The Great Green

Chapter 1 - Over Feeling

There was a huge stone at the edge of the tree-lined reservoir, perfect for sitting. Pulling my sweater more tightly around me, I ignored the coldness of my rocky seat. No one seemed to notice this place was here, which was a relief. Most of New Jersey was overpopulated in the extreme, and it was difficult to find a quiet patch of green.

Despite the tranquility, the glassy water, only broken by the splash and glide of a heron, my mind was elsewhere. I had come here, again, for the fifth time this week, to try and quiet the wailing of my thoughts.

He had died. He was dead. He is dead. No matter how many times I tried to absorb the words, the unreality of it all left me numb.

I had tried to save Charlie. I had reached out to him, over and over, attempting to break through and leave him with the understanding that I loved him, that I wanted to be close to him, and that I accepted him for who he was. But my little brother was no easy case. What tormented him, had tormented us both. That which he endured as a child, I did as well. The only difference was our wiring. I soldiered on, while he struggled to function at all as an adult. This wasn't to say that I was fine, by any means. I was as broken as anyone. But my kind of broken kept me alive.

He drank too much–it was the only way he felt comfortable around people. And he smoked too much weed, but he was 26-years-old, and he wasn't going to listen to me.

When I got the call from his neighbors, I could only say, "no", over and over again. No. There was no way. No. This was a dream. No, I was about to wake up...any moment and I would wake up.

No. It wasn't real. It wasn't real. It wasn't real. 

But even as the days went on, as I spoke, half-unseeing and unhearing, to the man who had completed his autopsy, heavy with dread to the funeral director who would lay my brother out, with the priest who would see to his funeral mass, still...I could not wake up from this nightmare.

Once, in the midst of actual sleep, I opened my eyes and gasped, sitting up quickly. "Charlie is dead," I said in a whisper, as if it was hitting me again, for the first time. A cruel trick of the brain.

Then, staring at the lighted Christmas tree that brought no joy or warmth, my heart jolted in my chest and I began to cry. Oh no. Oh God, please. Let me wake up.

I had prayed a certain prayer many times in my life. I had beseeched the universe that I could take anything it threw at me, so long as it left Charlie alone, so long as he was okay. Always I'd worried about him, from the time he was just a tiny child. In the year prior to his death, I had felt an urge, stronger than I understood, to tell him that I loved him–though it wasn't normally his way to express such things to me. It was mine, and I needed to be certain he knew. And, after all this, it seemed that it was me who knew. Somehow, I knew this life would not spare my brother.

Now, I sat upon my cold stone seat, watching the bare trees as the sun fell lower behind them. The sky was pink. It almost felt like Charlie sat beside me– the hopeful thinking of one who grieves.

"What am I supposed to do in this life without you, kid? You were my heart." He was. I hated the way it sounded in past tense. "You'll always be," I said out loud, just in case he could hear me. 

I had never felt like I belonged in this place, same as him. I had wanted to be happy. I had tried many times to fit into the mold and mindset of this world, but it always felt off, as if I was tuned to the wrong channel on an old TV. I could hear the words, I could interact, but there was a veil of static that muted some of the colors. And that which I felt–an ocean of something inside of me–always seemed out of place, as if the world wasn't built for me and I was overfilled with something that was given in futility...something I could never release. Even in my friendships I held back, for fear that I would be too much, see too much. And in matters of love? I was a square hole where everyone felt like a triangular peg. The channels didn't match.