‘Poco Complex’
I hate this taste in my mouth Of a couple dozen state cigarettes in a few short days. I’ve never been one for self harm, but I suppose this is a more subtle form of the matter, arguably of a higher caliber. It just feels better than crying at this point. I’ve been laughing through my nose with no trace of a smile. Just out of habit of politely responding to people’s jokes. I always found the thought of people laughing without smiling hilarious. But even self acknowledgment of me doing this doesn’t get a grin. I’ve been sobbing into the shoulders of dear friends and empathetic coworkers. Going against the wishes that I shouldn’t be grieving at home in my room. Yet here I am. One of my best friends died a couple of days ago. Went the way that I fear the most as a matter of fact. At work. Not even because there is a lot of scary machinery that can crush our fragile meat vehicles so quickly that the DMT released in your brain in the event of death can console you from the ultimate and final traumatic moment of your life, but because dying at work seems like such a meaningless way to go. Trading the best hours of your days for pieces of paper, or in Canada’s case a weird plastic, on the front bearing faces of people you’ve never met so you can take a girl out to a nice dinner and hopefully fuck her to music you like. He worked at Tim Horton’s. He was standing on a table when his eyes rolled into the back of his head, for reasons we’ll have to wait for an autopsy to explain, and hit his head on a metal table and died later in the hospital by cause of blunt force trauma to the domeski. Most likely working minimum wage. Worst fear. My dad dated his mom, for a long time we were practically brothers. They met at a rehabilitation center. If they had stuck to their guns and stayed clean maybe circumstances would have been different. Butterfly effect and all that. But their relationship remained destructive in all sorts of ways. The continuation of drug use and beating the shit out of each other wasn’t going anywhere. I remember her jumping on his back because she thought he took cigarette money or something like that from her wallet. I also remember seeing photos of the distinctive triangle shaped cut on the bridge of her nose which I can imagine took quite a few heated punches. Yet they stayed together for a couple more years and my mom would continue to pick me and my dear friend up after the cops would take him away (My Fajah). I couldn’t have been more than 7 years old during all of this. Eventually my mom had enough and decided to remove me from the situation permanently. She said it was a decision made to keep me safe and keep me from seeing any more of the hundred other things I’ve seen that no one should have to. Apparently my friend sent her a nasty email on the matter, but I’ve been certain for years that it was his mother. And so was my mom. She forbid me from talking to him saying that a friendship with him was unhealthy because he was a product of his environment, being her only child with no escape from the toxic upbringing which fortunately for me, I had in the form of mama dearest. “There’s just plenty of things you don’t know and don’t need to know.” Yeah, but I’m not a fucking idiot. I know what’s up. I always did. All it did was strengthen the bond, mum. We went through that whole however many year debacle together. The severed contact did not help. In fact I’m up to my ass in regret right now for all those years we could have spent together thank you very much. I just got off the phone with her about an hour ago and told her that I hold her somewhat accountable for that, but eventually I know I’ll get over that. Pain will make you do and say crazy things. All I know is that in many ways, regret is stronger than gratitude.Which is why your funeral is going to be a rough one. She gave her reasoning and it was genuine and passionate. She really only did it in the best interest of my safety, but I can’t help but hold this distaste. Much like the cigarettes. We always said we’d never smoke cause it smelled gross, was a waste of money and will kill you. So here I sit with that information. Alive, for some reason. He was a very healthy dude. His love for soccer was parallel to my autistic level obsession with music. I’m not wallowing and screaming “why couldn’t it have been me?!” But genuinely wondering how it wasn’t. I drink although not always in copious amounts, but pretty much every day. I don’t exercise very often although my job can be sometimes physically demanding which is good enough.. I guess. But seriously.. how wasn’t it me? I’m going to miss that dude like crazy. Knowing that I’ll never be able to apologize for not being a good friend kills me. In that case, I can hold no one accountable but myself. I can already feel the wound healing though. I think I might even be finished with the water works. My dear friend, I know you won’t read this because you are in fact, diseased. But in case there is an afterlife and you’re sitting here with me watching me type this, stop because it’s seriously creeping me the fuck out. Or maybe if we are all connected to this weird sort of mother-ship like consciousness hive-mind and you’re somehow able to read this through my eyes.. OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT, I love you my brotha. There’s a lot of things I won’t be able to do or see without thinking about you. Playing Star Wars or Max Payne games, soccer, awful long blond mop tops, hockey cards, Runescape, Nerf guns, the list goes on and on. I know I’ll get to a point someday, hopefully soon, where I’ll come across these things and you’ll come into mind and I’ll smile rather than shed a tear. It makes me wonder if you ever heard the song Grace by Jeff Buckley. The song itself is a death prayer. “We’ll drink a bit of wine/We both might go tomorrow.” “I’m not afraid to go/But it goes so slow.” That last line always gets me. As far as we know we’re the only species that acknowledges our imminent death. Life can be beautiful, but Jeff is right. It fucking draaaags. It almost makes me envious of you that it probably happened so quickly you don’t know what hit you. Because it’s not the fear of death itself that gets me, it’s the fear of my life ending in pain. Maybe I’ll die of cancer because it’s apparent at this point that it’s hereditary in my genes or one day I’ll just forget to look both ways like I was told when I was knee high to a grass hopper. Maybe I’ll see you, maybe I won’t. But bear with me because I’m about to quote a Frank Ocean song. Despite all of the bullshit we went through, the times when we beat the shit out of each other and called each other every name in the book, “I’ve loved the good times here.” Goodbye, my friend. -j
