The Other Side

by Kim Holden

But the night carries on as I seek out my target and do what I came here to do, despite the lack of beer. She arrives an hour later. Her name is Bethany. She has secrets like all the rest.

But guess what? I’m stubborn, and you don’t get to call our friendship off. You’re still my best friend and I care about you.”

I want you to have a life that’s filled with pursuing dreams that are so mind-numbingly radiant you don’t even know they’re possible yet.”

“I want you to not only watch your son grow up but to be the role model I know you can be,”

“Some people aren’t worth fighting for, Toby. You’re not one of them. There are people we meet in this life who anchor us. They reassure us with their presence. They bring us comfort simply by being. They love by osmosis, radiating it out and diffusing it in effortlessly. Quietly, they walk among us, treading lightly but providing stability and influence because it’s second nature. The thing that’s so special about these people is that they don’t even know they’re doing it.”

You’re worth fighting for. No, you’re not worth fighting for. You’re worth fighting for. You were never worth fighting for. You’re worth fighting for. Alice doesn’t really care about you. You’re worth fighting for. She doesn’t even know you. You’re worth fighting for. You’re incapable of being loved. You’re worth fighting for. You’re incapable of love. You’re worth fight— The world will be a better place when you’re not in it. You’re wor— You should kill yourself now and get it over with. You know your mom won’t show tomorrow. Stop lying to yourself. You— I knew you’d see things my way.

They’re the soundtrack to a macabre slideshow of Nina’s life leaking out in a river of red from the hole in her head.

You could’ve ruined that bus driver’s life!

Stress is a way of life. The future is a way of life; the constant carrot dangling within view but just out of reach, is a way of life. There is no present. Only future.

And it’s at this exact moment that I realize maybe I didn’t have something to prove to her. But that I just wanted her to be proud of me. Proud. Of. Me.

“Will you stay with me, please? I’m afraid this is it and I don’t want to die alone.”

Which is cruel, isn’t it? It’s like a muscle-bound bully who beats the shit out of you until you can barely move and then lets a child step in and deliver the final blow to knock you out.

Watching someone you love suffer is the wickedest form of torture there is.

His heartbreak is killing him far more than his body is.

“Holding it in gives it power, Toby. Talking about it takes that power away.”

Put all thirty-one pills in my mouth. And close my eyes.

But I know better than anyone that sometimes you don’t get what you want…

Toby’s easy to talk to. Surprisingly easy to talk to. Dangerously easy to talk to. He’s a good listener. So good that I tell him things I’ve never told anyone.

He looks at me like I’m a human being worth more than I give myself credit for. And he tells me so too. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I might be.

All of this thanks to the stranger who asked the right questions and listened when I most needed to be heard. He’ll never know he changed my life. But he did.

I don’t know how to explain it, but when Toby looks at you like this, you feel seen to the marrow of your bones.

“He’s my professor and no one would believe me.”

“He raped you. That will never be your fault.”

He’s perpetually melancholy and that somehow translates into being perpetually in need of taking sadness from others, like he’s willing to harbor sadness for the world so others have a chance at happiness because he thinks he doesn’t.

“What if your grandma thought the baby was mine?”

You’re too good for that, I should add, but I don’t.

But today is the first day in my life that I’ve felt like guardian angels are real. And how lucky I am to have him as mine.

difficult. I’m not so great with people either.” But you are, I want to say, but for some reason this is the one thought I don’t let escape.

When he turns the corner, I backtrack down the sidewalk and don’t stop walking until I step through the ER doors of Denver General Hospital. And I tell them I need help.

Thirty days later, I walk out of a rehab facility. Clean. Program complete.

All thanks to a stranger who will never know what his words helped me find.

All the praying didn’t help. She died and my pops didn’t change.

Being alone sucks. But today something changed. Changed me. Toby stood up for me. He took the fall when I stole those cigarettes. Because he didn’t want me to get in trouble.

Then the cycle repeats.

He helps, sometimes it’s something small and sometimes it’s something big that will change someone’s life. Not his own, someone else’s.

It takes a dick to know a dick—he’s not a dick. He just wants people to think he is.

But Toby took that risk. For me. I owe him. Someday I’ll repay the favor.

I see you. I’ve been you. You are so loved. You matter.

“I wanted to watch my son graduate!”

“Marilyn raised you, but she wasn’t your mom.”

“She was only fourteen.”

A month before she delivered you, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She threatened suicide the day after you were born and was held under psychiatric observation until you were ready to be released from the hospital.

Two addicts covering for each other is a volatile pairing.”

depression isn’t about weakness, it’s about battling and wanting to deaden the pain, not the person.”

“You could’ve saved my life if I’d gone through with swallowing them, Cliff.”

“Yeah, well you kind of saved mine too…so we’re even.”

“When you’re used to being kicked down, I guess all it takes is that one person who comes along and stands up for you instead. That can change everything.

Joey,” her voice cracks on his name and then her voice breaks down, “is so lucky to have you in his life.”

“I should’ve checked in with you like you’ve checked in with me.”

“Uncle Toby?”