There’s a lot to be found in the translations of our conversations.
And so here I was, at 25, sitting second row deep at my best friend Sophie’s largest party to date.
When someone dies, people always speak of ‘something missing’ in their lives. Nothing is missing. Death is like moving house. It is simply that someone has moved, to a new, dark and very much smaller house, where nobody visits and nobody can communicate. Really, it wouldn’t make much difference to the people at this party, except that now they felt guilty for treating her like she’d already moved house while she was still alive. These people were trying to fill their missing spaces with self-forgiveness. Of course it’s not their fault that they didn’t take 5 minutes a month to call her and say something appreciative. They didn’t have time between work and their babies, their box set DVDs and shopping for a new dining table. “Nobody can be blamed for her death, it was a tragedy” they’ll say later, while they stare into their wine and Pride and the Prejudice DVDs dimly light a room with a new dining table and the TV cabinet they bought, reassuring themselves that “Sophie would have loved it”. They were here because they needed self re-assurance. There was no true compassion. This death was their fault.
Sophie had come home from work that Friday, her last column written and handed to the boss. She drank a glass and a half of wine, the lipstick on the rim was her last mark of self-enjoyment left for anyone to find. Then she’d hung her clothes.
But Sophie never got undressed.
They said to me, you’ll never get anywhere in life with an attitude like that.
And you know what I thought? I thought to myself, well I don’t really care, if I’m cruisy and happy, then what does it matter what you think? Truth be told, what you think, matters a lot. If every single person was ultimately as selfish as everyone suggests we should be, and as selfless as the rest say we should be, then we’d all be still in bed, alone, having complexes while the person lying next to us did the same. Occasional sex, sure, but nothing that meant anything.
There is no formula
There is no universal way to live
It’s all
Impromptu.
Rehearse all you want, think out, plan out, it wont go the way you want.
It’ll go it’s own way.
She’s gone.
Far from here.
And there’s nothing I can do about it. It leaves me writhing in pain sometimes. Crying and weeping until all hours of the morning, sprawled across a bed far too large to leave a person of my size feeling anything but alone in this world.
She’s not here anymore. She’s never coming back. Never coming back.
Sometimes it hits harder than other times.
Sometimes I don’t feel a thing.
But I always tell myself. Remind myself.
She’s not ever coming back to me.
I am the key to my own guidance, a follower of the darkness, there is no light to guide me.
Just my own night vision to see with.
Behind me follows my own creation, the one who depends on me.
As if I were looking down upon him from above, as if for some reason there was a heaven and I'd made it there, I saw it all.
She spiked the anti-biotics, hung them on the pole, the infusion began and he was fine.
15 minutes later, a rash around his throat. He was unsettled, but nobody was there to notice, no machines to let them know, it wasn't unusual for him to dispise being alone.
It spread across his chest and he began to wheeze a little, he laid his face down in his pillow and screamed, heaving for more air in his lungs, he needed help. He needed someone to notice he was in trouble, but nobody was there.
Where was I? Why could I not know where I was? I was helpless. I wasn't there.
His throat was tightening, his reaction becoming more and more severe, he needed help urgently. But nobody came, soon his wheeze became simply a squeak, and died to nothing, he laid, eyes open and blood-shot a few inches below his pillow in the iron-cradle that had now become the place in which he drew his last breath.
And I wasn't there. Nobody was.
The nurse found him on an obs round, the poor woman. He was just becoming cold, she let out a scream, hit the nurse call button, and another 4 young women also encountered their first dead 17-month-old.
He had cancer, but he died from an allergic reaction to medicine to treat a fever.
How fucked.
Miss Supermarket Love-less.
Baby I’ve got to tell you, there’s a secret I’ve held onto,
For all this romance and fancy dancing we’ve got going on,
Please don’t think that I love you any less than I did before,
But there’s someone else.
I swear to you, our meetings are brief,
There’s scarce weight given to any words spoken between us,
But every time I buy bread and milk, it’s love.
We share awkward eye contact every time I buy groceries,
The same groceries I serve for you me and baby.
And yet every time you and I are together,
It’s as if they don’t exist, all a different world to here.
You.
You mean not what you say.
You never meant a word.
Trust does not exist here.
We are not what we thought.
We have nothing except denial.
You will enjoy what you have, not what takes effort.
You wont enjoy what you didn’t have to begin with.
You, are truly not worth my time.
You.
You are someone I miss dearly.
You are probably more like me than anyone I know.
You are my blood.
