Time To Dance (19 Letters)

8

15th of April;

Dear Gerard,

Life is beginning to become a routine again. Pete and I wake up, we go to school, we come back and do homework, we hang out, Mom makes us dinner, then we go to bed. It's getting dull.

Do you remember, back before you started writing your letters, when you would randomly burst into my room with a sketch book, or singing loudly.

I miss it.

You haven't done it for so long. Well, I mean you didn't. Sorry, wrong tense.

It's actually pretty frustrating. Everyone else is moving on, and it doesn't feel right. I know, that's rich coming from me. But I've been moving on for you, trying to pick up my life. It feels like everyone else is moving on because, I don't know, like they had to be sad for a while, and now it's been long enough they're allowed to move on. I don't really know. It just doesn't seem right.

Almost everyone at school has moved on. I still get those horrible sympathetic glances in the corridors at school, but everything else is almost back to normal. I mean, now there are dozens of posters for suicide hotlines everywhere, that weren't there a month ago. Not to mention, Camisado is still painted on the front of the school (although they've added in a memorial plaque with your name and some bullshit about how you were 'a well love student'). But other than that, school is the same boring shit hole that it always was.

Things at home are slowly starting to improve too. I think it's because Pete's living here now. It's kinda seems like when he moved in, Mom decided to do her best to look after him, and accept him in the ways that his parents wouldn't. She's doing housework, more than just the basics. She smiles at us, hugs us, and asks us about how our day was. And she's gone back to work, part time anyway. But she's getting back to 'normal'. I think she's sick of crying as well.

Dad's left the garage too. I think Mom went off at him while I was at school the other day. I came home, and Dad was sitting on the couch watching Star Wars. I just about fell over in shock. I don't think he's gone back in the garage since, thankfully. I've missed him. It feels like he's been gone for so long.

It's all so bleak now. I don't know how to cope with it. Having Pete live with us is great, and I love it, but he's not you. I need to do something, stop myself from going insane. I thought that school would be it, but it's only become part of the problem.

I don't know what to do anymore. Do I just continue with each day, pretending everything is peachy? I don't know.

Fuck, what do I know?

I don't even know why I'm still writing to you! I'm writing all of my thoughts and feelings to my dead brother. I'm trying to figure out how to feel alright again by writing to a ghost, not by fucking talking to a living person.

Fuck it! Fuck it all.

- Mikey