38 days.

38 days. The worst 38 days of my entire existence. Sometimes I want to share my most disturbing and difficult thoughts so that everyone can have a glimpse of how hard this is, but it wouldn’t help, even if I was super articulate, I could never do these feelings justice by trying to use something as feeble as words to describe them. And I’ve realised it also makes people feel uncomfortable. I’m not in a place where I’m concerned of that though. Sometimes I don’t want to share, with anyone, sometimes I want the world to know. Sometimes I feel like the world is forgetting you and I can’t comprehend that. I will be brutally open and honest and some people will listen and some people won’t, I don’t think that matters to me. Nothing much matters to me. Today I walked your sister to the school bus. She complained about forgetting her new reading book, Jesus, I thought, it’s a book made out of paper, does it matter. But it mattered to her. ‘It’s only a book, you can bring it tomorrow’. I thought about all the times I had played down issues that you might have raised. Things that mattered to you. Did I handle them sensitivity enough? I think about you at this age while I am with her and I find that difficult. I think about all the ways in which I might’ve been able to alter your path if I’d have brought you up differently. I thought about how many times we’ve walked down this road. I thought about what you could be doing on this day. Then a woman in her garden shouted to us ‘ooh somebody doesn’t look happy’. Fuck off, I thought. A few houses down someone was screaming and swearing at their kids. I hated that these people weren’t the ones going through this. I would never dream of speaking to my kids like this. Arseholes. A woman at the bus stop told me she’d been to look up the road for us because we were late, she told me who else was late, that she’d been playing with her grandkids this morning on the iPad. Fuck off and so what. I didn’t say anything back but she kept on talking. I waved the bus off and thought about how I’ll never wave to you again. Or hug you. I thought about that time you hugged me so hard that I went to the doctors and had bruised ribs and had to sleep sitting up for a week. I thought about how you always said I had no walking etiquette and I would just meander all over the place. I thought about the times we had been out walking places and wished I had suggested this more. I thought about how you would never go for a walk again and I thought about all the things you would never see. I remembered all kinds of things and thoughts. Mostly I thought about how you aren’t here and never will be. That thought runs alongside all the others, all the time. I thought about why you’re not here and how you left. I thought about some old ‘why’s’ and ‘what ifs’ and some new ones came too. I think about how much you look like me and that I won’t see your face again or see how you grow into a man. I don’t think I’ll be able to look in a mirror again. This was 15 minutes. Minutes feel much longer than they did before. The loudness of my thoughts is something else. That makes me think of you and your thoughts and what they must’ve been…here we go for the next 23 hours and 45 minutes. This was a very tame 15 minutes, it changes a lot, but all normal apparently, I hate the word normal.