Searching for Purpose (Twenty One Pilots)

32. The Start

Tyler rested his forehead against the door. His hand was throbbing with pain, making it hard to concentrate on anything else.

"Leave me alone," Tyler whimpered.

The doorknob to his room jiggled. It was actually locked for once, which only heightened Josh's level of worry. Tyler didn't remember locking it.

"Please, Tyler!" he cried. "What happened? Why is your door locked?"

Tyler didn't say anything.

"Let me in, please. I just want to help you!" Josh pleaded. "What was that loud crash?"

Tyler turned around and sat with his back against the door and his knees up.

"It was me," Tyler whispered, barely loud enough for Josh to hear. "I punched my mirror."

"You what? Are you okay?"

Tyler shook his head. Disappointment in himself was spreading throughout his body. "No, I'm not."

"Let me in, then. I want to help. Please let me!" Josh's voice was growing more desperate by the second.

"You can't," Tyler said solemnly. "I'm broken. You can't fix something that's as broken as me."

"What are you going on about? You aren't broken." Josh moved around on the other side of the door so that he was seated in the hallway staring at Tyler's door. He figured that he should give up on trying to get Tyler to open his door. The best he could do at this point is keep him in one place before he can do anything else.

"And you shouldn't spend your time on someone as worthless as me. I'm not even a good friend," Tyler said. Inside his chest his heart was pounding don't leave me alone while his thoughts fought back, almost making Tyler scream, as they shouted go away leave me alone. He wanted Josh to be right by his side, but he also wanted him to be on the other side of campus. "I don't know what your favorite color is."

"Ty," Josh's heart was breaking. Tyler thought he was worthless? "What are you going on about? What started all this? You are not worthless. Who told you that?"

Tyler shrugged. "No one had to tell me. I just know. I'm a piece of trash."

"No," Josh said again, tightening his grip on his friend. "Tyler don't say that. That's not true. Don't even think that, okay? You are worth so much to me. I can't even begin to describe how much you mean to me. I was petrified at the thought of losing you."

Josh sounded so sincere and every word felt like a stab to Tyler's heart. Josh was lying, and didn't even know.

When Tyler remained silent, Josh continued to talk. He figured that he probably looked a little weird, what with sitting in the middle of the dorm hall talking to a door, but Tyler was much more important that other people's perception of his sanity.

"When I see you, I see my best friend. Not some thing that belongs in the garbage." Josh's voice was gentle and so quiet it was almost a whisper. "I see a guy who is insanely smart and absolutely hilarious. A guy who writes the sickest rhymes and loves tacos just a little too much. A guy who would be the life of any party and can always manage to make my day better. When I see you, I know I wanna hang out with you for the rest of my life because you mean so much to me and I never want to forget you or lose you. And I know that Mark and Jenna think that about you too when they see you."

Tyler looked down at his hand. The bleeding had slowed down, but it still felt as though it had been dipped in acid. A tear fell down his cheek. Why did Josh care about him so much? Why did anyone care about him? All he did was hurt himself more and more to the point where he almost died.

"So please, don't call yourself worthless. Don't think it, don't do anything. Because you are worth so much to me."

Tyler was silent. "But I don't have any purpose. What good am I if I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do with my life? I just fuck everything up."

"What do you mean?"

Something inside of Tyler snapped. He was at his weakest and the floodgates had broken. A cascade of tears fell from his face, mixing with the blood.

"I just feel so completely worthless! I'm not good at anything and I mess everything up! I can't even talk to my mom without upsetting her! What kind of a son am I?"

Tyler's voice was hoarse now from all the yelling and Josh wanted nothing more than to open the door and hold his friend.

"And- And there are the voices in my head, you know? And they yell at me every day telling me that I'm useless and stupid and pathetic and a fuck up and it's gotten to the point where I wish I was dead! But it's not just that simple because I'm too much of a fucking coward to do anything to myself! And when I do get the courage I just fuck it all up!"

The whole dorm could hear Tyler at this point he was shouting so loud, but none of them besides Josh could make sense of the sobbing mess that Tyler had become.

"I'm a fucking worthless piece of trash that's just waiting for the day someone takes pity on me and ends it all for good. I don't have a purpose in life. I'm just going to end up dead."

After waiting for Tyler's voice to die down and his gasps to become less frequent, slowly and softly Josh began to speak. "First of all, you don't ruin everything. If anything, you make things better. You made my life a hell of a lot better when I met you."

"But I'm just wasting your time right now with my problems that don't even matter."

Josh shook his head. With every word that came out of Tyler's mouth, Josh's heart broke even more. To hear his best friend, the person that had stood by his side the entire year, say that was like being stabbed with a rusty blade over and over again.

"If it's bothering you, or has anything to do with you, then yes, of course it matters. It matters a whole fucking lot because you are my best friend and no one is more important to me, okay? So don't say that anything about you doesn't matter," Josh said.

Tyler was shaking. He could barely control his breathing and the pain in his hand hadn't stopped.

"Second of all, everyone has a purpose," Josh spoke with as much sincerity as he could. He wanted Tyler to not only hear what he had to say, but to listen. "Some know what theirs' is and some don't. I don't think that I've quite figured mine out yet, but right now it's hitting things really hard with sticks to make sound come out and hanging out with my best friend and making sure he's okay. Some people's purpose is to teach others, whether in a classroom or not, some people are meant to do stupid shit on the internet, and others are meant to cook. But that doesn't really matter. What matters is that they are all different and unique for each person. It takes time to figure that out. Some figure it out in elementary school and others figure it out when they're eighty. You have to give it time. Everyone has a purpose."

Tyler sniffled. "But I don't. My thoughts will be the death of me because I have nothing to live for. I'm not good at anything but fighting with the voices in my head."

Both were quiet and no one in the hall said a word. It was the calm after the storm, it seemed. Tyler's hand had stopped bleeding and his breathing had evened out, and his cheeks were nearly dry, as well.

A voice inside his head was screaming at him, don't be fooled don't be fooled he doesn't care you're worthless you're better off dead no one cares about you, but something deep within Tyler's chest was beating, shouting louder and fighting to be heard over the voice in his head. You do matter you do matter listen to Josh you do matter you matter so much.

After minutes of nothing but silence, apart from the battle going on inside Tyler, Josh took a deep breath.

"Maybe your purpose is to defeat your demons. Or at least, maybe that's the start of it."