Again. Again. Again. I do this for you. I live for you, the love of my life. But I also die for you, the love of my life. Two polar opposites, one juxtaposition. How can I live and die for you at the same time? Perhaps my sole reason in this cruel world is to live for you. Or perhaps my only reason is to die, so you will realize how to live. This is what you asked for, this is what you told me to do. You all told me to live, and so now I must die. Don’t you see? I am doing this for you, the only source of happiness in my life. You brought the smile to my lips. You brought the laughter to my throat. You brought the warmth to my winter night. But you also brought me into this room. You said you would always love me, but that is a LIE! You told me to smile, to be happy, and that you would be the reason for this. For this everything. Well I hope your happy. Because you were the reason for this. You did this to me. Before, I was just crazy. Now I am more than crazy. I was crazy in love. And now I’m crazy for death. You said to remove the sadness from my life. To throw away what tormented me at night. To expel what brought tears to my eyes, and to get rid of the negativity in my life. Well here I go.

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On the outside, Marcus was your average high school student. He had mediocrely good grades in school, and had a family that “loved” him. He had friends, although how close he truly was with any of them was a mystery. Marcus seldom smiled, but when he did, it was beautiful. He got angry, he slept through some classes, and took notes in others. He appeared to be normal.

But when he went home, he changed. His father was a drunk and his mother was always in and out of the mental facility. Marcus had two older siblings. Neither of them made it out of high school alive. Kevin, the oldest brother, was a partier who died one night in a car accident around one am. Nobody came to his funeral.

James was the only one in his family that people truly cared about. He was the athlete, the one who excelled in school, the one that their parents liked to talk about. It was a shame when he overdosed.

At home, Marcus didn’t speak. That wasn’t always true, but it was now. On a normal day, he would get home and flop on his bed. He would ignore the thought of leaving his room until his father passed out in his drunken slur. After this happened, Marcus would exit his room in search of food. But there was never food to be found. He would take his father's credit card and walk to the local grocery store to find something to eat. He would eat it on the walk home, and go back in his room immediately upon returning. Sleep was the best medicine for him, or so his mother used to tell him when she took his prescription pills for him.

This was the routine for Marcus, before he stumbled upon love.
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And literally stumble upon it, Marcus did.

It was a Tuesday evening, and he was on his daily walk home from the store. Tonight’s dinner was a cold turkey sub. His feet pounded on the sidewalk to the tune of Sleepwalking by Bring me the Horizon. Should he sink or swim? Or simply disappear?

He was humming these lyrics as a bright flash of light crashed into him. Coming from around the corner was a girl on bicycle. She just so happened to crash right into Marcus. He was sent sprawling, as she safely wound up in a bush.

“OH MY GOD!?! Are you ok??” This strange girl rushed over to Marcus in a heartbeat.

“Yah.” He grunted, although the truth was quite the opposite. His blood mixed with the pavement to create an intricate array of colors.

Not saying anymore, he got up to leave. His shirt was torn, and an arm as well as both his legs were bleeding. Also, his sub had disassembled on the concrete. As he began walking away, the girl grabbed his arm.

“Wait.”

She was a strange sight herself. Or rather, a beautiful mess. Blonde hair complimented blue eyes. Her shirt had a rip in it, and her hair was a ruckus filled with leaves and the occasional twig. Marcus’ heart jumped into his throat as this pretty girl grabbed him.

“Umm… I’m sorry for running into you.. My house is right over there,” She pointed to a house several hundred feet away. “If you want to leave, that’s fine. But I ruined your food and got you all hurt. At least let me clean up the cuts on you.”

Usually, Marcus would have just kept walking, but something in the back of his head screamed for him to go with her. He decided to listen to this voice.

As they made their way up to her house, she tried to strike a conversation. “I just moved here. I came all the way from Georgia. My name’s Amanda. It is quite different here, wouldn’t you say? Well how would you know? I don’t suppose you’ve been there before. Well it is a very wonderful place, and I didn’t want to move. But I had no choice, seeing as how I am the only child, and my parents vote two to one on everything. It is quite unfair, but oh well. I hope I didn’t hurt you too much. Oh the bleeding isn’t stopping! We should hurry.”
They hurried up to her house. “Marcus.” He mumbled.

“What was that? I didn’t quite catch what you said.”

“My name is Marcus.”

