Grief Is Funny Like That

I never expected him to actually finish anything. He was always leaving. I always picture him with a suitcase in his hand. Sometimes I wonder what he would look like now. When I close my eyes I still see his smile and I swear I could smell him, Well him before the shooting. I dream of him sometimes and he's smiling and walking toward me and then I wake up. I wake up happy then reality sets in. For a long time, I wasn't able to talk about it. Even thinking about his death made me sick to my stomach. Sometimes thinking about it still makes me sick to my stomach almost nine years later. I thought that I would be less traumatized by it after all of these years but I'm not. I'm still that traumatized 17-year-old who just lost her best friend to gun violence. Things can change in a heartbeat. If we didn't walk down that street at that time he would still be here. I would still have my best friend here. But I can't change that. It took me years to stop blaming myself. Somedays I still blame myself or I blame God. Not the actual person who murdered him.

I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tell him. It didn't stop after his death. What stopped was the fact that he wouldn't respond anymore. On days like these, all I want to do is call him to hear his voice. The voicemail he left on my 17th birthday is still stuck on my phone. And by stuck I mean I can't bring myself to delete it. and by in my phone I mean I got a new phone so I transferred it to my laptop. It's hard to be the one who lives. I'm here, for the longest time he was the reason I was alive and now he's gone and I'm alive. That has to cause some kind of trauma. Not just witnessing his death but being the one who lived. My best friend is gone and it feels like I'm moving in slow motion. I'm moving in slow motion and the rest of the world is moving so fast. My mom says that I'm coming to terms with it. I don't think that is the best way to word it. How do you come to terms with something like that? Whoever said what doesn't kill you makes you stronger left out the part where it also leaves you with more anger and pain and confusion than you know what to do with. I want to be myself again. I want to be 17. I want to stop knowing everything I know.

He was in a coma for 7 whole days before he passed away. When they put him in the ground next to his aunt, I broke. That pain has never left. The week he was in the ICU I don't think I slept or ate. All of the things I wished I had said but didn't, couldn't. Then he was just gone. The things I said or didn't say didn't matter anymore. What was I supposed to do now? I miss him all the time. He taught me that I was not too much to handle and I thank him for that. He had taught me how to be a better person and I think that his death just brought that out more for me. I will always miss him nothing is going to change that and that is okay.