H*ll found me that day. As I stood so cool and content it came to me, carried on a piece of news as the olive branch was carried to Noah. It had no mercy on me, it engulfed me completely until nothing else excited to me outside of the flames of my personal inferno. Each word brought with it, its own divesting effect.
“He,” a short word that denoted to my best friend was hardly any word that was known to bring desolation with it, but that day it brought me a plethora of gloom. The word made my heart drop into my stomach, from the tone it was spoken in addition with the look on the face of the person who spoke it. Then there was a pause, a long pause before another word followed. It was this pause that told me everything, I knew then what had happened and I could feel all of the color drain out of my face and it is as if I could see myself being told the terrible news. “He, well, he,” and each word made me want me to regurgitate everything I had ever eaten. The fire began to rage around me and the great roar of the crackling flames seemed to stop me from hearing the rest of the sentence. I didn’t need to hear the rest of the sentence. I knew. Oh how I knew. How could I not know what my friend had done?
So maybe it is not that h*ll found me on that day, but that it finally caught up with me after a long chase that had spanned many years. A game of cat and mouse that I should of realized was going on. Maybe I deserved h*ll to be able to ravage me on that somber day and to still have it torment me to this day. It burned my heart and turned it to ashes leaving me as a drone who cannot take pleasure in life. How ironic that seems to me, not being able to take pleasure in life. For that is the very problem that my best friend had, he could never seem to find happiness of even the slightest contentment as he moved about his days. Life almost seemed to torture him, offering joy but keeping it slightly out of my friend’s reach. And now since I have had time to think over the way my friend’s life was, I wonder if there was something that I could of done to have prolonged the end of his existence. If I can see the signs so clearly now through the smoke of dispersion that my hells coats my surroundings in, then why didn’t I notice them when the air was clean and pure? And that is the part that makes my h*ll continue to hold power over me.
My friend never hid the signs from me, I simply didn’t take the time to notice them. I did not take the time to notice that my best friend was drowning in a pool of misery. I never took the time to try and pull him out. I took for granted that he would always be there, and taking things for granted is a abhorred thing to do. So now my flames of rage still burn around me. Not rage at him, despite the fact others are still angry at him for not asking for help, but rage directed at myself because I know that he was asking for help. For my help. In everything he did he screamed out for me to take notice and to be concerned enough to try to make things better. But I never did. I failed him.
All along his pleases for comfort were as obvious as the signs that one is in h*ll. His statements of despair were as loud as the roaring of the flames. His actions were as clear as the flames that burned my heart. His overall being, his mood, his frantic looks were all as easy to realize as the heat that is produced from the inferno. Yet I had to have hell catch me and burn my skin before I could feel the singe of what he was trying to get through to me.
Oh yes that is it, h*ll did not simply find me on that day. Oh no, it simply clamed me for I deserved the punishment. Though I never saw the tree he used I can picture it so clearly in my mind that I do not have to look for it. I image it standing in front of my friend, and what it offered to him was something that seemed to be as off limits to my friend as the fruit of the tree of life was to Adam and Eve. I never saw the rope that he used, but I don’t have to see it to know what it looked like. It looked like the snake in the garden of Endean, tempting my friend with the knowledge of God. To know what heaven was like.it offered my best friend the relief that he sought from the flames that followed him. And how could anyone resist such a glorious offer?
And on that day my friend accepted the temptation the snake offered to him as Adam and Eve accepted the temptation the devil offered, and now he knows what heaven is like. And on that day not so long ago, when my friend found heaven, h*ll found me. And today as I stand amidst the flames I am not selfish enough to wish that the fire would die and that I could go back to when my friend was still with me. I am not selfish enough to wish such a thing of my best friend because on that day that tree and that snake of a rope gave him the escape from h*ll I never gave him. I am not selfish enough to wish him back because now I realize that I was as blind as the man that Jesus once cured, because now I know that before hell took control of me it was busy destroying my friend.
He was the one who live in h*ll and I was the one who held the pail of water known as happiness. But not once did I never think to use the water to dispel the flames from my friend, I was blind. Not truly blind, because I could see what my friend was going through, but blind by chose. I chose to ignore the cries for help that my friend sent out while burning in the blaze. At that time the smoke that blinded me was not the one of depression that blinds me now from seeing happiness, but it was the smoke of happiness its self that covered my eyes from the truth. Because I was happy with the way things were I had no desire to try and change them, even though my friend was suffering. But when his suffering came to an end h*ll became free to come after me.
H*ll left my friend’s corpse hanging in the tree and sought me out. It flew to me on the worst words I have ever heard and took its hold on me. The flames smiled when they finally caught up to me after all those years of burning the ground just beside me. It felt good for the flames to attach to me, someone who deserved the pain and agony, for their last victim was just an easy target to go after. Oh yes, my friend never did anything to attract the flames, they found him when he was just a young frightened boy. It was no great challenge to make his miserable because he always was a despondent person to begin with. I, however, was a stupidly happy person who had done plenty to warrant the flames to me. The way I treated my best friend attract the fire to me as the flames themselves attract moths to them.
H*ll found me that day. As I stood cool and content, it came to me on the breath of the person who spoke the worst news I have ever heard. Now I know how my best friend suffered so, and how the h*ll he lived can lead someone to stop wanting to live. And right now I know just how good that tree and rope must of looked to him. They must of looked as good as the bottle of aspirin and the razor on my bathroom counter look to me now. A relatively plain bottle with the plastic still around the top and the razor I use to shave my legs with might not look like much to you, but they might be one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. They offer to me a relief from this h*ll I live in. They offer to me the knowledge of God. And they offer to me the sweetest thing of all, to see my best friend once again. How can anyone resist such a glorious offer?