“Oh! Well it’s nice to meet you Marcus. I hope we can become friends.” And with that they went into her house. And friends they became.
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That was a year and a half ago. Marcus had gone to the store that night, expecting nothing from life. But he met the most important person in his life that day. He met her parents that night, and they invited him to stay for dinner.
The next day at school, she appeared in his class. The teacher just happened to seat her right next to him. They became good friends. Amanda was the only one he could talk to.
When she realized that he walked by her house every day to get dinner, she started joining him on these walks. They would walk and talk about whatever came into their minds. They started hanging out, and Marcus learned everything there was to know about this beautiful girl. She listened to Jason Mraz. Her favorite color was blue, just like her eyes. She prefered rain to sunshine, winter to summer. She didn’t play any sports but loved riding her bike. It made her feel free. Marcus enjoyed watching her as she zoomed up and down the street. Her cheeks would look a rosy red, and her laughter filled the air. Her smile struck his heart and the wind in her hair truly made her look free. Marcus learned that she was scared of dolls, but loved horror movies. Her favorite food was brownies. He would always argue with her over that. “Brownies don’t count. They are just a snack.” She would just laugh at this, tap his nose, and say, “Oh cmon. Just let me have this one little thing.” He always let her have that one little thing.

As Marcus learned about her, Amanda discovered his secrets as well. She slowly got him to say more than one sentence at a time. She got him to smile, and she found out why he didn’t laugh. Than, she started making him laugh. She accepted that his mental state of mind wasn’t always in the right area, and that he had to take medicine for this. She would write him short silly poems to read at home whenever he was feeling sad. She assumed he threw them away after he read them. He kept and read every single one before bed. This became a large task over time, as she had a love for poetry.

And as they formed a friendship, they fell in love.

When Marcus finally worked up the nerve to ask her out, she simply asked him, “What took so long?” Then she kissed him. They went to a carnival that had come to town later that week. He tried winning her a stuffed animal. He lost 35 dollars, but she had a prize. The prize was, of course, the enjoyment of watching him try so hard for her. Even if he couldn’t succeed, he still made her heart melt. They rode the ferris wheel, got cotton candy, walked through a house of mirrors. It was a good night.

Every Friday night, Marcus would eat dinner with Amanda and her parents. They were excellent cooks to say the least. They were the nicest parents he had ever met. It made him jealous. But usually he just smiled and told himself how lucky he was that Amanda was in a good, safe family. Unlike his family.

Amanda made his life great. After 13 months of being in a relationship, she even managed to convince him to get off his medication. He was so happy with her, he didn’t see anything wrong with this. Depression, bipolar disorder, insomnia. None of these had plagued him like they used to before she came about. She was his savior, and he no longer needed his medicine. Or so he thought.

First, his bipolar came back. It came back at such a grudgingly slow pace, they didn’t notice any change. Unfortunately those little habits Amanda had started to annoy him. He would just ignore the pang of annoyance at first, but it started to really get at him. He saved Amanda the trouble of hearing him complain. He just stayed up at night and thought about it.

At first, it was only a half hour or so of lost sleep. He would stay up and think about Amanda. Oh, how he loved her. He would do anything for her, and he knew the feeling was mutual. She was just the light of his life. Over the ensuing months, he would slowly stay up later and later. Always thinking about Amanda, nothing else.

Once the depression returned, Amanda started to notice. How couldn’t she? At first it was easy to hide. A long sleeved tshirt here, a sweater there. He was just cold. But as it got worse, he couldn’t hide it any more. She saw the scars on his wrists, and the pain in his eyes. How could Marcus feel this way?

Amanda started taking the blame on herself. It was her fault he was so moody. Her fault he couldn’t sleep, obsessing over her at night. Her fault he did this atrocity to his body. And Marcus told her just that.
The first time he hit her, she covered it up with make up and pretended like it didn’t happen. It was just a mistake. “I’m sorry.” Marcus said, and everything was ok.

The second time he hit her, her parents saw the bruises. “I fell down the stairs.” She lied. They didn’t know any better. How could they? Marcus was such a nice boy.

The third time he hit her, she snapped. Amanda screamed and cried for help. “We’re over!” She had howled. “You lied to me! You don’t love me. You wouldn't hit me if you loved me. Never show your face to me again!”
Marcus took that to heart. He believed she meant those words, even if deep down she still loved him. They had spent over a year together, how couldn’t she love him? Marcus was to shell shocked to think clearly. His life was over. She was the one thing that was good in his life, how couldn’t he see that? It’s over now.

That night he grabbed a razor, a pen, and a notepad. He walked past his father, who was a drunken mess on the floor. He went into his bathroom and locked the door. He turned on the shower.

Time to get rid of the negativity in my life he thought as he began writing.