop him from doing what he had to do. It was time to be finished with life.

He took a deep breath, swallowed, & stuck his leg over the windowsill. He climbed through the window so that his whole body was outside; he was just clinging onto the wall, standing on a small ledge. He looked down at the fifteen-story drop below him.

For the millionth time in the past little while, more tears gushed down his face as he stood there. Down on the ground, people looked up & saw him, & more people started looking at him, standing on the top window ledge of a high apartment building. So he would have an audience. It didn't matter; he would be dead & gone soon anyway. As he hung onto the wall there, once again scenes from his life flashed before his eyes.

He remembered his parents' divorce. Every day of getting beat to the ground in the playground at school came to his mind. His drunken dad cussing at him nonstop, his uncle yelling at his to "be tougher", his break-up with Kara, & even the last little while, letting out all his anger & sorrow all came rushing in & out of his mind. The wound was deep & still bleeding. The pain was still very real, & there was but one way to make the suffering end.

Was he really going to do this? Was he really going to just end it all?

Mike took a final deep breath, closed his eyes…& finally let go of the wall.