No Place Like Home ✔

One

They say that when you die you have seven minutes of brain activity left. In those seven minutes, your brain plays out everything you've experienced throughout your entire life in a dream-like sequence.

In what way is that relevant to this story? It isn't. Not in the slightest bit. However, nothing really makes sense anymore. 

Everything stopped making sense after the death of my parents. 

My parents and I had always had a strong relationship. Good or bad, you decide. We had days where we'd fight, we had days where we'd be stupidly affectionate with each other. We had days where we'd sit on the couch and watch movies till midnight struck, we had days where we'd give each other the silent treatment. Despite all that, I knew they loved me.

And I loved them.

Which is why it came off as more than a shock when I found out they had barely left any money under my name in their will. Perhaps they had thought I'd be able to fend for myself since I was a 'big boy' - or at least that's what my father would call me.

"Eden, you need to start doing your own laundry. You're a big boy now!" - he had said when I was barely nine years of age. 

They were Catholics, but not as strict as you'd expect them to be. They prayed every morning, every night and every single afternoon and evening in between - yet they never really showed signs of discomfort when I came out to them as gay. Not many Catholics in the area minded at all, I'd come to realize - and the ones that did either ended up leaving the area or dying.

And them being Catholics is exactly why they had decided on naming me Eden. They had named me after the Garden of Eden. They often said I reminded them of purity, innocence and everything heavenly - but I found myself to be quite the opposite. I was ill-tempered, narcissistic, lethargic, an avid procrastinator whilst all the while being brought up in a tumultuous family. 

My siblings had all went their separate ways after the death of my parents, and the last time I saw them was at their funeral; in those dark, well-fitting garbs of theirs. 

I had two sisters and three brothers, myself excluded. In all honesty, I find myself struggling to remember their names. Not because I can't do it, but more so because I don't want to. I'd like the memory of them to leave my mind completely. 

We had been close too, once. But after the passing, we simply stopped communicating with each other. I can't tell you why, nor can they - perhaps because talking to each other brought back memories of our parents; the people that had kept our family together. The people who were now gone - forever.

Did their death affect me? It definitely did. 

But when I came to term with the fact that they had left me nothing but a fading memory, I lost all train of thought and the little sense of grief I had left. Call me selfish, call me self-absorbed; you wouldn't be wrong. 

One thing I can't blame on the early departure of my parents is myself. I can't blame them for me turning out the way I did; for I was like this long before their death as well. I had always been egotistical. I had always been selfish. I had always been overwhelmed with greed. I only began to let it show after the incident. 

I often found myself thinking back to when my parents and my siblings all stayed seated in a circle, talking with each other about anything and everything for hours on end. We did that on every eventful and uneventful Saturday. My dad would call them 'relaxation hours with papa bear and mama bear'. I always thought it was quite cheesy but now I found myself wanting just another of those somewhat therapeutic sessions with the both of them. 

I could also recollect how they'd often tell me things like 'you're too young to understand, you'll know when you're older'. But the truth is, in that case you never really learn unless you've lived to become the oldest man alive. There will always be people older than you, and they will always know more than you could ever dream of. 

But that's a lie. 

See, morality doesn't depend on how many years you've spent roaming the withered grounds of this world. I can't for sure say what it really depends on, and I probably will never find the answer. But, for now, that much is all I can conclude. 

However, no matter what, I will still always feel so undeniably little in a world filled with giants.

Giants that have a whole life of success ahead of them - and I was nothing but a dwarf, struggling to keep up with them.

All the sentiment aside, them leaving me with nothing behind meant I would eventually fall into debt - and fall into debt, I did. I found myself struggling to keep up with the electricity bills, paying rent, buying everyday essentials. It was all getting too much to a point where I even considered taking my own life and ending it all right then and there. 

But, I couldn't bring myself to do it. 

Mainly because I didn't want people to throw me an entire funeral to which no one would show up. 

I'm not trying to be funny with that - it's only the truth. I had lost all my friends after said incident as well, and I never really found myself caring. Good riddance. 

Back to the elephant in the room; my ongoing financial struggles. I lacked sleep because of how often I'd stay up attempting to come up with an appropriate solution - and no amount of hours or sleepless nights brought me to a valid answer. 

Then, at the drop of a hat, I figured it all out.