ramblings from someone who hasn't slept that much.

March 12th 2021.

In dreams that were usually tinted in a pink hue or full of encounters with celebrities, or even me and my friends exploring places new and others that feel familiar in some way or another, I never thought you would enter them. Nothing against you, I used to dream of you when I was younger. I would dream about summer days, exploring places or you teaching me how to ride a bike.

That was when you were still a reality to me — something real and tangible and not vacant or gone or sad or dark or rude or mean … you were just here and you knew who I was.

Now you’re in a different reality. — where even are you? — And you’re probably floating and finding a new life, somewhere else that doesn’t include me or summer afternoons — sitting in front of the industrial fan you bought back in 2017 when you literally thought you had heat stroke for three days straight because it was so warm … when in actuality you just couldn’t handle the heat (and neither could I, but I would never admit that to you). — It doesn’t include you cooking Christmas dinner — because that was one of the few times in the year you would cook, even though you used to be chef at one point in your life, so surely it would have made sense for you to cook all the time, but I guess not. — It doesn’t include you listening to music so loud, that I would hear it from outside the front door when I was coming home from school or being out somewhere. It doesn’t include you or your thriller films you would insist on watching over and over again. It doesn’t include you or Formula One being played every weekend followed by the motorbikes.

No! It doesn’t include you because that isn’t my reality anymore.

There’s something about my fears being materialised right in front of me, something about having to get used to my “new normal” within an already existing “new normal”. Something about logging onto my laptop every morning with every intention of having a full day working — even going as far as to checking my emails the first activity I do of every day, because I’m 22 now and I think that I’m important enough to check my emails first before doing work or instead of spending hours on Tik-Tok — and realising that this is my life now.

Life has gone on without you in it, but yet I’m still struggling to comprehend the fact that you’re … well not in my life to begin with.

It was so much easier when you were here and of course it wasn’t always easy, hardly any family have easy relationships or dynamics with each other, thats what makes each one so unique and interesting. We work in different ways, we move in different ways, we talk, we sing, we dance, we write, we shout, we scream, we laugh in different ways. That was us. And now it’s not. Now it’s just me, Mama and Gabby and we are having to navigate this new limbo of you not being here, you not tucked up in your corner on the couch (that I’ve since took over because it makes me feel closer to you as well as simmers my anxiety down from a 10 to a 5.4 at most) .

You visited me in my dream the other night. It really messed me up, I wish you’d have given me a warning. I had never felt closer to that one The Japanese House song in my life. I remember you hugged me and it felt so real, I hugged you so tight, I never wanted to let you go, because if I did you would leave me again. I remember asking you about the afterlife. We had discussed it when you were still here once or twice, going over our own thoughts and feelings around the subject. You were the furthest thing from religious, but you loved the idea of finding out where you would eventually go. Where you’ll settle next, if your soul will fly into orbit and go around the sun once or twice or if it’s somewhere more concrete, somewhere with houses and trees, somewhere like here but different. Somewhere where you can live out your wildest dreams — somewhere where you may even be given a second chance —

Second chances were familiar when it came to you. So were third and fourth and fifth chances too.

Sometimes I would make up fictitious ideals in my mind about me and my sister not giving you anymore chances, neglecting to let you live out your sixth chance of the month and instead just tell you no.

Say good bye and move on.

That never worked, you were good with your words and good with diffusing situations, even if you were the one who started them in the first place.

Everyone is telling me to forgive you. I’m getting there. I’m trying too, but it’s difficult when you left so quickly and I was still desperately trying to pick up the pieces and heal the scars of what you left me with when you were still here in the flesh. I promised you I would stop giving everyone pieces of myself so much that I’m left with nothing, I’m working on it Dad. I really am, because although you’re not here, although you ran out of those chances that we’ve talked about once or twice, you’re still here with me. You’re still in the pieces I have and the pieces I’ve given to people. You’re here right now in my notes app or on a page in a notebook tucked away on my desk. Sometimes I’m worried that you took all of the best parts of me with you when you passed. You’re in my dreams and in my soul and you’re rooted in my mind, so much so that I haven’t slept properly since the day you passed. I’m too scared too, fearing that you’ll pop up in then middle of the night or that I’m being watched — referring back to a child like state I never thought I would return to ever again.

I know that one day I’ll sleep again, I’ll finally be able to have a peaceful slumber; maybe it will happen on one sticky summers evening, where the air is thick and the thin veil of sweat from the sweltering heat we were faced with all day gets wiped away by your hand; your feet on the pavement as you sit on your doorstep, your hand curling around a cold glass of lemonade, the condensation starting to run down the side.

A day full of water balloon fights (in ode to you) long behind us in our utopia clouded paradise; where we aren’t faced with grief or the prospect of you gone, where I don’t feel abandoned and have to talk about that to my therapist, where everything is fictional and bright and colourful and where nothing feels like a permanent fucking storm following me around.

In our ideal perfect world, you would be the dad I’ve always dreamed of having and you would be alive, healthy and with me. You would be making my teddy bears -- you would buy me every single Christmas without fail --talk to me when I would cry about something going wrong.

You would be here and tell me you loved me.

Or even better.

I would have been able to tell you I loved you and good bye.