I spend so much time hoping that dead people really do turn into ghosts and will come back and visit/haunt me. Sometimes I think that if they are ghosts I’d be really hurt that they haven’t been hanging out on my bed, but sometimes I just hope it’s because they are really busy haunting the fuck out of their rapists. 

Today is 6 months since Carly’s death in Australia, and 9 months since Stef’s death here. Half way around the sun and a new-born baby. 

Nine months is how long it takes to bring a human to life. I wish nine months was long enough to make me feel alive again.

There is nothing, on or off this planet that I wouldn’t give to have them back.

My sisters, my lovers, my wives, mi amigos, you are all that I need. 

It is Stef’s birthday today, she would have been 28 and would have made it through the most dangerous year for rock stars, but she didn’t and now I can’t even do anything to help make this a happy birthday for her. I can’t even tell her how glad I am that she was born. But I am, I’m so glad she came into this world 28 years ago, I just wish she could have stayed in it longer. No matter how much this loss hurts I am so lucky for all the years I got to spend with her in my life. I can’t help but regret all the time I wasted sleeping.

But it has been a long and hard road learning this lesson, that I am and forever will be entirely fucking alone on this rock.

I am leaving the country in four days and have not wrapped up the loose ends that comprise my life here at all. I haven’t even started packing my room up for someone else to move in. I know that I am not well enough to stay here but what if I am not well enough to go? I have been hiding in this cave of my bedroom for 8 months and now I am flinging myself far away from it.. what if I just end up spending 3 months sobbing quietly in the corner of the greyhound station?

Clearly I am having last minute panic.

It’s so hard not to feel angry at the world all the time.

It’s so strange to lose someone you never met after losing the ones you spent all your time with. It’s so strange to lose someone.

And then I woke up to the realisation that it’s actually far too late for that, and I feel like that was news to me. She’s already dead but my heart still doesn’t know. I don’t know if I have actually been at all capable of feeling real feelings or genuinely emotionally responding to anything at all since Stef died. I’m just going through the motions.

I keep telling people that I’m not here, I’m only a hologram; they think that it’s a joke but I am not so sure.

I carry myself like an ambulance with someone dead inside, still thinking I might get there in time.

So in case it hasn’t been clear to anyone, I accidentally fell in love and got my feelings hurt. This feels so much like grief I don’t know how to make sense of it. Nothing is like before. I just keep crying all over the furniture.

Today I went to the street where Stef lived when I first met her and went looking for the house we first had sex in. The street and all the houses had changed so much it was hard to work out which one it was. Her curtains were missing from where her bedroom used to be. She was missing.

Then I went to the abandoned skate rink around the corner that she (and later, Carly) would often break into. All the windows were boarded up and I didn’t even have a crow bar, but Stef would have. She always did, back then. I felt like if I could just get inside I would find them both there, find some secret message they left for me, telling me how to find them now. But I couldn’t get in, so I just sat against the wall smoking cigarettes while my heart tried to escape my ribcage.

I talked to Stef while I was walking, out loud and into the air, tears in my eyes and voice shaking to no one. I don’t know if she can see me or hear me or if she exists in any form any more. If you had asked me half a year ago I would have told you that she definitely doesn’t, that her body has become ashes and she no longer exists in any form other than a memory, but now I’m not so sure. I want so badly to believe that she is still somewhere, watching me; that all of the things I am doing to try to make her proud count for something. I want the fact that I’m staying alive to mean something, and if she doesn’t know I’m doing it then I can’t convince myself that it does. Everything I have ever done has been about Stef, for her, the life story I have been writing is a love poem for her. I thought it wasn’t ready yet. I was working so hard to become the person I thought she wanted me to be that I wasn’t there when she needed me just as I was. I wish I knew. I could make this better now, I know I could, but making anything better just doesn’t count for much any more if it is too late to give it to her. I want so badly to believe that she is somewhere, in some form, that she can see and hear me now and know how deeply I love her and could never find the words to explain with my shaking voice.

If I thought Stef and Carly were somewhere and that I could be with them there, I would have left this place long ago. If Stef is anywhere that is exactly where I want to be. This is really hard because people have taken this time of tragedy to talk a lot to me about God, about heaven, about all these things that I really want to believe right now. I know they would both laugh at me for all of this. It is a trap in a way I can’t explain. I can’t give up what I believe in because I am trying to make them proud, I am trying to prove to them that it is possible for us to live through this; but it is only by giving up what I believe in and subscribing to an opposing set of beliefs that I can actually believe that they can see or feel any of this. This is a trap and I am struck in it. I never dreamed of heaven much until they put her in the ground but it’s all that I’m thinking about now.

I can’t seem to get past this bargaining stage. I can’t stop the feeling that if I just do the right thing or say the right thing or learn the lesson I am supposed to learn from all this that she will come back to me. That if I just go to the right place or listen to the wind coming through the right window at the right angle, I will hear her voice and she will tell me where to go from here. I am looking for her everywhere and I know that none of it makes sense but it’s the closest thing to sense I can find anymore.

It makes sense for me to go this weekend, it would fit in with the pattern. Carly went 3 months after stef did, the next morning. Carly went 3 months ago today. I am the last one left, now feels like my time. I know it doesn’t make sense, I know, in whatever conception of the world I had before it ended, that I cannot leave here and join them, but I am still waiting at this imaginary ferry stop for them and I don’t want to miss that boat. It’s like jumping into the ocean just in case an invisible boat is there. I know these words will worry you but I need to be honest about what’s going on and I’m trying. I’m still not telling you everything. I’m still trying to keep the darkest parts inside so I don’t make the people around me uncomfortable.

Lightning bolt, lightning bolt, won’t you strike me down?

http://youtu.be/6PAJj0OG0BY

What I really wanted to do today was to get the tattoo of her stencil done, but I couldn’t find a tattoo artist who could do it today and I don’t feel like I’m well practiced enough to do that one myself, because I want it ‘perfect’.

The other thing I had planned to do today was to put a plaque on the bridge where she died with her family, but her mum didn’t feel emotionally ready for it so I think we’re going to do that for the 1 year. Which means I would have to come back from North America for it.

Anyway, so all of my plans for methods-of-staying-alive have fallen through today and now I’m not sure how I’m going to pull it off.

6 months since the only person in this world who ever made sense to me left it.

I don’t know what to do with myself, I feel like I want some sort of ritual. I want to do something for it, but I want to do something that MEANS something and nothing in the world means shit anymore.

It’s not easy.

Today I met a friend for coffee and talked about Stef and Carly and Sophie and grief a lot, which is mostly all I talk about, and then walking out of the coffee shop I looked down and this was laying in a crack on the footpath. Which was essentially just this: