It Flickers in Oblivion

You know the idea of letting go? Well, its’ a lie. There is nothing more impossible than letting go of someone you loved, or love. The only advice I can give you on the lie of ‘letting go’, is that the only alternative us to forget or to replace, but ‘letting go’ in itself is painfully and impossibly unattainable.

Friendship is strange, almost as impossible to understand as ‘letting go’. I’m talking about deep friendship, friendship that blossoms, that erupts. Friendship can be born from anything, a heroic act, a ‘hello’, a bump on the head.

It was Patrick who decided the best way to get my attention was to hit me over the head with a toy hammer and somewhat politely suggest that I help him give haircuts to every fluffy toy I owned. I found the scissors and he started cutting. Then we got bored and try to escape up the street. It would have been a strange sight to see two toddlers running down the road, one in an oversized ‘Guns’n’Roses teeshirt and the other with just a nappy, throwing bald barbies into the gutter and giggling hysterically.

Patrick and I had been friends for 16 years. Our friendship began at the innocent age of two, when training wheels and sweet food was all our lives depended on. Patrick and I lived in houses opposite to each other in a crowded commission area in Newtown. In my suburb, freaks set fire to anything that was ordinary, peace signs come before stop signs and the sensation of cigarettes, spray paint and running is second nature to every kid born between Kings Street and James Street.

Every night Patrick would signal ‘good night’ to me from his window, he had this retro robot toy that we called Ringo. Ringo’s chest would light up when you pressed the button on his head, it was so bright I could see it from my window across the street. In return I would snap my cigarette lighter on and off three times.

For 16 years not a single day passed without one of us turning up at the others front door. When we were both 14, Patrick’s parents were sent to forced rehab for the first time. We had sleep overs every night for that six months, we kissed the nights away on the rooftops of buildings on the mainstream and inhaled the musty, polluted city air. We would scream insults into the sky and and let our prayers escape in unheard whispers with the smoke that we freed from our lungs. We prayed for a world without control, where nobody lived beyond the age of 27, and where we could escape the clutches of our grey, dying society. For what troubles a grownup should never trouble a child, but it always did. But I guess its inescapable, because the problems of our parents did trouble us, and that is why we were the way we were.

Patrick and I were the inseparable misfits, the beautiful wallflowers, we noticed everything and shared it only between ourselves. It was yer distilling power of rebellion that drove us. It was unsaid, but we both knew that one day we would board a train going absolutely nowhere, and leave forever.

Patrick was never someone I thought I would have to let go of; his presence in my life was like a divine contract. An always.

Or so it was until;

***

‘Patrick what the heck are you doing here?’ I wasn’t expecting him to be sitting on my bed this late at night. He hadn’t even signalled with Ringo that he was coming over. That was usually two rapid green flashes.

I sucked in my breath when I saw the tears running down his cheeks. Patrick never cried. The first and last time I saw him cry was when we were four, and his parents had been taken to rehab for the first time. Ever since then not a single tear had left his eyes. I knelt down next to him and put my head on his knee.

‘Patrick what’s going on? Is it your parents again?’

He shook his head, more tears falling onto the sleeves of his jacket.

‘Do you have to move house?’ That was always my biggest fear, that he would move house. That would change everything. At this Patrick stood up in a burst of angry despair and said, tears still falling, ‘Dad got a job.’

‘Well, that’s a good thing isn’t it?’ His dad had been looking for a job for months, it was never an easy thing for him to hold down.

‘Yes…but it is in Alaska.’ My stomach dropped, and my throat felt dry, ‘But…that’s so far away.’

‘11, 902 kilometres.’ Patrick’s confirmation of the distance made my throat tighten with the impulse to scream. I stood up, in a miasma of confusion, I couldn’t find any words, there were none.

‘They are not allowed to do this. We can change their minds, you don’t have to leave OK. I’m not going to let you.’ I was pulling at Patrick’s arm, trying to wrench some kind of reaction out of him. All he did as shake his head.

‘They put the house on the market four weeks ago. The tickets have been ordered and we are leaving next week…they didn’t tell me… I’m so sorry Alice.’

‘And they only told you tonight?’ Drowning in tears, I slid my back down the door and put my head in between her knees. Patrick sit next to me his arms stiff with the effort of not to crying.

‘You can’t leave me here…’

***

The next few weeks was spent in a daze of tears, angry outbursts and a couple more desperate attempts at escaping the nightmare that had become reality. We tried to run, but his parents always caught us. Three times we made an attempt and three times they shoved us into the back of their car as though we were criminals.

On his last night, Patrick climbed through my window at 2am, we spent the night crying until our eyes strung and our heads throbbed. Three hours later it was time to say goodbye. I told him to be grateful, because he was getting out, going to the snow and mountains, there was so much space there…he promised to call everyday and I promised to pick up. Before he walked out of the door, he tuned around, with a cheeky grin on his face, and made a rude hand gesture; before I could open my eyes from laughing, he was gone.

That was the last time I saw him. That night, I looked out to his window, and waited, and hoped and willed my eyes to see his green light, flick on and off, on and off, on and off…

Days and weeks and months went by; and neither of us were true to our deal. There were a few calls, but they were quick and he never left a number, and I never tried to contact him. He eventuated into oblivion, and I probably did for him too.

****

Five years had passed since Patrick left. My life went on, people came and passed through, I fell in and out of love, and now at the age of 23, Patrick was an occasional thought but an unconditional abyss in my chest.

I had just come in through the front door, I had been out with friends, and the house was eerily quiet. From the down the hallway I head a murmur, my mum’s voice, cracked and divested.

‘…Okay, take care Jules…I will…’ My heart dropped. Jules was Patrick’s mums name.

She hung up the phone.

‘Mum?’

She turned, and bit her lip, her face twisted up and tears started falling, as though she was ringing out a wet cloth. I knew what had happened before she opened her mouth.

‘Patrick’s dead.’

***

I once asked him what I should do if he ever left. We were fifteen, sitting on the swings at the park at the bottom of King Street, dragging our feet in the mulch..He told me not to be stupid because that would never happen. But now the slate was wiped and he was another victim to suicide. I should have called him. And I can’t help but be angry with him, because he should have given me a better answer.

***

I walked upstairs to my bedroom, and while I was numb, for some reason I didn’t feel alone. I looked out of my window, and into the bedroom that was once his in the house across the street.

And the green light flashed three times.

‘Good night.’