September 13th, 2012. Jarod Maxwell is dead.
Clear skies produced a storm of immeasurable destruction. Sobs thundered. Tears marred thed faces of his friends, the friends whose hearts were shattered. Pierced. Cut. Destroyed and sent to an oblivion of pain and grieving and mourning and suffering and denial and just every bad feeling in the world.
It's a weight in your chest, right on your heart and adorned with swords and needles, and it's heavy. Burdensome, so much so it hurts and suffocates you. Water is in your lungs. You can't breathe, you can't think, you're going insane and downing in a pool of misery and tears and blood. You're dying because all you can think about is that there's no way in hell that it's your Jarod that's dead, but you know for a fact that it is your Jarod because some of those faces you knew.
You have no self-control. None at all. No strength. You're vulnerable. No hugs or kisses granted to you can ever heal you because no one could possibly ever replace your Jarod, who truly believed he was put on the world to help people. And he did. He helped so many people. You scan everyone's face, and you just know he held their hand and provided a shoulder and would never, ever leave you alone.
One girl is in front of you. She is hysterical. Her sobs are coming quick, like lightning, and loud like thunder, and her face is so red and her eyes so watery you want to look away from her misery but you can't. You can't because you know. You can't because she's so stricken with grief she doesn't breathe. She's bawling, crying wordless pleas of help as she shook in her chair. And you don't do anything because you feel the pain. You know. You want to look away, not feel her own grief added to your own, but you just can't and Lord that sob will resonate in your nightmares and make you break down in tears because there was never such more despairing and heart-wrenching cry then what she had.
It was the sound of pure and total pain.
The room slowly empties, and you find yourself alone in the circle you had sat in. You stare at the ground and refuse the counselor because he doesn't know. He didn't know Jarod, know how much your heart was breaking and shattering and dying because you realize you had never said bye.
You make it to the end of the day, dried up of tears but still drowning and dying. You want to go home, desperately so, but you're stomach is tight, you were drained of your fluids, and you can literally taste the metallic tang of grief and blood, and the saltiness of your tears and the dryness of your mouth.
You want to go home, you really want to go home, to get away from Hell, to get away from the vision of the sobbing girl, from the vision of the woman who told the class the news, away from the room haunted by the cries and misery of his friends.
You want to go home, but before you can, you retch in the parking lot.
It was a vain attempt at ridding yourself of your grief.
Instead, it worsens. The weight on your heart is heavier.
And suddenly, you're heart is dead.
Suddenly, you know what a broken heart feels like.
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