The Most Challenging Time of My Life.

By: Gary Wyant


“You know, sometimes I think I’d be better off dead.” I guess that’s the sentence that started all this. That’s the sentence that should have set off alarms in my head. That’s the sentence that should have told me that this wasn’t normal. That sentence should have been many things, but in the end, it was nothing more than a sentence.
Danielle always seemed a little different from most people. Her mind always seemed to be off some place other than in her body. Our friends and I would be talking and then say something that related to her and when we would look at her for her response, all we would find is her staring slightly upward with a glassy look in her eye’s. She always snapped out of it though, but she always seemed like she was halfway between this world and a world of her own.
Danielle and I met when we were fairly young, around 6th grade. Even then she seemed slightly distanced from the rest of us but we were all changing about that time and I simply dismissed it. When the rest of our friends would go to the park and play, she would just sit on the swings. She would rock slightly back and forth staring just above the point where the sky and the tallest point of the horizon met. She could find that spot so easily. I, on the other hand could never seem to find that spot.
She was picked on by a lot of people during the middle school years. Everyone was very self-consciences as well as very eager to exploit any difference one person may have from another. This made her seem to drift off even more often. Her teachers thought she was one of the student who didn’t care about their education because of this. This was only half true. She was concerned, but like all other things she cared about, she eventually lost interest.
I didn’t stand idly by and let all this happen. I always stood by her side and in a way tried to get people to pick on me just so they would leave her alone. Everyone soon learned that if they messed with her, they messed with me. This seemed to help ease the picking, unfortunately, it didn’t seem to have any effect on her mood. I asked her several times if she was all right and every time she denied everything. Every time but once that is.
Since we didn’t live too far away from school, we usually stayed late to watch the sunset during the winter months. The sunsets always seemed to brighten her spirits, and that was worth more than any amount of times that we could have ridden the bus instead of walked in the rain. We followed the same routine that day, walked to school together talking slightly but mostly thinking, meeting each other for lunch in the cafeteria, sitting next to each other during our last class of the day, then meeting on the porch of and old building used mainly for storage now. That however, is where the similarities end.
Usually, when I met her on the porch, she had that same glazed look in her eye but somehow she just seemed to radiate complete contempt. She once admitted that when she saw the first of the sun start to disappear behind the horizon, she always felt an urge to run so that she could try to seize that moment in time forever. I found that suited her very well; wanting to hold on to the brightest moment of the day even though she knew she never could.
That day however, I found her crying hysterically. I had often seen a tear or two run down her cheek but never had I seen her crying like this. I immediately dropped all my books and ran toward her. I frantically asked her what was wrong trying to find out what had happen. She obviously had not heard me coming for when I reached her she immediately tried to cover her crying with lies about how a bug had gotten in her eye. I was still in a great deal of panic and practically yelled at her, saying that I would have no more lies of bugs or allergies and that I wanted to know what was wrong. That is when she said that single sentence. That single sentence that would forever change both our lives.
I held her in my arms that night. I simply didn’t understand her and simply hoped the sunset would calm her. I sometimes think that you could have put the sun out with all the tears that fell that night. I sat there holding her, not daring to even utter a word hoping that at least some of her pain would flow out with her tears. I was to find that those hopes were futile. The next time and last time I saw her was at her funeral. I stood there silent as I could, wishing that I could have understood her. I wanted to run to her coffin and beg her for forgiveness but instead I whispered my final goodbyes.
After the funeral I wandered around town simply remembering Danielle. I wished silently that I could be with her one final time. At that very moment, I looked up and found the spot that had been invisible to me until now. I knew at that exact moment that no matter what happened, I would always be able to be with her.