a message for MF

i'm sorry that I still have phases like these. I know you wouldn't like it. You'd hate to see me this way. But you would understand - and that matters. Matters more than you will never know because for too many years you know nothing new...

i'm sorry but I still feel like someone has punched me in the stomach out of nowhere in the middle of the day. Today and yesterday it was during the morning, while I sipped some water after waking up. As always, I'm in the middle of doing something and the image comes back. And I get in this weird "no-place place", a place where you still have thoughts but you are not aware until you feel them physically. Pow! I remember. And it hurts, it still fucking hurts so bad... I don't choose to have moments like those, I don't choose when or where to cry. It just happens. Like it happened to you - "because". Which will never be enough for me...

you know I need to understand. I will go to great lengths to deconstruct anything if I might learn from it. I will be stubborn (as you always said was both my best and worst feature) and I might damage myself but I want nothing in return - just to know. Not the why's... but the how's. Ok, maybe some why's - but in this case only because I know someone has the why. Hell, I was there! I cannot understand those 2 hours. I will never know what to make of them. I'm sorry I promised you'd be fine... I'm sorry I promised they would take care of it... I'm sorry I told you to calm down. I'm not sorry I held your hand. I'm not sorry I looked you in the eyes while you were fighting death. I'm not sorry I was there for way too long. I am sorry for not punching someone in the face and create chaos. I am sorry for not knowing what to do except... staying there. Promising things I shouldn't have promised. It was too long though... how can anyone go through that and not be fucked in the head, I ask? Not me for sure...

i'm sorry but I have to admit I wish you wouldn't have stayed around... it's not you, anyway. It's a body. It's a misfiring of neurons, it's the chaos I always cared to avoid. Something no one can study or measure. This grief is inconceivably twisted... absurd. Inhumane. Cruel. Absolutely deranged. All my fears (who are quite a few), all my life and all the fears I've seen others have... nothing like this even crosses our minds!! Why should it anyway?! It was "impossible" they said. We were in countdown. Bracing ourselves. Little did I know it could and would get worse...

we humans (for whom you always were too kind)... we have many limits concerning what we are prepared to deal with. It goes way beyond "Oh, it won't happen to me" because I always knew that's a lie and I can't even understand how people think this way... This kind of thought did not confuse me at all. Them is us and we are them.

but... (pardon me) this?! Who the fuck could ever be prepared for THIS? Maybe a combat veteran with a streak of psychopathy? It needs to be someone utterly freed from any positive feelings. Someone completely empty. As you know... I was never empty. I was always "too much" as you said so yourself - but you laughed when trying to maintain a straight face saying it because one of my favourite things was to make you laugh in inappropriate situations. I smile at those memories and I also cry for them...

some days are just... your days. Not only yours, because from you I go even further to thinking I never got to see C grow... into the beautiful human being he already was. How I don't have ML anymore to share the grief with. Only she understood... I'll never forget that big dinner, the first without you. I was still in shock and trauma was setting in... and everyone kept talking. Just talking. Small talk. And I got furious. My head was spinning. Did no one understand how nothing made sense anymore!? Didn't they know the world had stopped?! Didn't they know I could barely breathe out of pure shock that them behaved like... normal?! That I couldn't eat or sleep and didn't understand how everyone else could?! How could they escape the atrocity of randomness from the universe? ML saw me struggling to hold a fork. I had started to shake a lot and felt dizzy. Big drops of tears fell on the plate. I had my head down so no one would notice. ML did... of course she did! She just jumped up and came to me, protected me from all the talking, the small talk, the "let's pretend nothing is wrong" talk. She walked me away, hugged me, cried with me on the floor after she closed the door after us. And I screamed. I never cried while screaming like that. I'm sorry to tell you she lasted little after you went grey... I know you're not aware. Or maybe you are. FUCK!! See?!

i promise I am doing my very best. I still don't function properly... my social abilities and my "courageous" traits are gone. I'm fearful. Stubbornness has saved me more than you'll ever know. And just maybe, when I talk to you, you realise it - I really hope and wish you don't, but the recent news wasn't the "best". I guess they were the best for anyone who never knew the real you... the ones who are happy you're still "here" (here where?!). The ones who don't get inside their fucking heads you would NEVER EVER want to be around like this. Because you only trusted me to say those things... and while I appreciate that level of trust in me, it is a heavy burden to carry around... it really is.

throughout time I realise no one knew you like I did... that you showed more of you to me than anyone else. It was another shock to the system. I carry secrets I didn't know were only ours... to be only between us. And it took you disappearing for me to slap myself and come to feel what it is like to love. To care for, to... be happy while doing so. To highly value the fact that I got a surprising amount of regrets you admitted to me, mistakes you made while being influenced by the other people. Mistakes in misunderstanding me, in not acting the way you should've... very few have the honour of hearing such words after decades of struggle.

what can I do about it? Everything. Nothing... I don't know. Some days I feel I have figured it out, others are haunted from the moment I open my eyes after a long sleep...

i am trying. That is all I can do. Trying *really* hard, the hardest I've ever dared to try. And I think I'm managing... quite OK? I know you'd be proud. You always were, except I only learned about many of the hopes and dreams you had reserved for me after you were gone... how unfair! How awful and confusing it was to learn about them through the voices of friends and all the people you helped. Because that was you - you helped. I know ML would be proud. C would be too. You didn't have the time... I do. Don't know how much but for now I won't think too much about "it can happen again". I barely remember when it happened to me. The same red alert room you all were in... except I'm still here. Which, again, is something else I have to deal with. Not that I feel guilt per se... I've worked hard on that part - it's just that if I got out... why couldn't you? Why couldn't C or ML?? Especially when you lovely humans were the ones who would opt to live when I easily would toss my existence away... is this supposed to be a lesson of sorts? Because I don't believe that shit, but I feel it.

and you can only know what you feel.

i needed to write to you. I have great things and great people. I am so fucking lucky I should throw a party every single day. I'm suspended in infinite surprise. Yet you aren't around to party with me... which turns the party into a confusing wild ride of up's and down's in a grey room. I enjoy darkness - at my pleasing. Not like this...

not quite like yours but grey nonetheless...

i love you and if I still hurt don't worry, it's normal. I'm stubborn.

x