I could feel myself falling?falling for so long that I don?t even remember why or how, or even where. All I know is that it?s getting darker, darker as I?m falling, falling. I don?t remember when I forgot, or when I even remembered, but I know it was long, long ago. I don?t remember how or why, or where, but I know I remember who and what. He was getting sick?so sick, that he couldn?t give me big, warm hugs, or smile his perfect smile, or tell me that he cared. But back then, it didn?t feel like I was falling.

It felt like the world was crashing?the whole thing, just falling apart, every piece being pulled from under my feet, and every piece slipping away from my fingertips. And every day, when I watched his pale skin get paler and paler, I felt that world?my world, crashing even faster, until one day, my world finally gave up and crashed and burned and disappeared, because that very day, so did he.

But when the steady ground was gone, I didn?t stumble, or trip, or fall. I jumped, because I gave up too, just like him, and just like my world. I remember it as clear as how the light used to shine. The day I jumped, it felt like the world around me was getting darker?so dark that I couldn?t see. I remember locking myself up in my dark endless tunnel, and I remember shunning my friends and family. I remember it all--when I stopped eating, and I stopped sleeping, and I stopped going to school. I stopped almost everything?even living. But there was just one thing, one thing I never stopped doing, because the tears just kept on falling, falling, falling, just like me. I never stopped crying.

I never stopped crying because even if I gave up everything else, I had never given up him. And as I was falling, falling, I realized it wasn?t the world getting darker, it was me. The world felt like it was getting dimmer, dimmer but it was me fading, fading as I fell and fell until all I could see was nothing. Then something happened when I was fading into darkness, and falling into nothing.

I opened my eyes, and I could see that I was going nowhere, because walking in the dark takes you nowhere, and falling into nothing will get you to nothing. I opened my eyes, and I stood up, and I stopped crying, because he wouldn?t want me to. I stopped falling and I stopped locking myself up. I picked my world up piece by piece, and I put it all back together. The darkness was gone because my eyes were open?wide open, and my heart was no longer empty because I began to live. And I began to live because I let him go, even though I cling to those memories as tight as I cling to the light.

Because seeing really helps when you don?t know where you?re going.