Vulnerability.

It’s important to note, the journey and stages of grief are not linear. Neither is this. Neither am I. True turbulent chaos is not an aspiration…just reality.

During a conversation this evening I was reminded that next week is Mental Health Awareness Week. I cracked a joke and suggested that given I’ve reached peak mental illness, I could do a Q&A at work. So self-effacing dark humour continues to be my armour. Somethings do never change.

But it immediately made me think of you. I was 19 when we met. Is that right? I thought I’d write about you and share it with someone I love, as an expression of complete vulnerability. So now I’m lying in bed writing this – a love letter to you. A lament.

And fuck, do you know what? I just looked at the date. (Un)happy anniversary, girl with the radio in her head, with the leopard print eyes. I knew there had to be a reason I’d spent the day vibrating, breathless and feeling like I’d been kicked in the solar plexus beyond the push and pull of waves I’ve been drowning in. I’m still learning to swim, all flailing limbs and desperate gasping. They haven’t sunk this ship yet, I’m sure you’ve been pleased to observe. My anchor is twisted and heavy with barnacles, seaweed and other detritus that seems hellbent of tipping the keel until it hits the ocean floor…but fuck it. I learned to be my own skipper. It’s been rough because if I’m honest, I’m no captain. But the seas have been navigated – hardly elegantly, but we’re yet to capsize. Go, me – right?

So many years have passed now, it’s hard to remember things accurately. I worry sometimes that the recesses of my brain will eventually forget how to conjure your face from the deep because of my failing, ageing memory…but it hasn’t happened yet.

I was 21 when you died. That year in December, I turned 22. Ethan turned 1 that October, too young to even remember how alabaster your skin was, how you smelt after the rainfall, how your Ween tattoo looked like it was the imprint of a leftover club entry stamp on the inside of your wrist.

In September I sat in a Kodak kiosk inside St Luke’s mall and cried as I asked the store clerk for help changing the aspect ratio on a self-service print machine from 6×4 to a larger format. That poor store clerk, he looked so bewildered when he saw my lip quiver and my chest heave. I had to explain I’msosorrymybestfrienddiedandthesepicturesareofher…just like that. Without punctuation, no care, an exaltation. I really wanted your parents to have the pictures of you playing guitar on the deck of the Basque St flat (surely that place was condemned after you moved back in with mum and dad?), and of you and Garrett sitting on the stairs of his apartment building on Queen St. Right before I’d taken that picture, you’d come barrelling down the hill wearing the worst fitting, synthetic wig that was teased to all hell by your Howe St flatmate…the fledgling Drag Queen? I wonder what happened to them. All of them…actually, that’s a lie. I don’t think about any of them at all. Just, you. And Robyn, Clive, Alice…no, not Alice now. Elliot? I’m not sure, their name is fluid. I’m rolling with it but I can’t check my Instagram account because I deactivated it. Selfishly I want to keep some things for myself…that and I can’t bear to see how wonderful life is. I’ve wrapped myself in the safety of this old building, over a century indeed and a stones throw from the house you took your last breath in. I can see it I swear if I stand on my toes and stretch out my neck from my bedroom balcony. But I don’t look.

Sixteen fucking years I’ve counted out and time doesn’t heal a fucking thing. All it means is distance from a time where I sustained a wound that ripped a gash into my soul that never healed. Or it did, but into gnarled tissue, silvered and delicate like the Caesarian scar slashed across my entire torso, easily torn with the slightest wrong movement.

2006 was the year I stood beside you, held your hand and said goodbye to Jono. We drank cups of tea from those weird brown coffee cups they have in every teachers lounge and balled our hands into fists as Eddie wailed profusely and the funeral home played Yanni as the casket was wheeled into place in the chapel. 2006 was the year my baby collected a single year and I haphazardly raised him with the help of an army of lesbians and tried to make a family with a man who hated me and treated me with disdain in equal measures.

2006 was the year I met my now husband. We started a band, he helped me flee a toxic living situation and I learned to drive stick.

2006 was the year I begged my best friends parents for forgiveness as I confessed our collected sins, sat with her mum as she read and digested the coroners reports, the toxicology report on my lunch break.

2006 was the year my best friend died, my colleague died, HR sent a mass email to let everyone know and Wayne and AnnMarie watched as I turned into a vision, a horror, a waking fucking nightmare.

2006 was the year I forgot you fucking died and called your mobile to ask if you wanted to go to the fucking mall on a Thursday night. Your mum saw my call and asked if I called to hear your voicemail. I lied and said yes. I hung up after 4 rings when my lizard brain kicked in and said, “She died, remember you idiot?”.

I lied because I couldn’t bear to tell the truth. I forgot? What the fuck is wrong with me?!

She had the number disconnected after that call.

The night after you died, Brodie gently sang songs to me and played the guitar. Tyler, Ariana and Paulene clawed desperately at my pieces as they fell apart and tried to put them back together in places they would never ever fit again.

2006 was the year my best friend died.

2006 was the year my best friend died.

2006 was the year my best friend died.

Do you hear me? I miss you.