Oftentimes

  Oftentimes, humans find that they feel alone in this world. Events may transpire, things may be said, and the person who we once thought was the better half of ourselves leaves forever.
  Oftentimes, we never truly realize how important someone is until they do leave, or worse, we knew the whole time, and must now wear the heavy burden of knowing we will never have the opportunity to right the wrongs between us and them, never be able to change the last words we said; never be able to show them what they meant to us. We can't change time, we can't change biology, and we can't change our hearts.
  Oftentimes, our minds and hearts never leave the ones who left us. Even years can pass, and hearts still feel those same, fresh wounds. Religion helps us little; what good is an afterlife when our soulmate isn't here, now? The only recourse is to overpower the pain, to gain what little space we can between us and the emotion. Alcohol, drugs, violence, crime, gambling, adrenaline. Yet, time and again, these brief periods of peace end, and we're forced to do more to have the same effect. As the crashes become worse and worse, more of our time becomes devoted to escaping the crippling depression the loss of our love has brought down.
  Oftentimes, this unhealthy pattern becomes our downfall. As our escape from reality must keep up with our increased tolerance, now topped off with a desperation to continue escaping. We must now escape several things: our loss, our self-hate, our guilt and shame, and our depression, all balled up into a monster that nobody could ever hope to cope with. So instead, we do the only thing we've learned how to do; we escape. We take more, we do more to run away from it all, to somehow escape ourselves. We don't dare take a moment to ask ourselves what our loved ones would think of us now, we just keep going, keep running from everything. An endless cycle, one that we witness in real-time, as it completely destroys and ruins us.
  Oftentimes, we find ourselves sitting by a cliff, gun in hand, staring at the moon and stars reflecting from the otherwise-black, despairing waters below. The beauty is lost on us. We've lost the ability to care years ago. As we stand to our feet, we catch a glimpse of a new day on the horizon, brightening the world for another 12 hours. We place the gun to our head, our one last hope is the forgiveness of our loved ones. We have forgiven them for leaving us, after all. Perhaps they will forgive us for coming back so soon...