You are my best friend, my brother,
You understand me.
I love you.
You are so, so special to me.
You.
You are the one who’s hands the rest of my life lies in.
Your hands are going to save, or steal my son’s breath.
You are paid to shape lives, to save and to create them.
You are so powerful.
I do not know you to be different to any other man,
You have a label, and so I trust.
You, have a lot on your shoulders.
You.
You left me with thumbprints on my ass and a bad taste in my mouth.
You play the game. Like chess with your own secret rules.
You’re scared of restriction. But I think you’re lonelier than anyone I know.
I could hear it in your voice when you spoke of memories created years ago.
You say things and never follow through.
You lie, and apparently you cheat too.
You’re a charmer. And I thought I could tolerate it.
I’ve access to better than this.
You, can go and hump someone else’s leg.
You.
You attatched too fast.
You give me the creeps.
You barely know me. .
You’ve planned our life together and all I want is for you to stop talking.
You just don’t understand that you’re not on my radar.
You’re on the list of ‘Most Dangerous People’.
You need to leave me alone, or I’m going to emotionally crush you.
And I know so well that that’s the last thing I want to do to you.
You have been through enough.
You.
You are the epitome of ‘Good things come in small packages’
(Get your mind out of the gutter)
Ideal things come in small packages.
You are almost perfect.
You are nothing that scissors and a pair of stilts couldn’t make perfect. (So far)
You make me hate myself for being so narrow-minded.
I cannot afford to settle for anything below perfect.
You make me kick myself.
You make me sorry.
You, are seemingly amazing.
You.
You see things in me that everyone else does.
You love my shiny nose.
You love my much-too-wide-behind.
You love to help.
But I do not love you.
You are wonderful, kind and caring.
You are strange and insightful.
You and I did bad things.
You and I did good things.
You and I are friends. And that is all it will ever be.
You and You.
You’re the mates I can always rely on to listen.
You’ve been such a massive reason for me staying sane.
You both know exactly where we stand.
You wont let me down, and if you do, all is easily forgiven.
The token ‘nice guys’.
I love you like I love my brother.
You are amazing. No other words will do.
You.
You have known me longer than most.
We’ve rarely spoken for many winters.
You understand me better than most.
You’re the sort of person I could spend my life with.
You have a beautiful soul, and an attitude I love.
Wrong time, wrong places. I’d like to think.
Age is a number, it’s maturity that counts.
You and I are friends. The possibilities are unspoken.
You.
You need to set yourself free of a burden.
You mean well, but sometimes things just wont work.
Square pegs aren’t meant for round holes.
I know you hurt, and so do they, but let go.
You need to just jump in, and don’t stop paddling until you reach the edge.
You can do it, and so can they.
You’re one of my best mates, like a brother that almost was.
You have my utmost respect... most of the time. (I say this in jest)
And you.
You are filth.
You are a no-good, dirty, evil man.
And my life would quickly become a lot less awful if you weren’t in it.
You are someone I hate.
I ran.
What was I running from? I couldn’t even form words to describe it. All I had were images in my mind, flashing one by one like an old slide projector. Single frames, each one representing another reason why I wanted to escape. I wanted to get away from everything. But everything was everywhere.
And I was getting nowhere. Running was useless.
Suddenly I tripped, and through me rushed a fleeting second of clarity, as if time had stopped for just a moment. And all I could think of, in the midst of such clarity, was;
“Oh fuck.”
My hands saved my face, but my body hit the ground with what I remember as a crack, even though nothing had broken. As I tried to immediately lift myself from the ground as if nothing had ever happened, I realised that every ounce of energy left in my limbs had been drained. Gravity took over my body and I simply laid my head down on the cold concrete gently and watched the ants meandering about the edge of the footpath. At the time I’d pondered on whether they knew they were so vulnerable in the scheme of things. And then I’d realised that really, they had it sorted. Humans were the vulnerable ones.
Last week she made pancakes and this week she’ll make stew,
She cleans every couple of days and hates doing the dishes.
She’s just a girl doing what she does to get by.
But every night she writes a secret on the bathroom mirror in the mist from the steam she uses to cleanse.
It’d always been little things, like letting the dog eat off her plate, or stealing her brother’s easter eggs as a child, but lately it’s been much more haunting.
Every night since she realised she was lonely,
“I’m suicidal”
She wouldn’t rub it off, just let the steam fade away, in the hope that maybe one day soon, someone would notice the marks left, and enquire, giving her a chance to explain the way she felt.