Dear Mitch (Merome)

Chapter 9

Squeeze your eyes shut.

Embrace the darkness. Keep them shut. Now tease out a tiny burst of colour. Manipulate it into what you want it to be. A flower, a hill, a crowd, a person. Slowly expand the image, until it fulfills what your heart desires, and what your imagination allows. That is the true meaning to see behind closed eyes, is it not?

Take this image, and freeze it in your mind, like so. Draw in more colour. Make it bigger, stronger, clearer. Make it real.

Okay, too real, you're now insane.

Aside from the last line of insanity, this is what I did. I drew myself a perfect world at night. One where I was older, Ben at my side, Mitch and Dad happy, most likely with each other. Mom was with Caitlyn, no pain with their position of being away from us. My world flourished at night, right before I'd sleep.

Then I'd wake and we'd be back to where we originally were. With Ben an achingly long plane ride away, Mom and Dad teetering on the rocks and the issue still of Dad and Mitch.

Dad and Mitch. Mitch and Dad. Two men who loved so much, and lost so fast. Was their love a battle they lost? Or was it the start of a war they could win?

It had been those sixteen or so years since the first entry. Just contemplating it, it made me spin a little. A fourteen year old standardly doesn't think about this, but I wasn't standard. Wasn't ordinary.

I don't know if I knew who I was.

Dad seemed so unsure as well. Was he a man who loved his family, or his best friend? Mitch, or Mom? If anyone knew, it would've been him.

And yet he didn't. One reoccurring pattern was him going back and forth, past or present?

It was a constant battle of lust and logic, and it hurt to read about someone who was genuinely hurt about love. Admittedly, some of it kinda buggered me. We did love him, but we weren't enough.

7th March 2026

Dear Mitch,

Do you still love me?

I know I still love you. I can't stop. I can't help myself. I can't stop myself constantly falling for you. If I fall completely one day, will you be there to catch me? I know that if it were you falling, I'd catch you, no matter how fast the fall.

I feel like I have it all. I've graduated (go me!) but there's no happiness. I do, however, start a new job tomorrow. Here's to hoping I survive the first day of not being my own boss after so long...

Your channel is looking good. I watched a bunch of your videos today, and I couldn't help but say things out loud after you made a joke, almost like I was replying. How many times do I wish I was with you, these lost years nonexistent and gone. Never happened.

I don't know what I'm doing. I'm a shell of someone who should've been able to know where his life was going, but it all suddenly fell flat. Having my family here makes it all feel better, but I know you'd made it all complete. Make me feel whole again. That's the issue, isn't it? That we can't thrive on what we have. It isn't enough to keep us whole, to keep us sane. Just enough to keep us alive.

I'll shush now, I'm being all philosophical again.

Love, Jerome

Deep thoughts.

Their 31st birthdays would have passed by now.

31.

It seemed like such an insane number in a way. I still read this with a 20-something year-old voice, so thinking about it in that context blew me away a little. He was 31, a fully grown adult, nearly a third into what people find is a satisfactory age achievement, yet still able to fall for the petty things in life, and recognise he was doing so.