Hopefully Broken
Konnor opened his eyes, the world coming into focus around him. Everything else had been nonexistent as he traveled inward. Now the noise of the city deafened him. Cars and people rushed by on their way to whatever place they thought they had to go. The hardness of the bench he sat on made him want to stand but he stayed still, the slight discomfort was nothing compared to the discomfort he often felt towards life.
“You were lost again, weren’t you?” A voice to his left said softly. Konnor looked over to see Sarah sitting beside him on the bench. Her blonde hair rippled occasionally in the light autumn breeze, her cheeks were rosy from the chill. He had forgotten that she was with him.
“Yes.” Was all he said. He had given up explaining how he felt, nobody ever seemed to be able to help or even understand.
“Why do you do that to yourself?” She asked, a noticeable amount of concern in her voice. Sarah still cared about Konnor even when he couldn’t care about himself. He tried to be thankful for her presence but sometimes he just wished she would leave him alone so he could suffer in silence.
“Because it’s easy. I cared to much for to long and I am just tired of feeling like I am the only one that cares about the future of our planet and life on it. Everyone else is so satisfied with whatever they accept to be normal. My words go unheard, my actions go unnoticed. And in the end all of my suffering was pointless. I can’t make a difference because people don’t want anything different, they want things to be the same as they always have been.”
Sarah looked like she was going to say something else, then turned back to watching the traffic. Everybody else had given up on Konnor when he had given up on himself. Sarah tried though. Even though she had only ever known Konnor since he had lost hope she still tried to keep him from falling back into the black pit that he considered his true home; she still believed that he could overcome this. She wouldn’t accept that he could only ever be hopeless. He knew that she was in pain because of how ineffective she was but there was nothing he could do about it. He didn’t understand how she could tolerate his hopelessness, even after it had already driven everyone else out of his life. She would be better off as far away from Konnor as possible but as much as he tried he couldn’t get rid of her. She wouldn’t let him.
“You know you can’t go on like this. Eventually you’re going to get trapped in your own darkness. And then what? It’s what you want but you’ve also told me before about how much you wanted to escape it last time you were there. Do you think you would survive it again?” She said so quietly that her words were almost lost in noise of the city.
“Is simply surviving enough? Is that all we are here to do? I’ve tried to live to the fullest, I’ve tried to make a difference with my life, and live each moment for the greater good so that our species can continue to evolve. All it accomplished was making me feel alienated from everybody because they are all so satisfied with being normal. If I get lost in the darkness again then so be it, if I don’t survive then the world can go on as it is. Comfortably numb in it’s stagnation.”
“No the world will not go on as it is. It will go on without you, it’ll be missing one more real soul and you know it needs as many of those as it can get. You see the emptiness of our society and you feel it more than anybody else, that’s why we need you. If you give up on us like you have given up on yourself than there truly is no hope.” Sarah said, her eyes afire with fierce determination. She was the only person Konnor knew that was even remotely close to experiencing life like he did. He wanted to believe her, he wanted to want to let go of how broken he was and move forward. But like everybody else he clung desperately to the whatever it was that was considered normal and comfortable. For him it was hopelessness, and alienation. For everybody else it was routine and tradition; but life has the potential for so much more than they could even imagine possible.
“How can I help the world when I can’t even help myself?”
“You have to let someone in. I know that’s hard for you, I know you’re scared to let others see how broken you are but you can’t carry the weight of existence by yourself. You’re so trapped inside your own awareness because you’ve never given anybody a chance to share it.” She grabbed Konnor’s hand and stared into his eyes, not just with her eyes but with her entire being. She looked deeper into him than he had ever thought another person would ever be capable of. Konnor wanted to turn away, to get up, to run. He knew if she saw the truth she would give up on him like everybody else had. He couldn’t move though. He couldn’t stop her. Konnor saw it in her eyes as she realized how dead he was inside, he watched as the same sadness and emptiness filled her. Tears spilled from her eyes but she didn’t look away. She didn’t leave him. He wanted to cry, to turn away in shame. He had let her feel his pain. It was bad enough that Konnor had done this to himself but now he had done it to only person that actually cared about him. He watched her struggle against giving into the darkness, her eye’s closed as she inhaled and exhaled heavily. They sat like this for a long time. Konnor thought he had broken her the same way he had broken himself. Then she opened her eyes, and with tears streaming down her face she smiled at him.
“Please let me help you.” She said finally.