Acceptable Loss

Acceptable loss I lost my best friend 2 years and 10 months ago on a windswept winter evening. Alone in his thoughts about his future... his past... his life... his pain. He ended the relationship with his life as he knew it. Content to let bygones be, accepting of his failures, forgiving of his humanity and happy to part with the emptiness that filled his plump belly. First a zenith of suffering was needed to push him over the edge. He had taken pills for pain, pills for fun, pills for depression, pills for anxiety, pills because he took pills!! Pills, booze, bongs, powders, practically anything he could shove in his self loathsome face. When he found himself restrained to a hospital bed trembling, convulsing and soaked in his own urine he was scared, in fact horrified and feeling so so alone. Never so alone. And terrified. He never before thought he cared if he lived or died, he actually wanted to be dead. Dead. Faced with his own death he realised he will never see his children again. Never. Never is a long time when one faces their own mortality. I think only then he realised what a gift he was throwing away. He passed away alone later that night. Now almost 3 years on and I still miss my old friend, my companion, my confidant, my Yin, my Mr Hyde, my pills, my drugs. I accept that part of me had to go through unimaginable horrors to walk in the sun on the other side. I mourn my passing but my rebirth has made everything worthwhile. 28/06/2018 Broken Wings contest on grieving