Something happened to me today which hit me like a freight train carrying 12 tons of bricks. It's a humid Friday and it's raining. It has been all day. So I've stayed in playing with Evie, attempting arts and crafts for Father's Day but mostly just being lazy. Lazy enough to not shower this morning. I think I even forgot to put deodorant on. Well, I know I did because I caught a whiff of myself and that's when the freight train came along.
I smelt like James after a intense session of skating and it broke my heart into a thousand pieces. A smell I'd only come to associate with him. One I haven't smelt since one of the last times I would have watched him skate. A weird thing to say and probably a weirder thing to admit.
But let me start by saying there is nothing romantic deep rooted within these feelings. Explaining my relationship with James is difficult. We were together for a few years and then we weren't. It was natural and mutual and we remained good friends throughout our new relationships and then our breakups. I don't see him as an ex boyfriend, I see him as someone who was once one of my best friends.
As well as being mine, he was one of my younger brothers closest friends. After my older brother moved to New Zealand I think James filled that older brother hole for Tom. His influences weren't always great, but he was a friend to him. A really good one. My dad had a soft spot for James, he cared about him like he was one of his own. So he was a part of my family in a way.
I guess it's a weird time to be writing this. But it's that freight train which prompted me because it was a feeling I haven't felt in a long time. I've come to terms with James' death. After years of torment, and counselling followed by CBT, I've come to understand that it wasn't my fault, and I couldn't have saved him. I can talk about him now without hot tears prickling my eyes and my heart feeling like it's being crushed by some sort of heavy machinery. I actually like talking about him. But it will always be hard because he was my ~ex~ and I think people will always find that strange. So I push it to the back of my mind as something tragic that has happened. A piece of my past which shaped me, for better and for worse, into the person I am today.
But days like today, which don't happen often, snap me back into the harsh bittersweet reality that he was real. He was, he is, a very real person who meant a lot to me. I struggle so much to come to terms with the fact that he was a mere chapter in my life. Years will go by and it will go from being the 4th anniversary to the 10th anniversary to the 20th anniversary of his death. The fraction of my life he was in will become less and less.
He deserved more. So much more. He was beautiful, and bright and intelligent. He had a way with words and with music. He was kind and cheeky and he was also a bit of an arsehole. He pissed me off beyond belief and made me seeing-red angry and pathetically sad.
I don't really know why I'm writing this less than a month short of the 4th anniversary of his death. This post also has no real direction. Other than to tell you if you've lost someone to suicide that it does get better. And it also doesn't. Day to day life gets easier. And days go by that I don't think about James. But when I do, it hurts. It doesn't hurt as much as the day I received that phone call and my life shattered before my eyes; but my God it hurts. However I suppose I'm thankful. No matter how many years go by, when he comes to me in a dream or I watch Flight of the Conchords, listen to Prince or hell, even smell my sweaty pit; I will remember him. Vividly and in colour. How he should be remembered.
