A Ballad of Phantoms and Hope

by K.M. Moronova

For the weary darlings out in the world who seek hope.

“Not this time, baby. Go on ahead without me. I’ll see you two later.”

I want to say no. I want to beg her not to leave me alone. I want to go with them.

I believe in, well, love. In its purest form—in the most intimate and selfless light it’s meant to be in. And dying young, protecting the two people I cherish more than my aching soul can bear, is an act of love I would do over for eternity if I had to.

Ghosts are sadness and regret. Our hearts bleed as much as the living.

Why is my chest filled with so much torment and grief? Why am I still so fucking depressed?

My light died a long time ago—flickering with the many exhales of disapproval until finally, with one big breath, it was blown completely out. Like a withering candle left out in the cold, surely to hush and diminish as expected.

Heartless assholes aren’t born, you know. They’re trained into it. Their souls have been drained early and thoroughly by the wicked people before them. Hurt people tend to hurt people.

This lovely phantom is the very image of tragedy. She is a ballad of mournful movements, bones, and tattered lace—a symphony unlike any I’ve endured.

The way the wind caresses him as he reaches out for me is like a ballad. One that I’ve danced to a million times over but never quite found the right footing to. His light brown hair is chaos and his eyes are a storm of greens, blues, and dashes of yellow. A parchment of sorrowful words written and scrawled—he reminds me of such a somber, nostalgic song—one of sadness and death. One never known. He is a ballad of phantoms… and, perhaps, one of hope.

“Of course, it hurts… I think it always will. But most things that wound your heart like this are worth it. It only hurts because of how precious we hold them. I’m never alone, not really, because I know they will carry the weight of me with them forever.”

We are all ruined in some way, bruised and scarred.

Love isn’t conditional. The broken pieces of us should be where we start, not what we inevitably dig up after years of peeling back layers, only to be tired and skeptical.

“They are my take on yearning. You see, the moth is darkness, chasing the butterfly, craving the brightness of it. But when the moth is the one running, the butterfly, being light, chases it in return, unable to exist without the moth, because without darkness there is no light.”

I’m bad… I’m sinful for having thoughts of dying. I’m selfish for wanting not to be here. I’m going to fucking hell if I kill myself. People like me don’t go to heaven; they said so. How many nights did I stay awake, praying to a god I did not believe in that I would wake up the next day better? I wanted to be fixed. I wanted to be good. I wanted to stop being a disappointment to those who didn’t understand the battle I was having with my brain. The chemicals, they said. The chemicals in my brain were wrong.

There was no one as sick as me, I told myself, because that’s what was preached to me. No, sick people cannot comfort each other because what do we know? But sometimes, there’s an inkling in the deepest parts of my marrow. That, perhaps, our knowing we are not bad or alone in our way of thinking does help. I wish I knew I wasn’t the only person who felt like sitting in a dark corner and being forgotten—being dead. Of course, it’s odd and abnormal to yearn for such feelings. To not exist. To spectate without being, as we do now. So many people don’t understand. They refute the idea with their entirety because their brains process on a normal level. Their chemicals are balanced. Is that really what it boils down to? Chemistry.

Smile and pretend. No one cares about your depression. Smile and pretend. Don’t let them see what you really are. They’ll lock you away if they see.

Lanston, Hey, you. This is the last letter I’ll give you. Well, maybe not the last, but you’ve shown me that we can talk about the things that happened to us. And I want to share those things with you as easily as you do with me. I want to watch you continue to draw, letting the beauty of your mind infect the pages. But I’ll leave you with this until then. The last part of my tragic story. My depression grew after high school. The people in my life weren’t kind of my illness. They urged it on even. Do you want to know how I died? I’ll tell you. It was me. My murderer was my illness; it took me young, naive. I jumped from the bridge and fell to the depths of the world. Where the darkness finally came for me. I hope you don’t hate me… I know what I did was wrong, but what if I told you I fought it really fucking hard and for a long time? What if I told you that I searched for the light but couldn’t find it? Would I still be painted as a bad person? The one who only wanted attention? I’ll tell you another secret. I didn’t want attention. I just wanted to be gone. I wanted to be away from all the cruel things that made me hate myself. The words that made me hate myself. The bridge we met on, the bench I stood on and pulled roses from, was the memorial bench the local church placed for me. They didn’t put my name on the plaque. My family didn’t want their last name muddied with my sin, so roses it was. Ophelia roses. I’m stuck on earth because I was taught people who die by sui...