Here's a thing I want to talk about but don't really, although it isn't because it doesn't deserve its own post, or its own conversation I guess. I just... am afraid to start it.
My little brother's suicide two months ago. How it has been affecting me, worse than I've let anyone know. How sorry I am: to him, my little brother who was always there for me and who always looked up to me, thought I was "successful" even though I was always as bumbling and lost as he was; to my family, none of whom have any idea how to cope with this, and we're all kind of feeling around in the dark right now; to all my friends that I've had a hard time talking to about any of this. How I can't sleep a full night anymore (and sometimes not at all), and can't go 4 hours (at home in school or at work) without full-on breaking down into a sniveling snotty puffy-eyed bawling mess. I am horrified that I am broken and cannot be fixed.
How I don't know what to say to my parents, my poor parents who did everything they could and tried everything to help my brother. My mother with the biggest heart you've ever seen, a nurse who cares for and loves everyone. My dad: never in my 26 years had I seen him cry until this. My grandparents, who were always there for me and my brothers growing up, knew all of us so well and love us so much. To all my brother's friends who were as surprised and caught off guard and are reeling the same way I am right now. I want so badly to make them all feel better, but I don't know how to make them feel better because I don't feel better, and I am so scared that just talking about it will show them how poorly I'm dealing with it and hurt them even more.
How I see him everywhere and hear him everywhere. My music sounds like him, the video games we played (together or separately chatted about) feel like him. He's never been in my apartment but it smells like him because it smelled the same way when I found out. I carry a memento of his with me every day and if anybody asks me about it I can't even start talking without choking up. I dream of him at least 3-4 times per week. As a baby, as a little kid throwing sticks at me, as the bony teenager and young adult he grew into. I cry just hearing his name, yesterday I bawled in the grocery store because some kid yelled "chris!"
How I am, worse yet, haunted by thoughts of his last moments and my last images of him. The idea of him slinking out of the house with a gun in the cold, while I twiddled my thumbs in class. Nothing in this world hurts me more than the thought of him giving the house we grew up in one final look. I knew it at the funeral home that I was braced in a horrible catch-22: they had his body the next room over and I knew, I fucking knew I would regret going in there, but I also fucking knew I'd never forgive myself if I didn't see him that one last time before we cremated him. On that cot like an altar, linen over his face, his arms bruised and blue from the winter, crossed over his chest. Room temperature. My mother there, inconsolable. My father the same. Me and my other brother not far off. Trying to be strong, failing.
How much it hurt when the girl I was seeing for the past 3-4 months broke up with me this past weekend (for totally unrelated reasons). My one constant, my last link to the happiness I felt before February, who somehow made me smile for the last two months even when I was crying. Helped me at times and in ways I didn't know I needed help. Now I am alone in that sense too.
How much of a failure I feel like. Dropped out of my second semester of my first year of law school because I just couldn't do it. I just can't focus, I can't study for hours and hours and hours like I could 3 months ago. I let down my peers, my all-star study group, my professors and myself. This was my dream. But I can't do it right now. I feel like a moron. I don't know how to tell my friends, I haven't even told my parents yet and I know they will be devastated, and I know that's the last goddamn thing they need right now.
How horrified I am for what the rest of my life will look like without him. How angry I feel with myself for not being a better brother. How I failed him.
I don't want to talk about this because the only person I would have talked to about this took his own life almost exactly two months ago. Feels ok to type it all out, maybe a little cathartic. Fuck. I will probably delete this.