Entwined

And so the day came when my exams were over, and my mind truly had time to reflect and be undistracted. I find myself habitually reaching to talk to him quite often. When something funny happens, when I have a story to tell, when I could use comfort or have it to offer. But he's not there.

Flashes of literature and movies go through my head a lot. Epic writings and acting that have depicted great sorrow. And I find myself wondering whether anyone ever truly managed to communicate what grief really feels like. Whether it's for a dead loved one, for a breakup, a lost child or something else all together. I wonder if there was ever a piece of work made that encapsules the magnitude of it.

I think of Romeo and Juliet, tragic, yet beautiful. Of Buffy being pulled out of Heaven, and the guilt of those who loved her for doing it. I'm reading the Infernal Devices trilogy and the loss and hopelessness of the severed bond of a parabatai circles my brain. I watch Gilmore Girls and see the utter devastation of a heart, when your great love is coming apart in your hands. Patrick Melrose falling apart as his parental attachments are torn and twisted before him.

And none of it is quite what I feel. But I see bits of it everywhere. The need to communicate the story of losing something, someone, in some way, too dear and precious to cope with not having anymore.

I don't know how such a strong bond was forged in such a short time. But it feels to me unbreakable. Like nothing could ever hope to compare or challenge it. And I don't say that lightly. I had my moment of Heaven. Of being at complete peace and in balance with myself and my surroundings, being loved for me, unconditionally, accepted, flaws appreciated, and I got to see another human bloom like a garden in spring, from me returning those feelings. That's my Heaven. My little glimpse of it.

At Copenhell, I went to a concert my friends wanted to see, and I sat on the hill, in the very back, feeling as much as hearing the music wash over me. The one-time-familiar feeling of the bass thundering through me, thumping like the echo of a heartbeat. And I had a moment, a minute, it could have been a lifetime, of complete clarity. I found, for just a moment of my life, someone who loved me in the way that I define love. If you gave me years to describe it, I still wouldn't be able to, there would be too many words, but he understood each of them, even unspoken. Like I invented a language and he spoke it, without ever being taught. I don't know how to let go of that.

I wanted that heartbeat in the bass to be his. Thumping so clearly it reverberated in the air around me. And I wonder if I'll always feel that way. Like the wind is his breath on my skin, like the soft caress of the blankets when I move in bed at night is his gentle touch. Like the thunder is the rumble of his voice, or like any kind of warmth is his soul touching mine. Maybe I'm seeing and feeling him everywhere, like the thoughts about grief is in every story I hear. Maybe I'm putting him there.

But I'm quite sure, if I am, that it's because I can't imagine a life without him. Our souls touched. And when they did, mine was branded for life.

I miss him. So very much.