Ben.

When people ask about your trip they usually want either a colorful adjective ("amazing!") or a sentence, two max. They want you to know that they know that you went somewhere, or they´re just trying to be polite or sometimes, they really do want to know you had a good time. But time is a precious thing and in a world of facebook updates, texts messeges, and a myriad of other people that need talking to, their time cant be wasted with a lenthy speech on your vacation to Europe. I`m not complaining, its difficult to decribe to anyone what a trip was like and "incredible" makes it easier. I`m just pointing this out because it was the opposite of Ben.

Whenever I saw Ben, he wanted to know every detail of my latest travels. He would ask every question he could think of and become engrossed in whatever I was saying. He would remind me how lucky I was and I would always profusely agree. Then we`d laugh at a stupid story I was telling and after that we´d talk about all the places we wanted to go in the future, or mostly the places I wanted to go. Ben never made anything about himself.

The morning after Ben took his life last spring, I woke up with my eyes swollen shut from crying so much the day before. When I went upstairs it was twenty minutes before my mom found me crying into my coffee cup. We sat on the couch and watched the sun rise and talked about life and happiness and Ben.

It´s the hardest thing I´ve ever experienced to lose someone like that, but what hurts more is the idea that he was so trapped in life and in this dark place that he thought the only way to make the hurt go away was to end it all. I can`t understand it and I dont think I`ll ever get even remotely close. But I know that that idea is more painful then anything.

Life is beautiful, but you dont need Spain to realize that. Spain just reminds me of Ben because of the way I think I would describe it to him if I could.