Today marks a year since you died..

365 days since I received that dreaded phone call. 

8,760 hours- without you here.

8: how many bones we broke in total , 7: our record for Land Before Time movies in a weekend,  6: the amount of cars you totaled , 0: the number of times I will talk to you again.

 

I've been sitting on the couch for 134 minutes. 

It feels as if I'm sitting in the back of an Uber with that driver who keeps making wrong turns, and has thee absolute worst taste in music. Sitting, endlessly. 

Afraid that if I move, my chest will fall out. 

Afraid that I might go buy a dr[u]ink.

I hate this disease. 

I can still feel Denny shaking in my arms, sobbing at your funeral. Swearing that it was going to be different for him. 

Now he is gone too.

This truly has been a year marked by loss. If someone last year were to tell me in the next year, you will lose your grandfather who raised you, your baby brother, and then another brother.. I imagine I would have died right then. I most definitely would have relapsed.

I'm 102 days sober. 

I argue daily with my brain: I get to drink; I'm allowed to get high:: {Because life is difficult and painful} {{Because I'm here and-- you're not.}}

Today I miss you more than alcohol and drugs. 

But not always.

Lately, it's been difficult to stay sober more than a few months. I just want to take something to dull the pain, to fill this empty pit inside me. 

Most days I'm on standby, and everyone around me is moving so fast. I want to scream at everyone and tell them to fucking stop, slow down. 

I want them to open their eyes, to know what I know. 

The problem is I don't know anything. 
Except that: you're never going to be here again, and that really fucking sucks.

Your absence takes up so much space

I hear their words: 

You're not alone in this. 

Then I watch them turn away.

What can they say?

How can they be?

My loved ones pull away. As if I'll pull them into death's grip. 

Even strangers can feel the pull of my grief, the trees themselves keep their distance. 

But I need them. I can't breathe without the trees. I'm losing connection. 

 Arrested by an overwhelming pain; a weight I can't carry alone.

My screams turn into silence. Too much time has passed. 

Walk on the other side of the street. 

Tell me just to go to sleep. 

But I cannot sleep, I think and think. 

And when the weight gets too heavy..

I      want      to     drink. 

YOUR ABSENCE takes up so much space. 

In the small details, of everyday. When I looked this way, you looked that. The door isn't cracked the right amount, the room is too cold. No one is drinking all the milk.  

The jokes only you could understand, the stories we told without words. No one call fill the void.

Our final conversations are blurring in my head, the images are less clear. Your smell is fading.

When I'm high I feel closest to you.

I crave a pain that's less foreign, a pain I can watch heal. With glass shards in my arm and bruises on my cheek. Those scars fade with time. 

This one seems to be getting deeper.

Chaos was our home. And this.. this is the worst type of homelessness. 

The grief was almost easier before. The same amount of heavy, but I had more hands. The further I walk, the more people let go. They have other loads to carry. 

And my arms have never felt so tired. 

Is  this the worst part? 

Because I'm in it right now? Because I know I'll be here forever?

The door is closed. You're never coming home, and neither am I. Home isn't home without you. 

I don't know how to open the lock, when you have the key. 

And I can't drop you, without dropping myself.

Unanswered letters to a ghost

T[here] is a ghost where there once was a girl. She seeks out death, chasing it tirelessly. To her, it feels unrequited. She doesn't realize the l[ight]ife within her is rapidly fading. We call her Hopeless Hopeful. There is little hope left inside her. Like a slow motion hour glass, her hope shrinks with each day. 
             Yet life still lives within.

"Hopeless Hopeful, why must you try and hide? We always find you.
Did you forget you and your brother are entangled together in these roots?"

•••

"Hopeless Hopeful,
Your brother's eyes, they will not open.
Your mother's eyes stay cold and numb.
The light, too, has left your face.

The light is gone from your eyes
At moments they spark, an explosion of light
An artificial fire, as you coat your heart in layers of gin.

Soon everything goes
Back to {black}."

•••

"Dear Hopeless Hopeful,
The light is gone from your eyes
Like your brother, you wish to close your eyes too.

