October

Grief, my birthday etc.

It’s been two months since my brother, Jacob has died. This month it’ll be three then next month four and so one and so forth. I often have to remind myself that he is actually gone and that i’m not able to speak to him not because we’re fighting but because he’s dead. There is no way to comfort during grief. It stays with me like a scar or a stain on every item of clothing I have. It’s a reek that engulfs every room I walk into. No one wants to touch it or acknowledge it so I carry the weight of my pain all by myself which, is normal.

Jacob didn’t believe in heaven or God. He was baptized by our aunt though, it was more as a means to give her comfort than to be accepted in the pearly gates of heaven. He told me once however, that he was beginning to believe in God for all the suffering he had put him though. I don’t know what to believe in anymore as religion has done the opposite of comfort. I just feel angry and scared. I am angry that if God existed then why would he make Jacob get sick and suffer up until his death. And I am scared because what if there is nothing after this life and so my brother had to spend his last minutes alive completely afraid to be embraced by darkness. If he is someplace than is he ok? Is he scared? Does he miss me as much as I miss him? Does he wish he could talk to me and get ice cream? Or is it all just really nothing?

I don’t feel him with me. I haven’t dreamt of him. There has been no moment of being wronged that there is an afterlife or that Jacob is ok on the other side. When he died I just felt this emptiness as if my heart was scooped out of my chest and stomped. I left that hospital at two in the morning having lost my heart and my purpose. Now, I just go through the motions of my days in complete disbelief, my loneliness taking up space. What is the point of living when I don’t have Jacob to see and talk too? Why do I get to keep getting older when he has to stay young? There is so much guilt for being the one who gets to live and he doesn’t.

Next week I’ll be 31. I don’t feel like celebrating because I don’t feel like it’s necessary. I don’t have my brother to celebrate it with me. I won’t be getting a text or a call wishing me a Happy Birthday and that he loves me. It’s confusing to think that it’s October to everyone but to me I am still stuck in late July. I am still at the spot where I had my heart broken and my world shattered.

I can’t hide my grief. It’s too much fucking work but, I know that not everyone wants to be around that so I just isolate. I don’t talk to anyone outside of my work bubble and when I go out I tend to do it alone. I hate driving and I hate being at home because everything reminds me of Jacob. No place is safe as I can just in a blimp of a second think, Jacob is gone, and I get upset. Last Friday I wanted ice cream but most importantly, I wanted to text Jacob asking if he wanted to come with me. Don’t even ask me if I want to walk through the Criterion section at Barnes & Noble. Now, I am just completely alone in life.

I don’t think I am ever going to love someone as unconditional as my brother. I tried and it never works. It gets taken for granted, wasted and then I am left upset because I have so much love to give but no one nurtures it, feeds it the way it should be fed. Jacob wasn’t perfect and he could be mean and selfish but, my love for him has been my weak spot. I would stop everything for him if he needed me. I did that so many times and I don’t regret it. I don’t regret loving people even if they hurt me. I feel stupid, yes. Right now as I isolate and suffer I keep wishing to be loved the way I love, to be missed the way I miss but most of all, I want to know that my brother is someplace that’s warm and peaceful and he’s ok. I just want to believe that after all this darkness that there is light.