It helps me not miss you so much. No, that's not true -- it just helps me not think about missing you so much. When I have four hundred things to do and deadlines with people prodding me to meet them, I can't hear the quiet lapping of these grief waves against the corners of my mind.
I feel guilty. That's a theme for me. My baby brother died, and part of me wonders if more effort on my part could have kept you alive. Not in the "be responsible for someone else's actions" sense, because we all know that doesn't work. I mean it in the "perhaps if I had been less self-involved for so long then his life might have taken a different trajectory" sense. The same way I feel guilty about A--'s troubles for the past few years.
I haven't had a whole lot of breaking-down moments since you died because I just can't do that. I can't crumble because I won't be able to stand again, so I just keep cracking and pressing forward, hoping the cracks heal quickly enough to keep me mostly together as I move. I had one melt-down last week, just thinking about the most random thing about you. I don't even remember what it was anymore -- just something you said once or something so innocuous that the force of the grief shocked me.
And now those images, the ones I had mostly chased out of my mind, are back again, pounding against the back of my eyes, sinking into my dreams with me so that nothing else can get in during those twilight hours. I can't get rid of them, can't replace them with smiling and happy and silly you, can't change the channel and recall dominoes and spades and goofing off at the IGA and walking to the mall 20-deep and scary to those who couldn't tell we were just a bunch of insecure kids.
I miss you. I miss her. I regret so much.
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