Once in a while, amidst all your bad days, you’ll have a good day. A great day even. Make sure you remember those days. Keep them safely in the pockets of your coat or in a jar on your desk because you need to know that there are and will be better days. You need to remember how on those days you felt all warm inside, like you’ve just drunk a hot cup of tea. Like a small fire has ignited inside of you. Hold on to the warmth and never let it go. Just remember that there are places you have not been and things you have not seen. And poems to awe, art to draw, fields to walk through, people to talk to, music to take in, games to win and books to be read. So why, oh why, did you wish to be dead?
You always seemed so at ease, I miss your smile, oh how I miss your voice... They called to tell me you were gone and I heard every goodbye ever said to me, all at once. It was so damn hard but the next day was harder. And I knew with a sinking feeling it was going to get worse and I wasn’t going to be okay for a very long time. Because losing someone isn’t an occasion or an event. It doesn’t just happen once. It happens over and over again. I lose you every time I eat French fries; whenever that one song plays on the radio, or when I go to Antwerp and pass by the restaurant where enjoyed an afternoon together. I lose you every time I think of talking to you, holding you and laughing with you. I go to bed at night and I lose you, when I wish I could dream about seeing you again. And in the morning, when I wake and realize what has happened, I begin to lose you all over again.
I would have given you the one hug you needed for 4 seconds to make you forget the bad days. My voice would have made your nervousness and anxiety feel like calmness. My two eyes would have worked like a key that unlocks all the doors in you. The walls you built up because you were so afraid of feeling this sadness again, and you built them up higher, higher than the Mount Everest and deeper than the Mariana Trench. Hoping that either someone will climb the clouds with you or drown in darkness, closer to hell than anyone else. I would have climbed any wall with you. If only you would have said something, told me you were giving up. I’m so sorry I couldn’t get to you ‘cause I would have followed you anywhere, if only I could’ve saved you... But there’s no way back, so I’ll say goodbye to my almost lover. I miss every little part of you and at the same time I’m so angry, but my heart screams just forgive you.
Sometimes I have those days where all I want to do is go to sleep and dream of a better reality, a reality in which you never left. Jackieboy, come back to me... even as a shadow, even as a dream.