You Live, You Love, You Lose
I think this is the right place to put it, I'm not too sure... It's about damn time I got this off my chest; it's something I haven't really talked to anyone here about... but if I get anyone pouring sympathy on me, I'm gonna delete this thread straight away, this isn't about me, it's about YOU...
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I grew up as a child in a small place called Langley. I wasn’t born there, but almost as far back as I can remember I've lived there. One of my earliest memories was of my mum taking me to a nursery school, to see what this one was like for just one day. We were walking down the path on the cold day, holding hands as we made our way towards the building. I remember I was wearing my Wellington boots, big thick soles so I could go jumping about and squashing things in them. We were walking down that path and every time I put my right boot down, I heard a strange crunching noise. After a few steps of this, I stopped, my mum stopping as well when she noticed the tug on her arm. She turned to look at me as I lifted up my leg, staring at the sole of my boots. On it was a dead bird, a small one, surely no more than a few months old. Somehow I had stepped on it without realising, squeezing the life from its frail frame. Every step I had taken crushed the bones in its body just that little bit more. There wasn't much left of it, a mess of pink guts and brown, downy feathers stuck to the bottom of my boot. Nearly fifteen years later and I swear blind I've never been near that place again, the place where I first experienced death. What surprises me now when I look back on that moment is that I didn't cry or feel remorse at its death, it was just something that had happened. This is something that's always stuck with me; death happens to everyone, it's just a question of when. How doesn't matter, just the fact it comes to us all is the important thing. How foolish I was in my youth.
The same goes for the funerals of my grandparents, my mothers parents. Each one, I remember sitting there at the front, holding my mothers hand. Not because I wanted to comfort her, because she didn't want me wandering off in boredom, which in all truthfulness, I would have done. It strikes me as strange I don't even remember her crying at all about it, she just accepted their deaths and moved on...
No-one knows this, I've never told anyone about this before... I was the one who discovered my grandfather's body. I'd been in a fight with my brother earlier that day and I was really upset. In usual pre-teen behaviour, I tried to run away from home. The only place I knew where I would be safe was at my grandparents... I'd caught a bus there and had walked quite a fair distance before getting there. When I knocked on the door, I didn't get any reply. I was confused because I knew that he was in... it was a Tuesday, his Bridge club met on Wednesday and his Cribbage club was on Friday evenings, on Tuesday he was free... Perplexed, I went around the back and tried the back door, but that was locked which in itself was unusual, not that it really mattered. I knew for certain that his bedroom window would be open, it always was. When I used to play catch with my brother there, we would always start off there, While he counted, I'd run out of the door, closing it loudly so he heard it. Then I'd run out into the back garden and climb up the apple tree and drop onto the roof. I'd hide just outside the open window and wait until my brother ran from the room, searching for me. Then I'd climb through the window and hide somewhere upstairs when I heard him go downstairs. This is what I did that day but the bedroom wasn't empty as it usually was when I got in there. My grandfather was lying in his bed, all curled up. There was a strange smell to the room and I didn't know what it was. I later found out it's the smell a dead person gives off when they've been left in a hot room for a few days. I shook him, but nothing seemed to wake him. I was getting desperate, everything I did seemed to get no response. Finally, I realised he was dead just like the little bird on the bottom of my Wellington boot had been. I didn't know what I was supposed to do so I just left, leaving my grandfathers ashen corpse still in his bed. I walked all five miles back to my house, absolutely exhausted by the time I finally got back. When I got home, my mother cried with relief, hugging me closely to her. I'd never run away before and I never would again. I somehow thought that every time I ran away, someone close to me would die. I never told my parents about what I had discovered, and they were surprised at how quiet and distant I was for a few weeks, but as all young children do, I recovered from, it quickly, getting back to the things I should be doing, playing silly games with my friends and getting in trouble.
Nothing could have prepared me for what was to come. Years later, I'd discovered my sexuality and could express it fully. I was happy in my bisexuality and I couldn't give a trout if the whole world knew about it. Hell, I was even in love with another boy called Sam. We'd met through a mutual friend when I was recruited as the singer of a band, at that time unnamed. We'd been friends quite a while before I told him how I felt about him, unsure of how he would react. I already knew he was gay but I didn't know if he was interested in me that way... luckily, he was. We were happy together but he never talked about his life at home. I guess I should have seen that as a warning of what was to come but I was too engrossed in love to see the warning signs.
