This is the twelfth day like this

[cosmolinguist]

One of the things I cried about after Chris died was that I wouldn't always be crying.

I knew I'd get better, that life is demanding (especially when you're planning to get married and emigrate in less than two months), that people are resilient and that time, while not healing all wounds, eventually keeps them from being so raw.

I feel like today is one of those days I was crying for then. Today was the unimaginably far-future then, the kind of timescale where I knew I'd be doing what I do now: pouring a whiskey and feeling wistful and otherwise just trying to get through my day.

They all start to blur together, and honestly my mind doesn't make very good memories when I am very depressed. Will I remember this in future or will it be mistaken with other years or fall out of my memory all together?

I hate crying and I am uncomfortable when a fuss is made of me, but I am also uncomfortable if I succeed too well at being normal. I know it's silly but normal feels like I don't remember, I don't still care, I don't still miss him.

I always say I don't mind the anniversary so much because he's no more gone on this day than any other. Yet it's particularly hard for my mom, so by proxy thanks to my silent fretting I still feel the date looming in my calendar. I still pour myself a drink of whatever nice alcohol is in the house. I still mention it on social media, to friends I'm mad never got to meet him. Nobody knows who he is for thousands of miles and yet, here I am. "Gaslighting" is too serious a word but it feels helpless in some similar way to be talking about something desperately important to you but which there are no words to convey: I had a brother. He was named Chris. He was twenty-one. My family and my life will never feel right any more without him.

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[cosmolinguist]

Of course, I say I don't cry any more but it has only been a couple of weeks since I cried about this. I was walking past a stall at the Christmas market that did personalized Christmas ornaments. I've gotten a lot of these for my parents because they love stuff like that, so I'll get Mom and Dad written on a wooden star or snowman or whatever (with careful instructions that it must say "Mom" and not "Mum") and the year. These were fancier though: plastic molded shapes like a bunch of little penguins or Santas or stockings hanging from a fireplace. There are "just engaged" and "baby's first Christmas" and all sorts of variations. But it was these family ones, with "mummy" and "daddy" and a row of little English names. Exactly the kind of twee stuff my parents would eat up. Except, of course, that there was no way I could get one with my brother's name on it next to mine like so many things had been all through our childhoods...and it'd be just as unthinkable to get one without my brother's name on it.

("It's like the toothbrushes," Andrew said when I told him about it, because we'd just watched that episode of The Good Place the night before. At the time I'd pointed at the screena and said "that's me" but I didn't think I'd confirm it so soon!)

[alatefeline]

*hugs offered*

[alatefeline]

It does not have to be okay.

I am so sorry.

It is a hard thing that time just keeps on damn well moving. No matter what. For some things it feels like it shouldn't.

I'll drink a toast to your brother tonight. In the best of all possible worlds, he and all those loved others we - people - have lost would be with us.

[cosmolinguist]

Thank you so much. <3

[kaberett]

I bear witness.

[cosmolinguist]

<3

[worlds_of_smoke]

It's hard to know that life moves on, even after your heart's been broken.

I know it's silly but normal feels like I don't remember, I don't still care, I don't still miss him.

No, I don't think that's silly at all.

It takes a lot to make me cry. I'm just not a crier. I absolutely lost it when they found Joe's body and I cried at the funeral. I've cried a few more times, but.. I kind of feel like I'm failing him because I can go on as if things are normal. I mean, it's not even been 2 years and, while I still have times where it feels like someone's ripping my heart apart, I also have a lot more time where I can function. I mean, a lot of times that's because I have to function. But still. I feel like I should be more torn apart than I am.

[cosmolinguist]

I tell myself that the best way I can show how valuable my brother's life was is to live my own the best I can. And I know my incapacitating grief didn't help me, him, or anyone else, though if course there are limits to how well logic works on these kinds of emotional reactions.

[silveradept]

His memory lives in in you. I'm glad you have shared him with us, so that we may remember, too.

[cosmolinguist]

Thank you. Remembering is the best gift people can give me when I'm like this.

[barakta]

*reads quietly*

[sfred]

<3