*Narration*
"So I told you the spirit in me died..."
And maybe it did. The boy who trusted too easily, who loved too deeply, who believed the world would eventually show him kindness- that boy had been buried beneath months of darkness.
But suffering had eased, not vanished or healed completely... just eased enough for him to breathe again.
Spirit sat quietly, staring at the pale light creeping through his window. The silence no longer screamed at him the way it once had. It simply existed beside him.
And in that silence, his mind wandered back there.
He looked back on the suicide attempts he made with a deep sense of shame. The dark moment where the world felt so unbearable that ending everything seemed like the only escape.
Now, those memories made his stomach twist in disgust, and not because the pain wasn't real, but because of what it would have done to the people who loved him.
He thought of his mother.
Once, she had twin sons.
He remembered that. He remembered what it meant to be a twin.
His twin was gone.
The thought of his mother standing there with both sons gone, two identical faces lost to the same cruel world...the image shattered something inside him. The grief she would have carried would have been unbearable.
Spirit swallowed that shit hard.
Then his thought drifted to the people who had stayed.
Kaeim, Javonte, Chrissy and Zae.
His closest friends, the ones who had seen him at his lowest, the ones who listened when the darkness took hold of him and refused to let go.
He wondered how they would have reacted if he had followed through and if the darkness that once consumed him had truly won.
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"Would they understand? Would they blame themselves? Would they hate the world the way he once did?"
The thought alone felt unbearable.
Spirit slowly looked toward the mirror again.
Choosing the man in the mirror had only been the first step.
Growth had barely begun.
He knew something else too- something painful but honest.
He would never be the version of himself he used to see in that reflection.
The happiest version.
The carefree version.
The version of himself that loved without fear and trusted the world to be gentle with his fragile heart.
That version of Spirit belonged to a different time.
A different life.
He stepped closer to the window and looked up at the sky.
The stars were dim in the early dawn, but they were still there.
Waiting. Watching.
Spirit then asked the stars, "Did I choose the right choice?"
He waited for a response.
But their silence no longer felt cold, but it felt patient as if the answer was something he would have discover on his own.
Spirit knew something else too.
The depression hadn't disappeared, but it had only loosened its grip, At any moment, with the wrong memory, the wrong storm inside his head. That trigger... it could return.
He had tried ignoring his pain before. Tried burying it, pretended everything was fine. And that decision had exploded in his face.
So what would he do now?
That question stayed heavily in his chest.
He wondered why he couldn't simply return to the past.
Back to the better days he once knew.
Why couldn't he breathe the air that felt fresher back then?
Why couldn't he see the vibrant green in the trees the way he used to?
Everything felt faded now.
The world still existed... but it looked different through his eyes that seen too much.
Spirit tilted his head toward the sky again and questioned the stars once more.
"Why did Aphrodite gave love to me?"
Love had once felt beautiful, but now it felt dangerous.
Fragile.
Capable of destroying someone completely.
He then told the stars, "go get Pandora for me... let her unleash all the hope onto me."
"Stars... guide me with this new path ahead of me while I search for Better Days Ahead."
Spirit had chosen to live, but living didn't mean peace.
Living meant holding on longer, hoping that something better might come one day.
It meant surviving in a world filled with hatred, deception, and pain- even when every part of him remembered the year when the pain nearly destroyed him.
The cycle of hurt that had once swallowed him whole flashed through his mind again.
The betrayals, the grief, the endless darkness.
He wondered again if he had made the right choice.
Because people like him... people who poured their heart into the world and then gotten broken by it...
They didn't forget.
They would carry every memory with them forever.
Still, Spirit lifted his eye to the sky one last time.
Somewhere among those distant stars, there had to be hope.
Even if it was small, even if it was far away. And under that quiet dawn, Spirit made a vow.
That in this new life he had chosen... in this rebirth.. He would find a new version of himself, a new meaning.
One step at a time, one sunrise at a time.
Searching for the thing he had almost lost forever.
Better Days Ahead.
