Fear Will Lose // twenty one pilots // Joshler

Chapter 13

It was 5.20am and Josh couldn't sleep.

He'd been sat in the dining room, in the dark, since 4.30am and had no plans to go back to bed anytime soon. Instead, he continued to stare across the room whilst absentmindedly fiddling with his wedding ring.

His eyes had grown accustomed to the poor lighting, and he could clearly make out the contents of the room. On the table in front of him was the empty glass of water he'd drunk an hour ago, three envelopes Kelly had asked him to give to Tyler, and an old photo of Debby Tyler and him that he'd picked up from the shelving unit against the wall.

The shelves stored the full dining set they had received as a wedding gift on the top shelf, then a variety of framed photos, a bible, several prayer cubes, and various trinkets on the second. The final shelf before the unit turned into a drawer-cabinet was where Tyler stored his notebooks.

Josh ran his eyes slowly over the old leather spines. They had consciously decided to keep all of them, so the shelf was crammed full. The majority of the books were faded red, Tyler's journals, but occasionally the covers were black, signifying it was filled with poetry and songs.

Although they were kept in a social space, Josh didn't ever read them without Tyler's presence or consent and he had never felt the urge to. They were Tyler's inner most thoughts and Josh respected that entirely.

Josh's tired gaze fell back to the table, and the photograph. He picked up the framed photo and turned it over in his hand, then turned the clips and removed the back panel. The picture fell out loose, and he placed the heavy frame back on the table.

Josh traced his fingers along the edge of the photo, and felt its familiar cross shaped creases from when he used to store it folded in his wallet. As he raised the picture to his lips and kissed Debby's face, he felt a wave of affection wash through him.

There had been a time in his life, a long time, where so much as seeing a photo would have dragged him right back down to the dark pit of hysterical grief.

He had never been good with words, that was Tyler's thing, but when he thought about it deeply enough, he likened grief to drowning. The constant struggle to keep afloat as wave after wave crashed down on you with no mercy, leaving you spluttering and gasping for breath. The panicked desperation. The isolation. The sheer exhaustion of attempting to survive another minute. The temptation to let the water swallow you up.

But then, after months of choking on salt-filled lungs, you begin to understand the waves, anticipate when they're coming. They still come, but you know to close your mouth. It still knocks you back and you have to battle to get to the surface again, but you don't constantly feel fractions away from going under anymore. The 100ft waves turn to 80ft, and there's now a moment to catch your breath before the next one hits. Slowly, the waves feel smaller and your breath becomes less spluttered. Occasionally a huge wave will crash down from nowhere and knock the air from your lungs and shove you back 10 steps, but you've learnt that each wave always end. They always end, and you'll always catch your breath again.

It took Josh about 7 months to feel able to breathe, and a year to understand the waves.

He had spent the 8 months following Debby's car crash in Indonesia, arriving with only the clothes on his back and $180 he had stuffed in his pocket. At the time he had been living in the Joseph's house as his own parents had kicked him out, but he didn't say goodbye to Tyler or the rest of the family.

Within minutes of arriving in Batam, he spent the necessary money to upgrade his free 30-day visa to a 6 month social visa without much of a plan, other than knowing that he needed to be as far away from Ohio as he could get. After three nights on the streets without eating, Josh broke the terms of his visa and got himself a job. The pay was virtually nothing, but in return for Josh moving scrap metal around a yard, the yard owner let him sleep on the floor in the office. It was hardly a glamorous job and the office was actually a shipping container with a desk, but Josh was too much of an emotional mess to care. He didn't speak Malay, and the yard owner spoke limited English so Josh wasn't exactly sure why he got fired, but after three weeks he needed a change anyway so didn't care when the owner chased him off the yard. He didn't care about anything.