Six Months

TW: suicide, depression

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He studies his face carefully in the mirror, tripping and stumbling over the words on his tongue without actually speaking them. Six months, six months. He blankly stares at his notecards in desperation – tries to hold onto the fleeting words. Six months, he thinks.

Six months ago. The screech of tires, the crashing of glass, the crunching of bones. Deafening silence coupled with indescribable pain. And then, nothing. No recollection beyond a few broken bits and pieces for the next several weeks. Hospital beds, nurses, beeping, talking. So much talking, and so little said.

He studies his face carefully in the mirror. It is cratered with old acne scars and new, rugged lines forming his face into a map. A map of pre-accident and post-accident; a map of before and after. Scars so harsh and shockingly fresh they were still deeply red and purple. A guideline of how to act, feel, and portray himself forever. Six months. He looks and feels older than he should.

He starts again, breaking eye contact with his mirror image. “My brother…” he begins, unable to move beyond the first two words as always. What could he possibly say to capture his brother’s essence? No story was funny enough, no words kind enough, no eulogy great enough for what he deserved. He looked down, ashamed, and placed the notecards at his side. He had thought, over the last six months, for hours a day about his brother. He parsed the memories, desperate to find one. He reviewed them slowly, as if, in the recording of his mind, his brother would suddenly jump out and say, “This one!” but he never did.

He thought of waterpark visits, trips to the Grand Canyon, camping, picnics, school, climbing trees, parties, and learning to drive. He thought of girls, friends, baseball, birthday parties. And he thought of graduation, college move-in, growing up. Nothing sufficed the light they saw his brother in, and he knew nothing he said would ever live up to the expectations everyone had. The truth was, he didn’t have anything to say about his brother. They were brothers, friends, sure, but they had never been close. Colleagues, peers, more than anything. There were things he could say, lies he could tell, but, truthfully, he didn’t know him as well as everyone assumed. He was a fraud.

He had settled, eventually, on a story about the two of them building a treehouse in the woods when they were ten and eleven. They hadn’t recruited any adult help, foolishly, and had forced together a pile of unsupportive, ugly sticks. In climbing the tree to sit on the misshapen house, he had fallen. A cut formed and bled quickly on his forearm, and his brother had run to get Band-Aids – but not help. He had returned with the essentials, all except for an adult, and patched him up sloppily. His brother was older than him, and he flashed his boyish grin before tousling his hair. “The cut’ll be fine,” he said, before following with, “don’t tell mom.” He went on in his poorly written speech to talk about how his brother had always been a caretaker, had a way with people. How he knew, after that day, he would make a great doctor. How it was a damn shame the accident had happened, how he’d miss him forever. But the words were meaningless, empty to him. Logistically, they were the perfect to words to say to the grieving. A funny story from childhood, making no substantial mention of the accident, no mention of the grave details. An easy way to encapsulate his attitude and spirit without having to admit how little he really knew about his brother.

But the words wouldn’t come out. And he knew why. It wasn’t real, and neither was he. In reality, he had slipped and cut his arm on the shoddily placed trees, and he had gone to get Band-Aids himself. His brother had walked with him but left after arriving home. He patched himself up, and he sat down to watch television. Alone. That was the brother he knew, but it wasn’t the brother they all saw. So, he’d had to lie.

Even knowing it would help them grieve, he couldn’t get the words out. He practiced every day, but he always fell silent after “My brother.” There was a singular day when he’d progressed to a total of five words, and the charade of it all had nauseated him. He turned to his reflection again. Say it. Just say it. He mumbled his way through five words, maybe six, before nausea and exhaustion took over him. The words were insurmountable. Again and again, he tried.

And he wished, oh, how he wished, it had been him. He knew his brother would have no issue lying about or embellishing a story to tell as a eulogy for him. He knew his family would be less skewed by his death. He knew it should’ve been him. He had been driving, he had been flustered and distracted. It should have been him, and everyone knew it. He could see it in their eyes, their movements, their mouths when they addressed him. It shouldn’t have been him; his mother had said shortly after the funeral. And while she hadn’t said it should’ve been him in his place, he heard exactly what she'd really meant.

Now, he was determined to make it him, too. He wasn’t eating, wasn’t sleeping. Stopped working. They assumed this was a failure to cope on his behalf, but, really, it was a resolution. If the favorite son had to die, at least he wouldn’t be an embarrassing reminder of what could’ve been. What should’ve been. So, he tidied his assets. Outlined a will and drank every day. Made it seem plausible that he’d fallen into a wild depression coupled with alcoholism. Didn’t see them, didn’t call. Didn’t talk to anyone.

He wasn’t depressed. He wasn’t actually suicidal, but he knew it would be better this way. They would be better this way. He wouldn’t have to deliver that stupid fucking speech this way. He’d planned this for the 5 months he could recollect after the accident. All his time and energy had gone into seeming depressed, and what a convincing actor he was. Everyone believed his story, and, better yet, they were too entranced by their own grief to care.

He had no idea why he’d been practicing the speech. There was no point. He had known he’d never deliver it. Never give anyone the chance to hear it. Never should’ve bothered writing it at all because it was a twisted, fucked up lie. He set the notecards aside, and lazily wrote letters to his mother and father. Lied more about how hard he had taken his death, how he couldn’t continue anymore. Said he loved them; said he’d miss them. Apologized for being such an inconvenience these past several months. He told them to read the notecards and hoped they’d find some solace in the fiction. Texted a distant friend to tell her he had found some of her belongings in storage and could she stop by in the morning to retrieve them?

Then he sat, in his favorite, comfortable chair. He flicked on the TV to watch his brother’s favorite movie. He drank a glass of amber liquor before downing another. A third. A fourth. A fifth with a handful of pills. A sixth with a second handful. A seventh before John Keating had even said, “No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.” He savors this line, when he finally hears it, and repeats it to himself greedily. The harsh edges of the world begin to soften, and his vision blurs. He wonders now if he’s made a mistake, but he is too far gone to really care or consider it. He’s made his choice, and he knows it. This is what he deserves. What they deserve.

He is grateful for the approaching rest. He has been tired for the last five months, and he knows it’s time. The world begins to fade, and he repeats “My brother was a wonderful person, and I miss him…” before drifting into comfortable silence. His mind is finally free of the inescapable speech.