I wrote this back in August of this year, I’ve been going through some of my journals and writing and thought I’d share, maybe it will help someone going through addiction, or someone whose close family member or friend is in the throws of addiction, maybe there with you for the holidays, maybe not.
This relates to a prior short story entry on here
“My Dream” as well.
Anniversary of my brothers death Journal August 20, 2021
Brett Colby
5 years ago today,
On the morning of August 20th 2016, I found out my big brother and closest friend Alex was dead.
For years we spent everyday together, driving around, going to the beach, watching movies and HBO, riding ATVs, skate boarding and tagging, writing our names all over the city and everywhere else we went.
When I turned 21 he and I went hitch hiking and ended up in NYC.
I always looked up to his confidence and likability, but sadly much of our time spent together was in the throws of addiction.
I didn’t see him much for the last few months because I had gotten in trouble and wasn’t cleaning up, he had been urging me to stop, and eventually stopped himself.
I started kind of dodging him because I felt like I was disappointing him while he had been doing well for some time and I was continuing to give up on my life.
One of our last conversations was him telling me I needed to get away from the people I was around and spend more time with him, then a day goes by and he’s dead from an OD.
It’s hard to look back seeing how much of our time together rotted through heroin use, I had revived him from overdoses literally dozens of times. Once it started happening, It happened more and more frequently. He’d wake up and not know what just happened. One time I was driving and I looked back and saw his lips blue, eyes rolled back, I stopped the car and did CPR and when he came back, he said:
“When are we going to pick up?”
I told him
“we already did you just went out”
He didn’t believe me.
Since he passed I have this repeating dream, it started a few years after he passed but has been consistent ever since. Always the same dream, where I’m standing with my brother in the driveway of our childhood home and he keeps saying “dude I got shot” and I’m like nah dude,
then he insists :
“yeah dude for real I got shot”
And I’m saying:
“no you didn’t”
But for some reason I can’t remember how he died.
It goes back and forth for a while until he says again:
“see dude I got shot”
and I remember and say :
“no you didn’t you died of an overdose”
Then he just looks at me and says “oh” before going into the house.
Then I wake up.
I’ve been clean since he passed, 5 years today. I often feel like I’m in the wrong reality, that he and all my other friends are still there, and I’m the one that's slipped into this abhorrent place where they only live through my words, dreams and memories.