Forgive the Green Day but there are only so many instances in life where one can use that line and have it mean something.

If there’s any year where I think all of us really would have liked to see how you would handle things, it’s 2020. This is the closest we’ve ever gotten to the kind of world in which your prepping tendencies would have been incredibly useful and also I’m sure a point of ego boosting for you. I can almost hear the I told you’s and I kind of love that.

This morning, as has somehow become more routine for me, an intrusive thought popped in. One I have a lot, but I wonder more and more one I think maybe you and Jess had too. You were wrong, just so you know. Maybe I am too but that feels less real than being able to say both of you were because I can see it for you…just not for me.

Remember those WWJD bracelets? You don’t even want to know how many times WWAD has come up in conversation. Actually, maybe you would. Nevermind.

I still miss you. I still think of you every day. I really do feel like that’s the right way to live with grief. Letting go and not thinking of the people you lost doesn’t solve anything. Forgetting doesn’t help, facing does. I’m glad I stopped seeing that therapist. My current one would never suggest such a thing. If anything she’d ask what action I was going to take with my feelings. Ok, you feel it, what are you going to do with it?

Today, what we’re going to do is go grab your copy of The Fountainhead that M was so kind to let me have for awhile. I’m going to go through it and grab lines you marked and make a little art with it. Let’s see just how bad at Photoshop I’ve gotten.

Channeling another dead person I so admired today. Let’s see what we do.

“Take your broken heart, and turn it into art.” – Carrie Fisher

I’m not okay. I hope you finally got to be. Miss you, always.

‪I generally don’t mind dreams when you’re in them. Ones where my fucking alarm goes off as we’re hugging each other sobbing…not a fan. ‬

You could say it’s been a banner fucking mail day in my household. I’m not sure if you would share in the sheer joy I’ve held or if you’d make fun of me.

Marty and I jammed a bit, I’ll give these another full listen during some lone time later on.

For what it’s worth, I’m eternally glad we were both at that concert, even if we didn’t know it until years later. Miss you.

There are so many things about grief we don’t talk about. So many tiny elements in our minutes in the after that go under the radar unless you’re also living them. 

There is a connection felt with those who carry loss with them. Our atoms feel each other. 

The stages of grief are bullshit. You’ll feel every one of them on and off from day to day, month to month, year to year. Monday I might accept you’re gone, Tuesday’s denial and Wednesday too, Thursday I’ll be angry at you and Friday I’m back in shock. 

Other people live in a timeline where there are limits for your emotions around your loved one. Fuck that. You feel whatever you need to feel when you need to feel it. You’re not wrong for laughing two days after you lose someone and you’re not wrong for being a blubbering mess years after. 

You’re never the same after you lose someone. Death changes you. Your life becomes a time before/time after split. It sucks. 

Memories you make after get this really fun new layer of guilt with them because inevitably you think at some point ‘man, I wish X was here/could have seen this/done this/existed in this moment’.

There will be an insane amount of pressure from outside forces to move on. You may tell a therapist to fuck off for suggesting that you accept and release a loved one from your daily thoughts. 

You will hurt. Mentally, physically, emotionally. You’re going to feel some shit. You’re going to learn to carry it with you, you’ll earn the strength to do it, but it’s a bitch of a journey. 

Closure is complete bullshit. 

You’re going to find comfort in very unexpected places. Embrace the comfort no matter where it comes from as long as it’s not hurting you or someone else. 

Your last moments with them alive will replay in your mind. A lot.

Life events and milestones will be bittersweet. Places you go will have a tick mark of before and after.

Woot offs are never as fun.

You will find an exorbitant amount of things in day to day life that will remind you of the person you lost. This may lead people to question why the sight of BAWLS suddenly turned you from a smile to looking like someone kicked your puppy. 

Slurpees will never taste as good. Giant pickles and pickled sausages will have more emotional weight than such objects probably should. 

People will play grief Olympics a bit. Let them, you know how you feel, love is not a show you have to prove to anyone. 

You’re going to feel numb sometimes and raw others. 

Meeting new people who have never/will never know your person is weird as hell. You’ll never feel like you describe them effectively or give their personality justice. 

