I've been home since August 5.
Home truly is a balm for me (minus, of course, the fact that I'm persona non grata whenever my mum isn't here), because time literally slows down, and I can breathe, in a way that I can't in Kingston.
It is August 26, and if we're going by day and not date, today marks a year since my uncle passed away.
I watered his grave last year with (what I thought was) every tear in my body. I wondered how the hell I was supposed to resume my regular life without one of its pillars (who, incidentally, I was to have seen the day after he died).
I spent the rest of 2016 on a knife's edge, wondering if the universe could have possibly flung a bigger, steamier, nastier handful of shit into my face. (Pro tip: the answer is yes. The answer is always yes.)
But the months passed. Some of them crawled. Some raced by like the devil was giving chase. The months passed, and eventually the pain faded. It hasn't disappeared completely, and it possibly never will, because he was my favorite uncle and...he just...you know.
Now a year has passed, and Digicel has given his number to someone else, and I haven't heard his voice, or seen him, or anything. I still have yet to visit his grave, because I still remember the face I saw in that casket and it wasn't the him I knew in life. I have to tell myself that the him I knew is somewhere I cannot yet follow. He is beyond my reach, but he is all right, wherever he is.
I'm telling myself that, in the hopes that one day I'll believe it.
I go back to Kingston on September 3. I'm not looking forward to it.
It seems that my demons are strongest there, where I have no shoulder to lean on, and I can't randomly go hug my mother when I need it.
But, you know, school is a necessary evil.
I've been contemplating finding a therapist somewhere there, but I dunno what my final decision will be yet.
In the eternity that I've been here, I haven't cried once, haven't experienced the urge to self-harm. In fact, I've been attempting to self-care, eating better (and more, lmao), listening to more music, reading more. (Actually, I'm almost positive that I've damaged my eyes even more with all the reading I've been doing.)
This greatly abridged summer holiday is just what the doctor would've ordered.
