Catharsis

They look like pictures

Scattered on the floor

But be wary

Pictures have a way of cutting deep

Leaving scars

I have this recurring nightmare where I'm going about a normal day, maybe I'm running errands, maybe I'm picking up a to-go order for dinner, and I look up and see the local news on one of the tv screens. Normally I don't pay attention to it. I don't like the news, would never choose to watch it, but this one keep my attention, steals my breath and won't give it back. Whatever I'm holding drops from my hands as the words scrolling across the screen sink in. "Breaking News: Young, White Male Found Shot In Charlotte Back Streets." And suddenly the flashing lights take on meaning, as does the yellow crime scene tape and the form in the middle of all the moving bodies. It's you. Blonde hair matted with blood, eyes unseeing and unclosed, whatever terror you felt wiped away as your brain shut down and your heart ceased beating. But it's you. Those unseeing eyes still your blue, hair tousled and stained red from your blood, but still your course dirty blond hair. You're sprawled on the street like you were running when you fell and the black cement still shines and reflects the flashing red and blue lights from the rain that fell only hours before. It all sinks in, lays heavy on my heart, as the groceries or food or whatever I'm holding crashes to the floor. It had been a normal day. Just a normal day. And then it wasn't. The crash wakes me up every time. Brings me back to reality and I realize the truth in all its horror: that day could still happen.

It's hard to decipher

Where one scar ends and the next begins

So deep so hidden

Cropping up and breaking open

Pictures of memories too sharp to see

Too hard to relinquish

Just let me be

It sneaks up on me, the effect of everything you've done. There are days where I'm so busy that I have no space for it to be in the foreground. I've found that's when it's most dangerous. The bad gains strength in darkened corners. And the little things have more power. They mean more, resonate deeper, posses a louder clap of thunder. Draw out the darkness till it's the center of the room. And then something unrelated sends me staggering and suddenly it's all there again, forcing me to face the deceit and betrayal I shut away, lapping waves of shock and confusion and anger onto the already staggering grief, trapping me in a loop I can't escape, surprising me with its strength. A vicious circle I won't stop running, yet I'm trying to find an escape.

I'm stuck between holding on

And letting go

Can't move forward

Can't go back

Knowing one thing and feeling the other

Wanting it to never have happened at all

I'm a bottle of questions and fears, all churning about and raging in a storm, unable to stop it or control it, unable to get you back, needing to let you go, not knowing how or wanting to have to at all. I've become hard as stone because that's easier than feeling all of what I feel inside. But that's the problem with being a bottle - hard glass walls you can't escape and a cap that always wants to pop. I carry that nightmare around with me more often than I'd like, knowing how real a possibility it is because I was there that night you nearly died. It could have been you then. It could be you now.

No longer broken

But battered

Waiting for the next shoe to drop

When all I want

All I want

Is to see my brother stop

I keep hearing all the time that I have to let go. Just the thought brings tears to my eyes, because how can I? It may have all been a lie to you, a manipulation, but not to me. So how do I let go? Now I realize that the real question isn't how to let go, but what exactly do I need to let go? You walked away from me a long time ago, before I ever even knew you left, so how do I let go of nothing? The answer is because there's not nothing. There's the memory of the boy that I knew as my brother. The kid with the gaps between his teeth because he face-planted on the driveway after jumping on a giant red ball. The kid who has dreams of music and can dance at the drop of a hat like no one else. The kid who was bullied in middle school but made it through stronger than those who sought to make him weak. The kid who could spin a lie to everyone else but never to me. The kid who annoyed the crap out of me because he loved me so much and I didn't know what to do with it for so long. The kid who called me Aubie and Sissy and mastered the hardest song on Guitar Hero, who spent hour after hour as a humanoid cat in Skyrim. The kid who beat every level of Kingdom Hearts with me at his side. The kid who always sat too close to the television. The kid who was my protective younger brother and always had a comforting arm to lean on. The kid who always seemed to stumble a little in life, but I never worried because I knew him and knew that he'd get it someday. The kid I affectionately called Kid and who never seemed to mind. Child, yes, but never Kid. Because you were my kid brother who never left no matter how many times I shoved you away or ran you out of my room. You always kept coming back. And when I let you in and showed you something I wrote, something so personal, without any filter, just using narrative, poem, and song all together, it seemed like it clicked with you and I felt a little less alone in the world. Like not only could I understand you, but maybe you understood me, too. The world suddenly seemed right. It was you and me against the world and we were always okay together. Because I was the one you called to rescue you that night and I don't regret it for a second. Because I'm your big sister and I'll always get you out.