Indefinitely, maybe?
Forever, please.

Your eyes remain as open as the beer in front of you.
But how much longer, my hopeless hopeful?
Where is the limit?
            Where is the limit?  
                         WHERE is the limit?"

•••

•••

•••

"Hopeless Hopeful, won't you speak?"

•••

       My baby brother, are you here?

           I cannot see you

                     

      Six bags line the garage

         Six bags and a box of tools
       Does it have to be true?

          This is all we have left of you

        A narrative through luggage//

                          // so much left unsaid

  The place where we said goodbye

                                      Where you gave me your last cigarette

                 The place where you said "soon enough"

                                        And soon became forever
The place where our eyes last met

                                        Not enough light to be exchanged

              I cannot see; I cannot listen.

              I cannot speak.

"Hopeless Hopeful, we begged you not to go back.
The house was on fire
Now: //so are you\\

His shoes are too big
You miss him
His room is too cold
You miss him
These photos, just paper
You miss him
The memories keep fading
You miss him

Hopeless Hopeful, why don't you ever listen?

You left your heart out in the rain
Just like your sister's Tamagotchi
No one else could keep you dry
There are safer feelings than being high

You stare at his name on a bottle of Oxycodone. You think: he left this for me. You hold the pills under your tongue for what feels like d a y s. As you swallow, a glimpse of light returns.

In that moment you feel safe. You almost even see the light.

The days continue to pass. You try to conquer the nothingness. Caught in between the light and dark. You're not sure which way is r[l]ight.

This beer makes me feel warm, may I have another?

How many pills are too many pills?

Is this needle clean?"

•••

•••

Take care of my child

•••


The end
           doesn't have to be;



         

If Nathan were here

Hey brother,

Things are weird down here. I know you already know about the whole president thing. Here's something new: Tomorrow, I’ll be completely sober from drugs and alcohol for one year. AND the crazy part: I’m not even lying about it. Don’t fall out of your casket and stuff. Life is still chaotic and unmanageable, especially when it comes to accepting and feeling the fact that you’re no longer here.

I found this book at an AA meeting :0 It's about a boy
grieving the loss of his best friend Nathan.

Your name seems to follow me everywhere. Nathan was here. I can’t decide if I find it comforting, or if it’s another nagging reminder of your absence. Nathan was here. 

There are moments when I think, 'I’ve got this. I’m going to be okay. I can do this, sober, for both of us. I’m not alone.'

AND then I     B\R/E\A/K    . My heart, so heavy, I can feel my legs giving. My whole body collapses to the floor. Alone; I am weak. I can see no other way. I am so close to relapse, I can taste it. I can feel the warmth of the codeine and ethanol seeping through my veins.

They are lodged into my chest. All of your stupid plastic army men, all of your bottles and needles, all of your friends and the words they couldn't say, every scene from a movie far too short. I can’t catch my breath. My chest physically aches. I’m shaking all over. I fall to the ground. I pray to something, anything: please let me fall asleep. I don’t know how long I can endure the weight of this, without surrendering, seeking refuge in the pills and bottle.

I’m crying on your bed. Your bedroom is so cold. I think your body must be too. Why do we bury them so deep and dark in the dirt? I still don’t understand why we do the things we do.

I remember I don't have a choice. There is only one way to get through this-- and it's sober. (yeah, this realization sucks every time I come to it.) 

Yet, by supernatural occurrence or not,  I have NOT had a drink for almost 365 days.

Saturday morning we made a couch fort. You wouldn’t let me in. There was an invasion, you said. I stole the remote, and invaded your head, before changing the station back to Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.

We watched the movie Cry-Baby 300 times that year. You loved the scene where they play “chicken”. You used to practice outside, laying on top of the car, as mom pulled out of the driveway, hoping she wouldn’t see you--at least until she got into town. She didn’t see you, she felt you. I finally know what she meant. I feel you too. More accurately, I feel the lack of you.

We moved-in together under the table. You told me I brought too many things.

We were playing tag in the house and tripped on Mom’s iron. It was still plugged in. We burned our legs. We did not cry.

