Six Months

Six months is a long time.

In six months, I've had a birthday, made new friends, lost old ones, got a job, finished things I started, and started other things.

In six months, I lost whatever I had left of a childhood. I was never naive about the fact that people die; how could I be? But it isn't meant to be like that.

You know, probably better than anybody, that I can understand simply not wanting to be, anymore. The end. But I didn't do it, due in part to you and the fact that you knew.

Six months ago, you took it that final step. I can't believe that. Tomorrow I'll think of what we did, maybe pull out some of the things that remind me of you – not that I have many, you kept all our photos, and they took them away – and I'll be clichéd and light some candles.

None of this, though, will change that at 1.41, Perth time, it will have been six months.

He called me. Just so you know. I listened when they shut it off, and I couldn't cry. For one thing, I was in class – photography, if you must know, Temov told me off for sitting on the floor looking at nothing. And for another, it didn't hit me that I'd heard you stop being until much later.

I hated you, for a long time. For taking that away from me. For making me know what it was like to be by myself – after all, he wouldn't have left if you hadn't. I hated you for a lot of things. Part of me might still do.

She was right when she said that people who commit suicide leave people behind, and what are they supposed to do? Do you remember I told you about that and I was so angry that she could be so narrow minded, especially after what I'd confided in her, how close I'd been to the edge? But she was right.

You left me behind, and I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Because even though I was, in effect, living two lives – that is, one with you and him and the past, and one everyday when I'd get on a train for half an hour, change trains, and walk into any one of those very different buildings in the same place – it had been so long since I'd had to live the first one minus you, and eventually him, and I was so small when I did live it, that I couldn't remember.

Maybe she was even right about it being cowardly. But the way she said it? That wasn't right. I could cry and scream at you and about you, and hate you as much as I want, but you weren't a coward. You just couldn't, anymore.

I could come on here and call you a twat, and a wanker, and any number of other things that could've been in jest or mean I was unhappy with you. But I never thought that you did it because you were scared. I knew you did it because something happened, and to take it down to the basest parts, you couldn't.

In sixteen hours and forty-one minutes, six months are gone.

It's a long time.

But it's also none at all.

I can still remember how you felt. What colour your eyes were. Your hair. The shampoo you liked. The way you knew what to say, most of the time. The sheer joy at sitting near you when you'd pull out any number of instruments.

I can remember holding you, you holding me, and what sheets were on my bed that day. I remember daring plans to sneak to your house, and subsequently getting caught. I remember staying up all night and talking, numerous times, but especially when you had to sneak back out of my room, climb the fence, and knock on the front door, pretending you'd only just got there.

What scares me most isn't not having you. It's the idea that some day I might forget these things.

Because while six months is both an exceedingly long time and a ridiculously short one, it's long enough to still remember this.

But over time, what happens if the colour of your eyes changes to more of a blue than green? Or if I get that joy sitting next to somebody else playing just one instrument? Or I hold somebody else – don't worry, you never got the chance to know him, I wish you had though…I could do with your opinion – and they hold me, and I like it more? I sneak to somebody else's house? Or other grandiose plans are made and they actually work?

What then?

This is the real low point.

I want to ask you what then, but I'm only asking what then because you aren't here.

You haven't been for six months.

I want you to know that I'm coping. I don't think I hate you anymore. I wish I could change things, but I know that I can't. I think I can deal with that.

Know I'm alright.

But know that I miss you.