This photo was taken two weeks before my brother Cam killed himself. He's the cool one, sitting in the centre with sunnies on his head with his stupid beautiful smile wearing that stupid awesome t-shirt that I now have in my bedside table because he didn't wash it before he died. I don't know who these people are in this photo. It was obviously somebodies 28th birthday, maybe the guy with the beard and cap? Happy birthday guy. Hope your life is going well, with your red toaster. When my brother turned 28 I told him "CAM! WELCOME TO YOUR SATURN RETURN! It's full of big things and goes for a few years. It's gonna be AWESOME." He laughed at me, like he always did, said well Eed it's about fucking time.
Nobody in this picture knew that Cam was going back to his flat containing a full-face gas mask and nitrogen tank. Just waiting there, objects in his space. I imagine him walking around them as he made some kind of shit to eat. Watched TV. Played his x-box. Drove to work. Got home. Felt horrendous. Thinking, wondering, deciding. I mean, he LOOKS happy and normal enough in that picture, don't you think? He's beautiful.
This morning I got Rocco to kiss me on my cheek. "Right there." I pointed. He got out of the car and I sat there watching him walk happily into school. Stricken, I was literally stricken with grief. That's why they call it grief-stricken. Suddenly remembering all the times I'd get Cam to kiss my cheek. First he'd smooth the soil, kiss the seed in, then motion a huge flower growing out of my cheek. We called it "planting kisses."
Life is unbearable, really. Every morning I wake up and have to go about my day killing all the things in me that want to kill me until it's like, 11.54pm and I got it sorted! But then I have to go to bed and have nightmares and wake up and go about my day killing all the things in me that want to kill me.
It's like one day the sun saw the truth and said "Fuck this shit." And just fell from the place it was supposed to be, straight out of the sky. But you're always supposed to be there, SUN. And I'm the moon. Stranded cold and tired, I'm the fucking moon with a whole lot less love. But Cam wasn't the sun he wasn't even my son and who the hell was supposed to revolve around who anyway? And the more life goes on without him? The more confusing and dark it feels. My brain goes into overdrive. Nothing and nobody can hurt me, anymore, ever again. You wanna set me on fire? I'm already burning, bitch. Fuck you.
The letters that people have written to me in the past month have been incredibly touching, and personal. Telling me about you - thank you. One simply said:
"Dear Eden, I am so sorry that your Cam lost hope."
The truth. Goddamit.
So. Life will be over in a blink of an eye. I am not the only one going through hard things, even though it feels like it. I lost my friend, my most dearest, special friend in the whole world. Who can I laugh about choads with? Who can I compare pants-shitting stories with? Our hours-long conversations? OUR LOVE. Who's going to come good eventually and overcome his problems and heartsad and be all triumphant in the end? Not Cam, that's fucking who.
I'm so tired and lonely. A day last week was the most traumatic and awful day in the whole of the fallout of my brothers death and I can't even bear writing it out.
So I talk to him. Smash his cups. "THEY WERE UGLY CUPS CAM YOU CHOSE UGLY CUPS." Give his Ikea plates to Vinnies. I hide. Weep from the depths. Know I'll never be over it. Know he never knew for one second the pain this would cause. Every single thing I do, every second of the day, I'm in pain.
Sometimes I start google chats with him and it rings but doesn't pick up and a message comes up:
"Cameron is offline right now. When he is back online, he will get this message."
It's so reassuring.
I wait. I will wait for him until the numbers fall off all the clocks and the world freezes over and I turn into bones I will wait.
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Write to be understood, speak to be heard. - Lawrence Powell