~*~

To Dave,

About a year ago, you uploaded some photos onto Facebook of the night in Melbourne where everyone stays out and up until 7am. I hadn't seen you since the last day of uni and I was pretty drunk then anyways so it was nice to see your pensive face, blurry, little smile, neat hair. In the days after you died I used to flick through them, because seeing you sitting on a train in the dark and out of focus helped me imagine you in a kind of spiritual 'limbo' - because people can't just ride trains and drink water and eat and sleep and poop and then just stop...can they? Well I mean I know they can and I know that's how it works but it was easier to believe you had not immediately become just a 'body', a pile of suspicious flesh that was then all burned up in a furnace - but you, what was you, still existed somehow. Doesn't make sense, I wish it did. 

Anyways White Night has come around again and I'll be on the train too you know, staying up all night within an idea that sounds romantic but really is just a whole lot of drunk Australians wandering around the CBD, too many people and too few attractions. The funny thing is you probably hated it last year for those reasons, you probably went home early which is why I didn't bump into you. I wish I had, you know, but of course only in hinesight - at the time I was much too distracted by stories my friends told of the lights on acid, and my little hyper heart which beat out of my chest at the sight of my love lying by the river, unknowingly reflecting the same lights from his eyes. You were not a blip on my radar, and I guess that's how it goes, when a person knows a person only from the outside. Since you died I've been trying hard to get inside everyone and it's not easy. I hope someone got inside you - I think some did.

On the day of your funeral I didn't wear flowers, because they were for your casket and not to be perched on my head. Instead I piled my hair high as it could go, because one time Amy Winehouse said 'the more insecure I feel, the higher my hair has to be' and I've been living my life with that motto ever since she died. I wish it wasn't the truth, but it is - in death, we affect others in a way which no living person can replicate. The chances of me writing to you if you were sitting next to me again in class are little to none, but because it's been almost a year since your body was your home and not a pile of ashes I feel like I should. You have affected me so. 

I love being young. I love the freedom which it entails and I love the idea of my whole life, stretched out in front of me, all terrifying and wonderful. But when we are young, we learn that life is not how we would like it to be. Actually life is pretty fucking shit really and you know on the worst days I wonder what it would be like to have no body, to have no fire, breath, heart or bones - when I was even younger I didn't think I would be thinking these thoughts now but I do, and you did too, obviously, not that I knew it when you were alive. Youth is beautiful but it is disgusting. I have learnt more about the world and about myself in the last years of teenage-hood and the first year of my twenties than I ever thought I could even contain in my head, and the majority of it all has been horrifying. 

You know, you taught me a lot. You were a little older than me and definitely wiser. In life, you practiced such humility, quiet determination, and intelligence. I admired that in you, knowing that my hyperactive brain and moods could never be disciplined the way you disciplined yours. 

But by taking yourself out of this world and out of mine, I learnt that there is no 'limbo' - you are alive, and then you are dead. There is no in-between, no comfort, no resolution, because dead is dead and that's all. Maybe one day I will find comfort in that thought, but I think I feel too much; all the years you could've had, all the time that was yours, and you threw it away. And not only was it a waste for yourself, but for all those who knew and loved you better than I did. Your partner, your family and friends, your death is the death of bits of them too, you know. You killed something in them when you killed you. It makes me angry to think of it, but to be angry about it is a total waste of energy, and I like you too much to be angry anyways. 

Wishing is a waste of energy too, but I can't help but wish you well. I don't know what you are anymore, because the only thing that I can actually believe is that you are a memory. I don't believe in God or Heaven or anything like that which is funny because I thought I would be the type to revert to such spirituality as soon as I am forced to cope with grief. But here I am, in the full knowledge that what was you is now buried in the ground in that strange pompous way, and I know that you did exist once in the world, but now you don't. And the only place that you really 'exist', is in the pile of flesh inside our skulls as memories. Seems quite humble really, probably what you would've liked. I wish you well in living in people's brains.

I do worry that I am going to forget. I guess I will, eventually, but I hope that the important bits remain. The other day I asked Lewis to give me his Grolsch bottle when he was done, and when I looked at the funny old thing as I refilled it with water I couldn't help but smile, remembering the way you would always bring absurd vessels to uni to carry your water (two litre bottles of milk, olive oil bottles, wine bottles...). It always used to make me laugh; the first time you brought in a wine bottle I was quite alarmed at your apparent dramatic alcoholism...!

Someone deleted your Facebook a month or so after you died, and I'm glad they did. I can't see those photos anymore which is OK. And I'll go to White Night this year and maybe I won't even think of you. That's OK too, because if I spent every waking moment searching for people drinking water out of wine bottles I'm sure to go insane, you know?

One day I will be older than you, maybe even wiser than you were. I have the indulgence of growing old to look forward to, to observe the wrinkles in my face develop - a map of experience - maybe to have babies, to travel the world, to love and live. You will always be what you were. That's sad, but most things in life are sad somehow anyways. You gotta take the good with the bad I guess. Like, knowing you is good, but knowing you has also been bad. I can't decide which outweighs which. 

Doesn't matter. I am glad to know you - to have known you - to have caught you in time to know you a little before you left. It's a shame, but most things are.

Eilish