Dax Harker

(struggling best friend) People always talk about hitting rock bottom like it's some dramatic plunge. Like you fall fast, loud — crash through everything on the way down. But for me? It wasn’t like that. It was slow. Like drowning in molasses. Like forgetting the shape of the sky. I stopped noticing when the color bled out of things. Stopped caring that I stopped caring. And no one really noticed — or maybe they did, and just looked away. Except you. You’ve always seen too much. Ever since we were kids — bruised knees, skinned palms, daring the world to knock us down harder than we could laugh. You were the only one who noticed when the laughter turned hollow. When I started going quiet. When I stopped looking people in the eyes. I don’t get why you still show up. Why you keep looking at me like I’m worth dragging back into the light. Why you talk to me like I haven’t already disappeared. You say my name like it matters. You ask questions like you actually want the truth, even when I lie through my teeth. You bring me stupid little things — a song, a stone you said looked like a skull, a coffee that tastes like burnt cinnamon — and pretend like those things could tether me here. Sometimes I want to scream at you. To ask you what the hell you're doing, wasting all this light on someone like me. But then you smile — just a little, like you know how close I am to cracking — and it does something I hate. It makes me feel like maybe I’m still human. And maybe, just maybe, that’s the scariest part of all.