The Other Side

by Kim Holden

Guilt and me, we’re conjoined. One. When it isn’t stabbing me, I drag it around like a ball and chain.

kiss should feel like you’ve been plunged into an abyss that you may never surface from, or it isn’t worth doing.

Echo and the Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon,”

Music is fleeting; it’s chance. So when I hear a good song, it feels like fate because it can’t be planned or predicted. Like the universe has turned it on to flirt with me, to blindfold my dark thoughts and lord over them, lulling them into a submissive union for three or four minutes.

I prefer walking around with a familiar grip on the shield of hopelessness and my depression in control, to taking in the world around me with bland interest only when survival deems it necessary.

But the way she looks, I know she wants to imagine there’s a sky filled with a million stars overhead, so I lie, and it feels like truth: “Not a cloud in the sky. They’re all out.”

If you’re right, you don’t yell about it until you’re red in the face and someone believes you. Volume doesn’t change minds, it closes them.),

“The most important time to listen is when words are missing, that’s when hearts cry out the loudest.”

No one is supposed to see this. It’s supposed to remain hidden. My sadness is mine and it shouldn’t bleed all over anyone else.

We live in the moment. And living in the moment feels so odd, so selfish, but also so…good.

“Every kiss eventually ends. The memory of them doesn’t. I’ll still feel that one when I’m ninety,”

Life went on in this big, old house while he was somewhere else ignoring it.

The first brush of lips isn’t tentative; we jump right in where we left off the last time. This isn’t a kiss that’s going to smolder until it ignites. It’s an inferno from the start.

Because I know I won’t settle in the future—that I deserve all of the effort, attention, and respect that I show them in return. It’s a two-way street. Love isn’t lopsided. Infatuation is.”

She wasn’t perfect, nobody is. Her demons were many and she fought them daily:

how natural the laughter felt at the onset but how it felt equally as foreign. Almost like we’re both laughing for the first time in our lives. And as it fades, I just feel hollow again.

I wonder if he can feel her slipping away like I can.

Because every once in a while, life gives you a sliver of happiness…however brief.

“Sometimes in life, you do everything you can and it still isn’t enough. And that sucks,” I whisper. It’s true. It’s so true.

because at that time my walk home is quiet and I can pretend I’m alone in the world while most of the city sleeps.

I’m not a religious person, but the sight is tragically angelic and eerily prophetic, like she’s peering into my soul looking for a flicker of light amongst all the dark and decay.

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.”

I just want people to forget and keep living their lives. I’ll slip out of the daily flow the same way I lived in it…unseen.

“But the thing is, you don’t have to go back to who you were before. Time passes. People change. You just have to decide who you want to be today, and if you’re not sure who that is, time and sobriety will help you decide.”

I went because being close to her and her faith made me feel like maybe her good would rub off on me a little.

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

People aren’t perfect. It’s not about loving them when it’s easy and convenient; it’s about loving them even more when it’s hard.”

Because it matters. People need to hear it. Thank you for teaching me so many things. You were enough, even if you didn’t believe it.”

Sometimes in life, there are moments of clarity so blinding in their revelation that they change everything. It’s usually something small, something obvious, that we wonder how we missed it before.

It’s owning it all, the triumphs and the struggles, the things you like and the things you want to change, because they all make you who you are. We’re all a work in progress—hell,

“The girl who sees the stars despite the clouds taught me to do the same. And it changed everything.”

We never truly know what’s going on in other people’s minds. In their lives. Even those closest to us. Be gentle with each other. Talk to each other. Listen to each other. Tell your friends and family you love them every chance you get. Compliment a stranger. Initiate a conversation with someone you don’t know. People need to be seen, heard, and loved—it’s part of what makes the human experience so…human.

I’m a firm believer that we all affect people’s lives for the better in ways we will never know.