I miss you... still.

It's funny, or perhaps not, how thoughts can fly around my head and how easily it is to feel the darkness inside. I never even thought about suicide before ten years ago. Then the summer came and with it, the loss of my best friend in the entire world. I miss him to this day, looking back I can't help but wonder why it is he left us, and yet I understand better than anyone else why he had no other choice in his mind. Marcus was this brown, curly haired boy with a huge smile, out going personality... I remember the first time I met him, almost eleven years ago. He came up to me on the first day of school, his black skater shorts, vans and metallica t-shirt, a huge smile on his face. He thrust his hand out to me and said: "I'm Marucs, I want to be your friend." I remember thinking so this is middle school. But we became friends. We laughed, we got high, we hung out on base, off base, alone and with other people. I had such a crush on him but even more than that, he was my first real friend in my entire life. He made me feel like someone out there cared about me.

A year of laughing and being young and wild and free came to an end. On the last day of school, his arm over my shoulders, he whispered to me that he'd see me again soon. That he would miss me. You see I was going on vacation, no choice, my annual summer trip to my grandmother's and as much as I didn't want to go, I had to. Nearly two months of hell and torment to me but nothing compared to whatever he went through, what I'll never know for sure. I got home to find out that the day before, my best friend had hung himself. I remember thinking that it couldn't be true... I mean, how does someone kill themselves.

For the entire next year of school, I barely spoke, I barely did anything besides homework, cut myself off from the friends, started writing poetry, all because of him. I was so angry and so sad and sometimes I am still angry and sad. If he had lived, maybe my whole life would have been different. I mean that moment, it shaped me. I lost whatever happiness I had and lost my heart for the first time because the boy I liked killed himself, he took himself away from me. That was a key moment in my life. It changed me. It made me different. It made me sad.

And now it's been ten years. Ten long, long years. So much has happened. 9-11, 2 wars have started, my grandfather died, my... Corey died, I moved to three countries in that time, went to 132 cities, was raped and beaten, tried to kill myself and my Daddy died. Marcus started it all. His death, it started everything. It was that key pivotal moment that changed my whole life.

Anyways, I'm going to go. this is just painful to remember.

In the memory of Marcus Shawn Ledford, my best friend, the first boy who ever broke my heart in a completely irrepairable way.