{ i guess we're all one phone call from our knees }
i'm bone-tired, soul-tired tonight, but i cannot sleep. i know i haven't posted in a while and i wish i could write a witty post to break the silence... but i can't. instead, i have to spew half-angry, half-heartbroken, entirely painful and wondering words. this is catharsis in its truest form, so if you don't feel like seeing my guts spilled out on this site, i would advise you to stop reading now.
we lost dear Matty yesterday. and suicide is sickening.
in some deluded, hurtful moments in my past, i've wondered what it would feel like to lose someone this way. the pain would be nothing short of incredible, i imagined. the plaguing doubt. the constant wish to go back, to take things back, to change something - anything.
all true.
i wasn't Matty's closest friend by a long shot, but i knew him. of our four BA subjects, we shared three; he lived in one of my brother resses and we would joke around when we ran into one another, which happened fairly regularly.
i remember "it's the beard, isn't it?" and the wisecracks that followed that comment.
i remember that the last thing he ever said to me was,
"INTERVISITING! YOU'RE GOING TO GET HOURS!"
and i will always remember the feeling of falling when i heard. like gravity had gone crazy. like the earth had spun off its axis and was hurtling wildly into the universe.
and i wasn't even that close to him.
i feel physically sick inside when i try to comprehend how his boys, his family, his friends, his Jess must be right now. i hurt so deeply for them. because if i feel like this, and i wasn't even that close to him, then the pain they are feeling must be worse than i could have ever imagined. unbearable, even.
there is another part of me that is just downright furious. with us, with him. with whatever triggered this, with the build-up, the breakdown, the final straw. i am unbelievably angry that this happened, frustrated and desperate for it not to be true. it is too terrible to be real. it could not have really happened...
but it did.
and i can't change that.
and it makes me sick.
please... if you're feeling alone or hopeless - you aren't. there is always a better answer, a new page. this has put a lot of... well... for lack of a better word, stuff in perspective for me. something that it's affirmed is that it is important to surround yourself with people who love you. i'm not saying Matty wasn't - i know that his friends were his brothers, i know that they were close and that they are now hurting like hell. but they have each other. and i know that i have people i can fall back on. i've learnt that it's vital to tell people you love them. it's infinitely important that they know this. love is a shock of air for weary lungs. it is breath. i will venture so far as to say that love is LIFE. i have found that it is okay to hurt. but it is also so necessary for you to share that hurt, not to carry it yourself and let it compound and build up inside you until you can't take it any more. i don't know if that's what happened to Matty, but i know that living that way must be absolute hell. i can imagine how death would seem like a viable escape from the build-up of so much inside. hurting is something we do, but we were never meant to carry it alone. and - i'm going to get preachy, prepare yourselves - even if there aren't people around you to help you bear your burdens (and there always are), we have a Father who is desperate to hold us, to help us, to carry us - a Father who cries, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
i don't know how to end this; i have no meaningful conclusion, no neat ribbon to tie up all the loose ends, to make my package prettier. but suffice it to say that i love you, Matt, and i'm feeling the hurt you couldn't share alive. you were gone far too young; a brilliant soul like yours should have outlasted the lot of us.
[ i thought of you and where you'd gone, and let the world spin madly on ]
