1. Grief & Love

Feb 3, 2021
(TW: Self Harm)

Hey Chadderbox,

I decided I needed to create a space where I could talk to you again.

The idea came after a rough night when I was grieving multiple things I had bottled up for weeks. The initial reasoning for bottling everything was that if I could contain the emotions, I wouldn’t have to come to terms with how sad I had become, and I wouldn’t have to face the fact that I’d have to navigate said sadness alone. Simple, yeah?

It turns out it’s really hard to hold so much on your own. I dropped the bottles and wouldn’t have the extra hand I had grown accustomed to to help me pick up the pieces. That was made abundantly clear.

I don’t remember ever feeling that alone, or letting it get that bad. When my emotions are so high but I’m not feeling seen or heard, I begin to disassociate. Am I here? Why won’t anyone see or hear me? I hold a handful of ice cubes and rub them up and down my arms in an effort to reconnect, but it’s not working. I grab my keys and start praying for the first time in years as I drive across town to the church parking lot I claimed as my spot last year. Why can I feel everything but me? I take the set of spare scissors I keep in my middle console for emergencies and carve a small set of stairs into my arm in an effort to link my emotional and physical states.

I wince, I bleed.
It hurts.
Good. Here I am.

I set down the scissors as Banshee Beat played in the background. I turned it up and put it on repeat.

“But I don’t wish that I was dead
Now a very old friend of mine once said
That either way you look at it
You have your fits, I have my fits, but feeling is good
Confusions not a kidney stone in my brain
But if we’re miscommunicating, do we feel the same?
Then either way you look at it
You have your fits, I have my fits, but feeling is good

So I duck out and go down to find the swimming pool
Hop a fence, leave the street and wet your feet to find the
Swimming pool”

Hurting myself like that was stupid, I know it was, and I don’t want to let another moment like that happen again. But holding ice cubes in my hands isn’t doing shit for me. I was searching for a way to bring myself back, to feel like I still mattered, like I’m still being heard even when I’m completely alone. Most importantly, I needed to find a way to love myself again. So I decided to write you.

You loved me like I was your little sister. You listened to me, you put your energy into ensuring we maintained our friendship, you thought I was the shit and you rooted for me. God, I’ve never had someone root for me like you did. It made me feel like I could do anything. When you died, I figured that feeling disappeared, too.

In the finale of a show I think you would’ve liked called The Midnight Gospel, the main character, Duncan, interviews his mom, a therapist, who had an aggressive form of cancer for years. They talk and walk through birth, life, death (specifically her body’s eventual death to cancer), and grief. Near the end, he says, “Well, I love you very much, obviously.” And his mother responds with something that resonated with me.

She said, “I love you, too. And Duncan, that kind of love isn’t going anywhere. And that’s another thing you find - that I may leave this plane of existence, sooner rather than later, but the love isn’t going anywhere. I’m as certain of that as I am of anything.”

I think she’s right. Your love hasn’t gone anywhere. I always felt it when I listened to your old mixes or remembered a story from the house on Decatur - those were the easy things to recall. But your love was more than that. It built me up and rooted for me enough to help me realize I was worthy of it. For so long I thought that died with you, and I almost let myself forget. It took 10 years to realize what you really instilled in me by doing all the little things you did. You were showing me I was worth it.

Thank you. I’m going to work on seeing the worth you saw in me. I’m grateful I can feel your love and influence to this day. Avey Tare was right, I have my fits, but feeling is good. Will you help me keep going?

Love you like a brother,

-BreSoftware