Vanquishing Demons

I will probably never be able to fully explain why I need to make some old things new again.

Perhaps it's because true beauty never grows old; at least when things (and perhaps even people) are seen, not as they are, but what they can be.

Consequences

I've been thinking about Elliot recently
Or perhaps, more correctly, about the events surrounding that time.
Elliot stuck his head into a gas oven when he was twenty, or maybe twenty-one.
Of course it was all over a girl; a girl who dropped him.
All because he was never enough; or so he thought.

I went to his funeral; we all did.
Tags, Tim, and many of those who worked with him at the ODT.
They played Genesis; I still cant listen to "In it too Deep", or "Throwing it all away" without being teleported back to that time and space.
There was an open casket; baptism by fire, my first funeral without family. People touched him; said "Goodbye Mate"; stuff like that. I didn't know what to say really; mumbled goodbye. Wasn't sure what to feel.

Thinking about it now I realize what an arsehole he was.
I wonder, what possessed me back then to think that giving it all away over a girl was romantic in some way?
I now put those feelings down to being twenty; being twenty lasted a while with me. Truth is, part of me will always be twenty.

Debbie was there too; outside the funeral home. I went to school with her; she was one of the cool kids: we never really talked.
I was looking at my feet; we all were - this was all our first funeral - we didn't know what to say.
I looked up at Debbie - she was a mess. Two friends were holding her up.
Our eyes met and locked. She was 8 meters away, but it might as well have been 8 miles. I didn't know what to say.
She howled, as if I had accused her of all this. She turned from me, sagged on her friends shoulders as they led her away. I always feel I let her down; she was left to pick up the pieces, while I just went back to work.

If I wasn't twenty I would have done something. I would have walked up to her; bridged the chasm of cliques, and hugged her, told here it wasn't her fault: if I wasn't twenty.

Elliot may have taken his life; but he had no right to take hers as well.
But like I said - he was an arsehole. You have to think of the consequences.

I have; ever since.