We climbed on the roof. Dad didn’t see us and put away the ladder. We were too afraid to make ourselves known. You jump, I jump.

We ate cookies for dinner. In the summer, raspberries for every meal. Together we broke all the bones. And yet we still climbed higher.

I’ve lost my desire to climb now. There’s no challenge without you here. I put all the effort of climbing in, but I do not move. I think perhaps there isn't a point.

I read over old words in my inbox; I'm back inside the flashback. 
I try to confront you. I look at your eyes and see that you can’t stop. Something died inside you, and something else has come alive. They look like our mother’s eyes. Ravenous and rabbity, impossible to appease. They look like mine.

When did this happen, I think. Are we not any different then the ones we resented, the one's who provided the egg and sperm that made us suffer so perpetually? How can this be? I was careful and strategic. Like cleaning our room, I hid it all in the closet, so nobody could see.  But you, you totaled more cars than chairs at our dining room table. Our family wasn’t small. 

The stars are out again. We fell asleep on the roof of the barn. We both want privacy. You sneak off into the cornfield. I pretend I don’t know. Just like Mom and Dad. It’s better this way.

[The fort collapsed while you were on the roof.] [I fell out of the top of the tree] [I ran you over with the go-cart] [You flipped the four-wheeler down the hill] [The wasp’s nest landed on my lap] [You rode down the mountain on your bike.] [I could see your bone coming out of your skin.] [The ashes lit my pants on fire.] [The exhaust on the motorcycle made my skin peel.] [I shot your arm with my bow and arrow.] [Your BB gun bullets shattered my glasses.]

{I blacked out and woke up in a different city.} {I passed out at the edge of the cliff.} {I passed out on the bench, below zero.} {I lived on gin and sour patch kids for weeks.} {I don’t remember having sex in bacteria-infested waters in Tanzania because I drank too much wine and then snorted so many of those peach-coloured pills.} {I got in a fight with a glass bottle, there was so much blood. I couldn’t feel the broken glass tweezed out of my arm. I had more Vicodin then stitches they could give me.} {I jumped on the back of a motorcycle with someone I didn’t know.} {I left my friends in the city because I needed to find more alcohol.} {I left the club alone, took all the pills offered, without question.} {I had alcohol poisoning five times.} {I jumped from the bridge. I jumped from the plane. I jumped from the moving car.} {I climbed to the top of the crane in a blackout.} {I attempted suicide by drinking the fifth of vodka filled with Ambien and Klonopin. Then I took some of your Methadone, for good measure.}

I'm still here.

You did coke and shot up heroin. It had Fentanyl. You’re dead.

I’m still here and you’re not. And I cannot know why.  

 The cold metal of your toolbox feels familiar on my finger tips. Everything is slightly more uncomfortable.

Since day one, we were so used to having all the decisions made for us. So much, that we didn't realize when we started making them on our own.

Today, I know I'm making the decisions. Even though I don't always want to. Even though my soul still feels insatiable. Even though the only decision I really want to make is for you to be here.

Somebody somewhere who once said something:

"The one thing you have power over is your perspective." 

I’m told I have power over my thoughts, but I don’t seem to be commander nor chief.

Nathan was here.. Now, he is not. Colors don’t seem as bright. Your face definitely doesn’t seem as stupid. The cold air feels more cruel and the nights endless. Some nights there is no refuge from the depth and darkness of my mind. 

Nonetheless, I will be 365 days sober in less than 365 minutes. I’m making the choices and I’m feeling all the shitty, scary things. I hate it, and I hate this, AND I wish that you were here.

I have control over my perspective. I perceive that you are here. 

I am not getting sober alone.  We we're not fighting alone. Us against the world never was; Neither of us ever were. 

I have a different dream this time. The world is standing behind us, pushing us back down the mountain and into the light. I don't push you off this time. Instead, I watch you fall s l o w l y, peacefully. I yearn to fall with you. I fight to let go, but my fingers wont move. I keep holding on, for dear life. 

A year ago and a week ago. I look so deceivingly functional.
I had no clue what the next week, the next year- would bring.

.