Whispered bonds

dear will to

long time no see. it's so strange that half a year ago you were the only thing constantly lingering in the back of my mind and now you feel like a distant memory. by this i do not mean i wish to be dead, but wishing for life still feels so utterly uncomfortable. i think this is something uncomprehendingly inevitable when your new persona is formed of only pieces and memories of grieving memories and hindering sadness. the emotional bruises might heal, and then the scarring might fade away with time, but you remain stuck and stiff into your darkness.

and this is something i wish more would acknowledge: time can only do that much about your wounds, and no matter how committed you are, no force will ever be capable to extract that rotten roots out of your self. you wonder where did you go wrong to be cursed with this constant shame which is draining you from the inside out, bringing you deeper and deeper into a pool with no bottom and no forsaking surface: and it feels like drowning and as your lungs are exploding but the pool is as dry as it could ever be. yet you feel like your inhaling chunks and chunks of water and with each sip you're becoming that something that has been haunting you the most: a hopeless cause that's no worth the hand of salvation.

dear will to live, how could you allow this get so far and then sit there and not absolve me of this enormous guilt?

Day 17 without you, Michael, I muffled to myself while putting down the pencil and shutting down the cover of my only companion lately: a journal filled with pointless letters that will never reach a mailbox.

I've been writing to Life, Death, you-Michael, and to a few more throughout the last months of spring while you were still here, on this planet, breathing and sharing the same space with me.

Now my space feels too empty, and therefore my mental alteration felt unavoidable. I witnessed the body and soul of my own becoming an empty shell of something I could once call a person.

I witnessed your body become a corpse in a casket and your soul leaving this Earth.

But I would be lying to myself if I don't admit how suffocating and excruciating painful it felt to share a space with you during this spring. We all knew you were sick for a while already then: me, mom, dad and your girlfriend, Asha.

You and Asha have been fighting a lot before we found you were sick but after I called her one night and told her about you, she made ultra sure to make it to your every appointment and always have a chair reserved next to your bed during your hospitalisations.

You were mad at me at first for telling her. The screaming match between us in the school's cafeteria caught the attention of too many eyes, and Asha who just came to our school to tell you she knows everything and she is so sorry and wants to be part of everything from now on, looked so humiliated. But ultimately she was sad because you rejected her that day.

A few days later she will be showing at our front door at 2 am in pouring rain, rambling about how sorry she truly is for everything and she cannot stand the thought of you dying and she not being there to care for and love you during the finite time you have left.

I was eavesdropping from the staircases: how you told her you are so sorry you lashed out on her lately, how you cannot imagine not having her close before you'll be gone. She burst into tears because she heard you mention death for the first time. You gently pushed her tears away and hugged her shoulders. She sighed with a softened cry and then wrapped her cold, wet hands around your face and kissed you.

I realised I should give you privacy and headed back upstairs into my room.

Asha somehow knew I saw the two of you that night. She mentioned it once while we were waiting for you to come out your too many surgeries.

At your funeral, she hugged me tightly and thanked me for being the one who "brought Mike back to her".

I haven't spoken to Asha since then.

I haven't spoken to you either, Michael. Yes, yes, I know you are basically dead and I cannot literally do it but I meant it by my letters.

I wrote a couple of letters too while you were still alive: during your emergency interventions when the doctors were telling our parents they are doing everything they can but we should be prepared for anything, during the late nights when my parents went home and I remained at the hospital trying to find sleep sitting on those cold, metal uncomfortable chairs, and after we have been told the final bad news.

Wait. What have I even written you the last time? The fog fencing my mind makes it so difficult to remember.

I grab the journal with both hands and do flip the pages until I found what I have engraved into my brain on which of the pages it has been written. Mysteriously I cannot remember its content though.

I start reading and I can feel my eyes turning into watery and salted droplets.

Dear Michael,

Mom, dad and I just have had a meeting with doctor Shiva. He said you are no longer responding to treatment and we should prepare our goodbyes for the next weeks.

Michael, how am I supposed to say goodbye to you? You've been with me my whole life, I cannot phantom a world where you are not part of. I cannot, please, please, Universe, do not let this happen to us. Do not let this happen to my baby brother.

I had to wipe my tears before I could continue the rest. Just a second sooner than my second attempt to keep reading I get a text.

It is from Asha.

Hey you. Care to join me on a walk?

I hesitate a moment as I am definitely not feeling competent to have any social interaction at the moment. My thoughts are all a haze, my clothes are stinky and unwashed, my hair is a tangled mess and Asha reminds me too much of my brother.

Then it clicks with me. Asha is the only connection with my brother besides my parents I have left.

I reply back with shaky fingers

I will not lie, I was about to reject you.

I type and wait anxiously for her reply.

Yep, I assumed you would do that so I already came by. I am in the park across your apartment building.

Wow. I am surprised she would bother herself so much just to get me out of the house.

Asha, you didn't have to.

Day 17 without Michael also marks day 14 since I stopped communicating with any other human being. I stopped using words with my parents too: they tried to force me, went through a mixture of reactions from screaming, begging to accepting I need time.

Come one already, my butt starts to hurt being stuck in this swing.

I chuckled and reply.

Be down at the park in 10 minutes.

I close my journal, secure it in my desk drawer and jump onto my feet.

As promised in 10 minutes I am walking towards Asha's silhouette who is hitting the sand with the edges of her boots.

"There you are!" She says enthusiastically.

"Uh... hey" I talk under my breath for first time in 14 days.

She gives me a sympathetic look. "I can tell it has been monstrous, hasn't it?"

I nodded, tears forming rapidly into my eyes.

Asha walks closer and pulls me into a warm hug. I haven't let anyone touch me since day 2 but right now, with Asha, I felt safe and not alone and not drowning for the first time since March 3rd when we found out Michael has been diagnosed with a very progressive form of carcinoma.