I remember that day clearly, every single detail about it. It was a Thursday, the day before our next gig and we were gonna have a rehearsal that night just to check we had everything in sync. I'd gone to school and trudged my way through the day, just eager to get the hell out of there and go to band practice. In the final lesson of the day, a double period of English, the school secretary came up to our classroom and told me that the headmaster wanted to talk to me. I was kinda worried as you usually are when the big boss summons but it had nothing to do with school. He told me something that tore my heart in two, my life was shattered and useless as far as I was concerned. On the Wednesday night, Sam had been in a fight with his father who had found out about him being a homosexual. He beat him black and blue and nearly killed him; he would have if Sam's mother hadn't intervened. It wasn't the first time his father had beaten him but it was to be the last. That night, after supposedly going to sleep, Sam had taken a belt and hung it from the top of his door. Standing on a box, he made a noose from the belt, putting his own head in it and he kicked the box away from himself. He was discovered on the Thursday morning after his mother had repeatedly called him for breakfast with no response. She got suspicious when she part of the belt hanging through the closed door. Opening the door, Sam's corpse fell to the floor in front of her...
I can't imagine what it was like for her... it must have been even worse than it was for me, and I know I took it badly. None of us went to rehearsal that night but the next night, at the gig we played in memory of our fallen comrade, the man that I loved. The climax of that night was when we played No Hero by The Offspring, dedicated especially to Sam.
On Saturday morning, a letter came through the post for me. It was from Sam, the last thing he did before killing himself. I still have that letter, I have it put safely away under lock and key. In it, he told me all of the things he had never told me, he could never tell me when he was alive. In it was a single lock of his hair which I still keep in a locket, close to my heart. A part of me went with him when he died, and a part of him will always be with me. I've got that letter out right now, I can see the shaky handwriting as his wounds were still hurting him, I can see my teardrops on it as I read it the first time, some of them lying right next to where his fell as he wrote it...
I still feel him watching over me at times, there are days when I swear blind I saw him look at me and then walk away, a smile on his face as he saw I was alright. He will always be with me, and when I die, I hope that we will meet again. It's almost enough to make me want to believe in a God so I have someone to blame for all of this but I know he wouldn't want me to do that.
Today, I let him go. Today, I burned the letter. Today, I burned that lock of hair. Today, I am free.
Never take your love and life for granted. Never assume things will work out for the best. Never be anything that you aren't. It can all be taken away from you in a single moment and you will never be able to get it back another day, it's gone forever.
I have the ashes of the letter on my bedroom floor. Tomorrow I will scatter these ashes over the local reservoir...
I will never forget him, I will never let him go but I will move on. I will sort my life out and I will learn to love life again like I once did when I held his hand...
Once you said you'd stick to it until the end
I guess you lied, they call it suicide
Now you're gone, what was so wrong
That you couldn't find a way to carry on?
Second guess
Did I do my best?
There was a friend I had
Johnny was a weirdo
So what did you expect?
I ain't no smurfing hero
I'm just trying to survive myself
I should have known, you went through it alone
I wonder why, did you even try?
You could have come to me, I would have helped you see
You could have found a way to carry on
Second guess
Did I do my best?
There was a friend I had...
Johnny was a weirdo
So what did you expect?
I ain't no smurfing hero
I'm just trying to survive myself
Johnny's strange behaviour
Was a tip-off, they say
But I ain't no smurfing saviour
I'm just living day by day
Little things, little lives hanging 'til the end
I say it doesn't really mean nothing
Telling truth, telling lies
I used to have a friend
I say it don't really mean nothing
And I can't let this feeling go
Let this feeling go
Let this feeling go
Johnny was a weirdo
So what did you expect?
I ain't no smurfing hero
I'm just trying to survive myself
Johnny's strange behaviour
Was a tip-off, they say
But I ain't no smurfing saviour
I'm just living day by day
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Have you ever had someone close to you die? What, if anything, did you take away from it all?