You may buy movies and never watch them purely because they remind you of them. 

Explaining your person died doesn’t get easier. If anything it gets harder to hear ‘I’m sorry’ or worse yet no reaction at all to this information.

Sometimes, you’re just going to need to throw up. 

Anyone that judges your grief process deserves swift removal from your existence. 

What you lose with that person will sting. You will learn things and be pissed you cannot share them. You will hear songs and be pissed they will never hear them. 

You will wish you had taken every ounce of knowledge from them you had and saved it to a million hard drives for safe keeping. You’ll wonder when humans will get cloud backups. You’ll laugh because you know they’d see the security flaws in that and hate that you even suggested it.

Loss is loss. There is not a scale for worth that differs between friends and blood. 

You will blame yourself. You will reply conversations wondering where you went wrong. You will blame others. You will blame yourself for not noticing the mistakes of others. You will blame science, religion, existence itself.

Nothing you do or that you learn about them after will really change the love you hold for the person that died. They earned it. They get to keep it.

Everything really is pretty fucking awful. 

Music will run the gamut between healing and breaking you all over again.

The dead never really leave us completely. The indents in our hearts they built carry on in every tiny thing that reminds us of them.

Traditions will continue or be built from the ashes. You’re so special you get two holidays in my life now. 

You really don’t get over it, you don’t even get used to it. You just learn to survive it. 

You will cherish every hug you ever shared. Especially when it took years before you had them in the first place.

Still waiting on my email from the afterlife. If anyone would figure that out, it’d be you.

You will miss sharing a sink with the year of vanity. 

Concerts will never be the same. 

Cliche bullshit will become amusing.

If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever.

I miss you, Aaron. Always.

I wish the number 4 wasn’t so important to us.

Every time I watch the news I flip between relief and sadness that you aren’t here to experience this world, and the total fuckery we find ourselves in.

I still can’t hear those songs.

I haven’t been able to watch that movie again, every time I try I end up turning it off.

Sometimes, the envy I hold for your non-existence scares even me.

I can’t look at Jason Ritter without thinking of you.

I always half intend to actually go to that Polish festival we found, but I probably never actually will.

Every concert I’ve been to has been a little bit for you.

This year my desire to have you here has been less for me, more because your support was so needed.

Grief is love’s unwillingness to let go.

Today will always knock the wind out of me.

Paint’s Peeling

Miss you

I hate December.

Well fuck.

Here were are again. Another loss. Another blow to the souls of my nearest and dearest and not a god damn thing I can do to patch things up.

I’ve decided anyone that says something along the lines of ‘they’re just a pet/dog/etc’ immediately gets on my ‘bad blood’ list. Fuck you people, you are not capable of love the same way we are then and thus, fuck you.

I don’t get close to many people or things, but I can definitely say that Duke’s fuzzy ‘got food for me’ face has been a comfort, joy and band aid for me at times when I most needed it. Best Neph-pup ever. No one else has ever been so excited to see me they peed. Can’t even count how many times his fuzz caught my tears as well as my pets and snugs. I’m blessed that I got to live with him for a bit, have his happy barks to welcome me no matter if it’d been 10 minutes or 10 months since he’d seen me.

I can’t verbalize this loss any better than I’ve been able to Aaron’s. All I’ve got is dark humor. Joking about it is the only way of opening my mouth without screaming. Still find it funny that my agnostic little brain most likes the idea of a conscious afterlife when I don’t want to let go.

Hope you find Aaron, Duke, and when you do, you’re so excited you pee on his shoes.

Wish you were fucking here. That’s all. That simple. Every day. Always. Forever.

TFW you get physical items with your art on them for your DFA and you’re having ALL.THE.FEELS.

So, I did a thing. A thing I have no idea will be well received or may get me called a giant cunt. I’m hoping for the first one but history tells me it might be that second guy.

I just thought it was a cute, stupid, fitting way to have a thing that ties what’s left of us together. One hoodie at a time. I hope you like this, dude, you’re part of this stupid little group of IT misfts like it or not. He’d want it that way, and I feel like he’d get a laugh out of this while I am a weepy.fucking.mess.

