Stand Still

"I firmly believe that some people are born with a darkness. My bunni was. Though I didn’t know the details of her past darkness, I felt like I was saving her from something. Had I known how low she'd gotten before, I would have fought a million times harder, but I seemed blinded from that dark. Numbed to the notions that would have pointed me toward digging into her past. Whatever numbed me told me to live in the moment with her –to make her happy whenever I could. If those moments could be good enough, then the smiles I got were the smiles I'd cherish, no matter how many smiles she'd had&lost before me.
You never think that someone is actually going to do that. Actually take their own life. Her&I had big plans for the future. I always figured the worst that would happen was that our plans wouldn’t happen. I never thought that I wouldn’t have the option to choose whether or not they would.
I remember that last conversation.
Boy, was I angry.
She wanted to start over and erase all our issues.
“We can’t just erase things, bubbah. We can move on from here. We can get better and move forward and slowly forget the things that've gone wrong, but we can’t erase.”
Her response was loud. It wasn’t her voice. It wasn’t audible. Had she slammed the phone down? What an angry hang-up... we were seemingly fucked beyond repair.
I tried to call back. Sent her a reassuring text that, with help, she could get better and we could get better.
No response.
Fine.
“Be that way.” I angrily murmured to myself as I walked into the art building. The cold concrete walls matched my frustration. “I’m not fighting this battle without your effort anymore.”
Little did I know, her effort was over. Her last attempt at “our” happiness was to leave&hope I’d move on. The loud response I'd heard through the phone was a gunshot. A bullet placed behind her right ear.
Go figure, she’d preserved her beautiful face but turned her body off.

Almost 2 years later I still think about that “effort.” Not wanting to hold me back was an important desire of her’s. But, though she left in the hope that I’d move forward, in here absence I find myself bleakly standing still."
-excerpt from my novel