Just Like Yesterday

DAVID’S POV The raging thunder outside on a Bayside’s evening made it all clear to me. Thomas is dead, I keep remembering vividly how it all happened. It’s all my fault, had I arrived on time I would have saved him. The memories are all rushing vividly to me as I remembered those events that took place on that fateful rainy Saturday night, the event that has been giving me sleepless nights for weeks now. Our friends had told me that it wasn’t my fault but they wouldn’t understand how I felt everytime I remembered the look on Thomas’ face when he was about to face that sad fate. And as I look back at these events, it had me thinking, was he scared in his last moments? Did he try to be saved so desperately? A gloom of sadness overcame me as I thought about these things. I couldn’t be of any help to him, he loved me so dearly as I loved him but I couldn’t save my dear Thomas. A sob arose in my throat, I looked at my reflection in the mirror in my bathroom. Who is this boy in front of me? Where was the gleeful Dave I know? All I could see now is a boy that sadness has built a home in. I looked like a wreck. My eyes were puffy, different scars in my upper arm and I looked like I could break at any moment because I couldn’t remember the last time I had a proper meal. My mum keeps saying it will be best if I could go to therapy but the truth is I didn’t want to talk to anyone about what happened to me. It’s like adding salt to an injury. I just couldn’t bring myself to start recalling the events all over again. I have tried to forget about it over the past months but I just couldn’t, I want to think of happy thoughts but I can’t bring myself to do that, this was someone I loved so dearly, how will I be able to forget about the way my dear Thomas always has the brightest smile in the world? Or how he always smells like minty perfume? How his laughs always sounds like music to my ears, how his touch felt like something that is a thousand years old, no matter how many times you come in contact with it, you can never get tired of it. The way my dear Thomas always looked at me like I’m the greatest thing in his life, he looked at me so tenderly I didn’t care about what the rest of the world thought about me. Those brown eyes of his that are like the desert, a desert I am willing to get lost in any time he looked at me. His lips that speak to me in language only us understood, a language of love. Those lips that tasted like peaches, soft like flower petals. My dear Thomas was the most amicable person I have ever known in my life. How will I leave without him now? Living is worthless without my dear Thomas. He gave me the motivation to push through each day, he gave me a reason to be able to pursue my dreams. My dear Thomas was my placebo, I felt safe whenever I was with him. Who would give me that feeling of feeling safe if he is not here to hold me in my darkest moments? Who would hold me in those rainy nights just like this one? Who would confess their love to me about how they are willing to give me the world? Who would tell me they love taking part in things I love doing? My dear Thomas was the only person that did these things for me. This guilt, depression, frustration and misery made me wonder the amount of pain he must have felt, I wanted to feel his pain with him. I tried many ways to make me feel the pain he felt. I tried cutting myself with knives and razor blades, but even still, seeing the amount of blood that came out of my body each time, I was convinced that it wasn’t as close to the pain my dear Thomas felt when he left me. “Dave, darling? David?” Came a voice calling from outside the door. It was my mum’s voice. Sensing from the way she had concern in her voice, she must have suspected that I was doing something to myself again. Over the course of the weeks that has passed after the death of my dear Thomas, I have been taken to the hospital in a total of five times as a result of self-harm and fainting because of the way I have been starving myself too much. My mother has made it a priority to always check up on me even though my dad said he couldn’t care less about anything that was happening to me. He was always against my relationship with Thomas. “Dave baby are you in there? Talk to me, Dave?”, my mum called out to me with a sudden c***k in her voice. My heart broke for her, having a son like me wasn’t anything she wished for. I came out from the bathroom and put on a shirt then proceeded to open the door for her. “Oh my dear, oh Dave”, she said while a tear escaped from her eyes as she looked at my appearance. She saw the way my eyes were red and puffy. She held my face in her hands while looking at me with tears in her eyes, this time she let them out willingly. She hugged me and ran her hands up and down my back soothingly while saying in a low voice “It’s okay baby”, and I found myself crying in my mum’s arms like I used to when I was five years old whenever my elder brother wouldn’t want to share his toys with me. My knees gave out and I found myself going down slowly. My mum didn’t let go of me for one second, she went down with me. The both of us on the floor of the hallway few inches away from my door, me sobbing painfully and my mum comforting me. No matter how many times I cried, it never feels like my dear Thomas died weeks ago, it feels like it all happened yesterday. Why is this pain always so fresh, why doesn’t the pain ever go away? “Let it out now. Mum is here, I’m here baby”’, my mum said continuously. And I did.