Today is one of those days I wish Facebook had an option to not allow comments. I didn’t say what I did for anyone but you. Maybe it was better put here but there is that little social nuance that comes with having a dead friend. Expectation might have been a better word there but you get me. If I say nothing, am I an asshole? If I say something that has meaning to only a few it invites jokes and questions that are inappropriate and force me to have those conversations of why I posted what I did in the first place. Followed by inevitable apologies and rehashing all the why.

Fuck it, I thought it was an appropriate in thing to do. Just as much as including some binary in my tattoo if I stop dragging my damn feet will be. That’s my little nod to you, to the computery nerds that we are and the people we wanted to be.

The world keeps turning, but it will never be the same. There’s a dark corner of my mind that realizes how easy it is for things to keep spinning after a loss, and that little bitch can sod right the fuck off today. Things do keep spinning but it’s far from easy. Some days are a whisper, some days are ear bleeding decibels to my fragile little heart.

This year in particular there have been moments I’ve just wanted you to exist in a tangible way again. Purely selfish ones, when I wanted an Aaron hug or laugh to stave off the pain of what was going on for a minute. Funny too how many moments I wanted you to exist were perfectly mundane and ordinary, just with a tinge of ‘man, he’d love this’ or ‘I wonder what he’d say about this’.

There’s still some Inigo left in me – I want my friend back you son of a bitch. Always find it amusing I want a ‘god’ to exist just to have something to be mad at that has a face instead of the reality of the nothing.

Well now I’m just thinking about Artax drowning in the mud and fuck balls did not need that today.

All this is to just say that I miss you and I’m annoyed by the expectations and obliviousness of the world as per usual. So, yeah.

Dawned on me that I did actually make all those old letters to you public, for whatever that’s worth. Been awhile, which it really hasn’t considering how many mornings I sing in my car or talk to the air like it’s you. Songs are getting a little bit easier to take but there’s some bands I still instinctively skip. Just can’t take it yet.

Conversations with M lately on all things worldly harken back to many a conversation on the floor in the old apartment in the wee hours. Once you were really my friend too, not just that guy I knew. So often lately I have been wishing so hard that you were in the midst for our conversations, knowing you would have your views and that they’d be fantastic in one way or another.

I remember so clearly that first year after you were gone. How many people would tell me it gets easier and all those little lies we tell ourselves to survive. I nearly fired my therapist for suggesting that I ‘let you go’. That struck me as such an insult at first, but given the complete breakdown I had just had in her office I can understand why that would be the suggestion made. Letting go, accepting is supposed to be end goal of grief I guess. Thing is, that’s not how I roll. Acceptance to me feels like forgetting and I refuse to forget you. I listen to the few voicemails and videos I have of you when I need to hear your laugh. Those are precious commodities to me now in a way I never anticipated. Sometimes just those few words, hearing you say my name is exactly what I need to not throw in the towel.

I’m trying to be brave. I’m trying to live. If not for me, I guess I do it for you. I realize how hopelessly romantic that sounds (not in a creepy way, whatever there’s love in friendship so the fucking cliche works).

Maybe this is the practice I need to start? Just stream of consciousness to you like I do in the car? Better than not writing at all, even if it is useless bullshit.

Miss yer fuckin face, man. Miss yer brain. Miss ye.

Hi friend.

So that was a weird experience I hope I don’t have to repeat for at least a decade. Seeing you in that medicated fog was the one silver lining of it all, that’s for sure. I just wish I could remember more than your face and the feeling of it all…

Well, here we are.

What I said this morning in social media realm wasn’t for me. Truth, yes, but it was the kindest way I could think of to say something and not expose more than needed to be said in such a public realm. This, since really only M even knows it exists. This…this is for me.

Fuck it.

I’m still angry, man. Less now at you for being simply a damaged, stubborn ass of a human being than angry at myself for not being a better human myself. Yet, if I’m really honest, it’s not like I’ve been a better friend since your parting…all my wishful thinking and bursting heartstrings falter when I actually have to take action. Better on the sidelines, Eeyore in the wings observing but never wanting to be a bother to anyone.