Memories like pictures

Pictures like shards

Glass broken and scattered

Wheedling deep, making scars

Do you see what I see

When I look around?

"Pieces of memories fall to the ground"

These are the memories of you I have to let go. Because at some point they turned into farce. Because somewhere along the way the kid brother I knew wasn't the one I grew up with. And I don't know the person who took his place. The person who could tell me that I knew you better than anyone else, that I'm the only one who understands, and then turn around and say that I don't know or understand you at all. I'm protecting those memories, hoping in some way that kid brother I know and love is still in there, that he'll come back to me. Because I miss him so very much. My head knows the truth but my heart refuses to follow. I know he's gone, but I don't want him to be. I want this all to be some terrible nightmare within a nightmare and I'll wake up, walk down the hall, and see you playing Skyrim on the Playstation. I wish you'd told us about your struggles instead of hiding them away and turning to drugs and bad decisions. I wish you'd known your family loves you unconditionally and depended on that. I wish you'd depend on that now and get clean. I wish a lot of things. We'd finally achieved a wonderful brother-sister relationship. And then I watched as it crumbled around me.

Is ignorance bliss

When the bliss is shattered?

When the heart breaks and its pieces are scattered?

When tarnished and fractured, the memories seep in,

Laughing and mocking and watching you crumple again?

Like a train wreck

You can't look away, your heart heavy and face tear-stained

But is it his train wreck

Or my own?

It's that which I miss the most - knowing you've got my back, that I know who you are. Our bond. I miss that. It's been the hardest thing to realize that it was a lie. To really feel what that means. To look back on all those memories and the little tendrils they created to make our bond and suddenly see that the biggest ones - that afternoon on our back porch where I shared with you my soul, the years that sewed us together, the car rides we took, the shared secrets and fears - may have bloomed into something I depended on, but was nothing substantial to you. I've been to a lot of therapy session since last April when everything happened. There I've been effectively disillusioned of all mirages you put in place and here is what I've learned, what truly breaks my heart: I never really knew you. No one did. You became what you thought we wanted to see and placed that person before us, before me. You hid the real you and created a secret life. In it you placed all the things you wanted but knew we never could condone and you stayed that way until it blew up in your face, quite literally. Now, there is no illusion, no mirage, no secret life, just you and all the things you want but know we can never condone. And you chose it over us. I'll never know why we aren't enough, your family, but we aren't. You've made that clear by your actions and decisions.

I'm still here, unable to look away

All the wreckage, the damage

Yours causing mine, causing theirs

But you're not here

Limping away

All broken and fierce

Look back, I cry, Come home

But no, your back says, I must continue on from here

Here's the thing. I want to know why. Even if it hurts me I want to know why. Because it's stupid that you would give up everything for something so caustic, so detrimental to everything you're supposed to hold dear. Why don't we matter to you? Why aren't we enough? Do you care at all? I know the thrill of power a mask gives you. I've had my own run with the Darkness. In the end, it only leaves you screaming for someone to rip the mask off and get you out. And you did. For one night, you did. So I don't get why you would dive back into it when you begged me to get you out just last year. You wanted out of the dark place in your head and you said drugs put you there. And now you're back in it and I don't get it. God sent me to save you that night, why would you go back when He got you out, when He wants you out? Whose voice are you really listening to?

Determined to see it through

To be the light in the dark

Reduced to shades now

No longer light but shadow

And growing dimmer

Darker

With each inhale, drop, and swallow

Maybe it won't help me. Maybe getting the answers won't do a thing. Maybe I already know the answers to all my questions and they are exactly what I fear. Maybe I could never be enough because your love was an illusion and the only language you really know is deception. In the end, all I'm left with are shattered pieces of memories that pierce my skin and make me bleed when I hold them too tightly. I've got scars from that past year and all that you've put me through, but I think now I'm creating my own by holding onto you. It's clear you don't want me to. Will I break if I hold on or if I let you go? How can I let go when all I want is to get you back?

Your own path
Your own way

What would I know anyway?

Forced to let you go on

Hands clenched tight to the scraps you left behind

Open up and let them go

Or squeeze just a little bit longer

And screw the scars

What are scars compared to a soul?

I don't know. I don't know what to do. So instead I stare at blank pages and blinking cursors because how do I communicate the emotion behind these words trapped within me? The fear and the panic? The lonesome and the lost? How do I put into words that I feel like an island nearly submerged by the sea? This is attempt number five and still I'm unsure. If nothing will get through to you, what's the point in typing them out at all?