Monday, November 20th, 2016
Alternate universe idea: you’re still alive, Theo.
But I don’t live in that universe. I live in the real world where you’re having an open-casket funeral this morning.
Hold up; I’m getting ahead of myself. I always do this.
I’m sorry you haven’t heard from me for seven days. I missed talking to you, believe me, but I’m still really pissed because you swore you would never die and yet here we are. I’m breaking my silence because I have to get this off my chest while you’re listening: it only hurts so much because this isn’t the first promise you’ve broken.
I’ll break down the details of this promise again since you made it last August. Trust me when I say I’m not talking down to you as I recall this memory, and many others, in great detail. I doubt it’ll even surprise you since we always joked about how your brain worked in funny ways. You knew enough meaningless trivia to fill notebooks, but you occasionally slipped on the bigger things, like my birthday this year (May 17th, not the 18th) and the night classes you could never keep straight even though I got you a cool planner with zombies on the cover (which you-know-who probably forced you to throw out). I just want you to remember things the way I do. And if bringing up the past annoys you now—as I know it did during your recent relationship—know that I’m sorry, but please don’t be mad at me for reliving all of it. History is all you left me.
We made promises to each other on the day I broke up with you so you could do your thing out there in Santa Monica without me holding you back from a different time zone. Some of those promises took bad turns but weren’t broken, like when I said I’d never hate you even though you gave me four good reasons to, or the fact that you never stopped being my friend even when your boyfriend asked you to. But on the day we were walking to the post office with Wade to ship your boxes to California, you walked backward into the street and almost got hit by a car. I saw our future—our endgame to find our way back to each other when the time was right, no matter what—splinter in that moment, and I made you promise to always take care of yourself and never die.
“I’ll never die,” you said as you hugged me.
If there was a promise you were allowed to break, it wasn’t that one, no matter how impossible it actually was. I told you to live forever, and you didn’t listen so I stopped talking to you. But your funeral begins in an hour, and I have to approach your casket to say goodbye to you.
Except it’s not going to be goodbye.
I’ll always have you here listening. But being face-to-face with you for the first time since July and the last time ever is going to be painful and impossible, especially given the unwanted company.
Let’s leave his name out of my mouth as long as possible this morning, okay? If I’m going to have any chance of getting through today, tomorrow, and all the days that follow, I think I need to go back to the start where we were two boys bonding over jigsaw puzzles, and later falling in love.
It’s what comes after you fell out of love with me where it all goes wrong. It’s what comes after we broke up that’s making me so nervous. Now you can see me, wherever you are. I know you’re there, and I know you’re watching me, tuned in to my life to piece everything together yourself. It’s not just the shameful things I’ve done that are driving me crazy, Theo. It’s knowing I’m not done yet.