I want to be angry with God, but given I’ve never been certain of such a creature even that seems a fruitless venture. Really, if there was a God what could I question aside from why now? Why not when we’re in our 80’s? As if that loss would hurt any less?

Doesn’t matter when someone is taken from you, it only matters that they are taken. The piece still goes missing, the scars still have to form.

I want to help B so badly, but I don’t know that there is anything I can say or do to ease the struggle on that end.

We all just have to make our way I guess. Understand, we’ll go hand in hand but we’ll walk alone in fear.

I hate today. I hate it because for the vast majority of this day I was unconscious. If anything I’m pissed that in that space our consciousness didn’t get to meet one last time. Hearing the words still makes no sense, felt like such a dream. Guess I should be thankful for anesthesia to some extent. I’m not sure I could have coped with being fully conscious for that affair.

There’s got to be a dark joke in my being sterilized the day your light burnt out but I can’t find it just yet…

Sigh, I just miss you. We all miss you.

If ever there could be a sign that the afterlife existed, it’d be you wiring up a connection back here…still keep waiting for my e-mail from the afterlife…part of me will always be.

I’m realizing as this day moves forward that it’s been more than a year since I’ve talked to you in any media format.

I don’t honestly think I spoke to you this day a year ago…or even a few days prior.

I’m still not ready for this…but maybe that’s just how it needs to be.

I’m kind of an asshole for this I guess. My guts broke for you a little bit. Feel like that’s my right/role somehow. To feel for you since you’re…dead.

Sigh, can’t we just skip the next two months? I’m not ready to feel these feels right now.

Well, the e-mail has been sent. Here we go old friend. I figure the best gift I can give to honor you in a way is to finish the damn thing I started you were occasionally up my ass telling me to complete.

Should this actually become a real thing, it’s your doing just as much as mine.

I really wish you were around to be snarky about things with me. Right now, we’d be on a roll I know it.

This right here? This second is when I want to roundhouse kick you in the balls. I really hate reiterating the story…it lives in my head every day as it is, but mostly I really don’t want to have to say it out loud or type it to someone that hasn’t gotten the information shared with them yet.

Now I’m not just a friend, I’m your fucking life editor.

Want to kick you right in the babymaker man…following by a big ass bear hug because I miss you something terrible.

Do you have any idea how aggravating it is to not be able to listen to songs that used to bring you calm and peace?? Notes have become open wounds lately, there’s not a day I don’t have to skip a song or I’ll be a blubbering mess before I reach my destination.

Why am I still so damn angry about all of this? Why am I still so SILENT about all of this?

There’s got to be something said for those who struggle internally but I feel that I am seething far more at the simple fact that on the outside I probably appear to be very bubbly, unintelligent and generally happy when that is the farthest fucking thing from reality.

Beautiful disaster, well played illusion at best. Hide the mayhem so no one makes you go on medication again. Sometimes there are cracks in the vernier and now…he knows. Wants you to get help but you don’t see a point because what if…you’re the one that’s right?

What if you’re not really broken? What if the whatever the fuck they’d DSM you with isn’t really a problem but really a florescent lit window into the harsh light of reality? Maybe it’s really your synapses that got it right?

If that’s the case, why does my skin constantly crawl if I’m around the people that used to feel like home to me. Like they can see this thing devouring me and I have to act like they can’t?

Being consciously aware of how fucking wrong you feel 24/7 isn’t something I’d wish on anyone but I feel it ten fold since you left us. Every conversation drips with mediocrity when I’m screaming inside…every hug feels cheap and void because I keep wondering when it’s going to be the last one I ever get.

I’m still so damn mad…mad at you, mad at us. Why do we all think we’re hiding so well when we really see through each other’s shit more than anyone else? Why’d you think you were so damn clever and why in the FUCK didn’t we call you on it more…but would that really change anything?

Living inside my head in akin to watching a blurred version of a party you weren’t invited to. Everything seems to fit but you and when you try to carve out a spot it just feels fraudulent, ill fitting and itchy.

Spend more time wanting to punch everything into a paste than ever saying a word.

Some days I’m ok…but then…I remember…and I want to talk to you and I can’t…and I want to hit all the things.