Time Will Tell

"I've got blood all over my hands,
In my eyes,
On the strings.

It's pouring out all over all my favorite things..."

Happy new year.

Though there are few things to be happy about and the slightest tinge of joy brings the guilt of being here while you are not.

Not given the chance.

Stolen.

Yet I get to be here.

I get to enter this new year, this new year that had so much promise and the one that we had so many plans for.

Without you.

I get to be here.

Everyone gets to be here.

Except you.

Last new year's eve we ordered takeout, sat and laughed, watched Schitt's Creek and lamented how neither of us really liked going out much, how a glass of wine and those burgers from Bernie's were better than any other celebration.

Then we laughed, pointed at Spillar's Cove on the NTV scroll, kissed at the moment of midnight and said this year was going to be our year.

How there would be so many big things this year.

Yet there was only one big thing.

"My guilty heart is beating faster,
Every time I try to sing.
It seizes up and then my lungs begin to sting.

Only time will tell..."

I'm bad at this without you.

I feel like a shell, something that has been hollowed out that keeps existing and moving but not feeling.

But you made me feel so much.

This was to be our year and the day you dropped me at the airport the look in your eyes showed so much promise.

Then you sent me our yellow house on Nelder and said you couldn't wait for me to come home so we could make that offer.

So I changed my flight.

"Is it written all over my face?
Should I even feel ashamed?
Or is it that early thirties thing, where some guys just go insane?"

Not early thirties but 40.

"I'm going to make sure 40 is your best year yet," you had exclaimed when I lamented how I did not do well with birthdays and never felt accomplished or comfortable enough to celebrate them like milestones, rather than the stark reminders they were.

My best year yet.

A living hell we could not have ever imagined or written if we had tried.

"And the doctors give us lithium, but we're never quite the same,
Do we retreat to younger years to stop the pain?

Well, only time will tell..."

There is no retreating.

"Do you take all of those pills?" my mother asked last night.

Yes.

Three antidepressants, a muscle relaxer, a nerve blocker and a sleeping pill.

To exist.

And these are days and nights now.

"You say there's not a god?
Goddammit I could use a little faith to keep from crawling right out of my skin..."

I am sick of hearing that all of this was "God's plan."

What god could ever allow you to be stolen from this world, all of the good you did and still wanted to do to be taken.

That void.

Who you were.

What god allows that on his or her watch?

"I think it's adding up,
Staying up blowing tombstone powder with the broken hearted liars again..."

So many liars.

And I have had to build boundaries.

Sometimes growing courage for yourself means saying goodbye to those who feed on ensuring you are taken down.

Those who claimed to care, love and take care of me in your absence have often turned to have nothing but malice.

And I will never understand it.

"Oh I think I've had enough,
All my records feel like yearbook pictures,
There's fondness but I can't remember where,
Where I've been..."

Things are so cold now that I can't remember where.

Where I've been.

Who I've been.

Though I was the happiest and most contented I had ever been with myself.

Accepted.

Loved.

Then gone.

"So I'm sharpening my pen,
Shooting the ink into my skin..."

How fitting that my sleeve was finished on the mark of 9 months of you being stolen.

9 months.

How has it been 9 months when I didn't think I could last 9 days?

Those 9 days, these 9 months, have been a blur.

And I wake every morning in a stupor, amazed that another sunrise is creeping through the window and it is time to start again.

9 months.

The compass for the direction you were going to pick me up.

Our last time, though you were always there when the plane landed.

The pocket watch with the time you were taken.

The candle from your sleeve that you loved so much - reiterating that it indicated how precious time was.

The anchor because you were my anchor.

The "silver thorn on bloody rose" for every time you laughed when I played Don McClean's "Vincent" on repeat and rambled about the beauty of the lyrics.

The "Steve McQueen" lyrics - "'Cause this life is only chains, it's nothing like the colours in my dreams..." that hit a bit harder these days.

Finished.

But nothing is truly finished, I guess.

I need to push forward, learn to live around it, and carry you with me.

And I will.

I will continue to try and fill the void left in the community by your unnecessary exit.

And until my dying day I will try and channel your good and your drive to do what I can.

It can all be taken in an instant, can't it?

So I will take you and who you were with me to drive everything I do this year.

Everything.

In your name.

There is nothing else I can do.

"Baby, here's where we begin..."