What Follows
19.2: My World

′leave him be, in a time of madness, a time of death′

My suicide note is quite stupid. I don’t even know what Tobias likes about it.

After our little drama, Tobias stood by the shore for a long time, watching my brother do his thing as the sun sunk lower and lower into the sea’s embrace. I, however, was adjusting the note’s position and making sure that it will be easily noticed by my clumsy brother.

It really shouldn’t be missed as it flaps noisily against the bench and the large rock that anchors it.

It’s getting late and Jacob should be heading out of the waters any moment now. He does get out and I replace Tobias staring at me with big, barking Benji in his arms, anticipating my reaction.

There’s nothing to react to because this feels like cheating. And it makes me wonder if someone else had the guts to do something like this before. If the mere coincidences we see at the end of movies about someone replaceing their brother’s or lover’s suicide note are more than just ‘coincidences’.

I wonder if they’re interferences like mine. I wonder that as I watch Jacob pull on his sweater and denim shorts.

When he’s done dressing up, he gives the sea a final glance before looking in my direction. I remember that the note is right behind me so I step away, then remember that he can’t see me and that I’m not ‘blocking’ his vision. I sigh wearily.

Jacob walks steadily toward me, shaking the water from his hair before sifting through its golden strands with his fingers. His transparent, cold-blue eyes narrow before he jogs his way to me, his eyes widening and unblinking. And I remember sickeningly that that’s what forbidden hope looks like.

He moves past me and kneels in front of the bench on the sand before cautiously reaching for the rock to move it away. I quickly move to stand in a place where I can better decipher his facial expressions.

He holds the paper in front of him and his face almost falls apart. His eyebrows sink in relief and his eyelids drop as if praying, God thank you. He wastes no time to press the paper to his pale lips before bringing it to his chest. And I wonder if my fingerprints are on the paper. I wonder, if my fingerprints aren’t there, would the ‘heart-prints’ I hope I’ve left behind suffice?

I wonder a lot of things as his flushed cheeks quickly turn wet with tears when he bows his head to sob quietly to himself. I hate how hard it is for him. I hate the pain I’ve caused him. I hate to be his ghost.

I don’t realize I’m crying too until Tobias brings it up when he stands next to me and looks at me apologetically. Like he’s sorry for the hell I slit my wrists into.

He shouldn’t be sorry. My torment will never equate to the sum of torments I’ve inflicted on everyone who has loved me. Sometimes and I never said that before, sometimes, I wish I could suffer more than that.

Jacob reads it quickly, his glassy eyes devouring my not-enough words as he holds the paper too tight. It’s a miracle his fingers don’t hole their way through.

“Will that give him peace?” I ask Tobias who’s patting down Benji’s fur and staring at my brother.

“No.”

I nod with a sigh. He’s right. This letter is too late, too empty. In fact, it has no more than five sentences and a sorry ′Dear Jacobsen’. Maybe it’s just my last touch he’s relishing.

Jacob, I know that there are no existing words, arranged in any possible way, that can both, express my love to you and explain my actions.

“Will it stop him from smoking?” I ask, knowing the answer as I watch Jacob flip the paper to its empty back.

“No.”

Because I know that suicide isn’t a side-dish you order and pay for when you love someone as the main dish.

“Then? Why did you say it’s a good thing?”

“I didn’t,” Tobias says. ”Not entirely,” he looks at me. “It’ll anger him, in fact. But it is a good thing-”

“What-? How?” I say as I study Jacob’s disappointed face.

“I mean, my sister just kills herself and compares my love to her as a main dish,” Tobias lifts a brow. “I’d be pissed.”

I’m taken aback by his response. “Why did you say you liked my letter then?”

“I liked you writing a letter-” he argues and I shake my head.

"Are you serious? I literally got a ‘poet’ as a friend and you couldn’t even help me in that?” I’m suddenly embarrassed by what I’d written to Jacob. I quickly glance at him to replace him hugging the paper to himself, his eyes squeezed shut.

Tobias smiles, the sides of his eyes crinkling. “You never asked for my services-”

“Are you serious-?”

“Take a joke, Roseline,” Tobias then tells me, seeing how much this whole thing means to me. “I did like your letter.”

“I knew it,” I say, casting down my eyes. “It wasn’t perfect.”

I failed even at that. I feel like I’ve been breathing ‘being-a-disappointment’ instead of oxygen my whole existence.

“That’s subjective.”

“I should’ve written it better,” I say and Tobias makes a face.

“Your letter will be perfect for him,” he says and I blink up at him.

“You said it’ll anger him.”

“It will,” Tobias smiles. “It’ll also ground him, and that’s how we measure how ‘perfect’ your letter is,” he tells me. “Him accepting your death, moving on, should be the ‘perfect’ you’re wishing your bother." He looks down. “Your note is some form of goodbye. It’ll give him solace in a way or another,” he tells me and I look at him with wide eyes. “I told you,” he says. “It’s subjective.”

But maybe in the complicated process of living, I’ve given out my love to so many but myself. And I owe myself an apology as much as I owe you.

Jacob gets to his feet, holding the paper in one hand and wiping his face off tears with the other. He faces the sea’s magnanimity and doubles over, letting out a suppressed groan.

“Oh boy, he is angry,” Tobias says beside me and I sigh. “I like how you reasoned your suicide by self-hate when you didn’t really hate yourself.”

“I might’ve hated myself at some point.”

“We all do sometimes,” Tobias speaks through Benji’s fur. “You killed yourself because you thought people hated you.”

I hold my hands in front of me and shrug slightly. “It’s complicated. I can’t pinpoint a reason,” I say. “But I believe I should’ve loved myself to more confidence. I should’ve been more confident of my presence and purpose regardless of what people thought. I should’ve flipped off anyone trespassing their limits with me. I shouldn’t have been easy on them. I should’ve raged and called the rain on them,” I click my tongue. “Maybe I did kill myself because of self-hate after all.”

I look at Tobias and he has his brows lift in amuse. “Our will to live only comes in our death,” he says.

“I think we now understand what it meant to live,” I tell him. ”It is what it is,” I repeat what he’s once said before and he smiles, dropping an arm around me.

“No, not really,” he says and I look at him, offended.

"You said that,” I suddenly feel embarrassed again.

“Yeah-no, I know. Many people say that but context is important. You can’t be the reason behind the being of something and just blaming it on an ′it’,” he argues almost too seriously. “I’m not the reason behind my brother’s anguished cries,” he points at a worked-up Jacob. “I am the reason behind my brother’s death. But that’s- that’s different."

I blink at him, surprised at his humour attempt. I smile. “Okay. Whatever.”

“I would say, Roseline is who she is,” he tells me. “Because, like, everything you’re going through is because of you, not ′it’.”

I shake my head with an incredulous smile. “You’re an idiot.”

“Why are you talking to me? Shouldn’t you be watching your dear brother giving away his final goodbyes, huh? Who’s being an idiot now?" Tobias jokes around and I shake my head again, my eyes lingering over his wide, almost-real smile, before sighing softly.

I watch my brother stand in the weak, dying sunlight, folding my letter in half, only for a strong gust of wind to come and tug the letter free from his fingers.

I gasp a little as Jacob stands too shocked to properly respond to what has just happened.

When he realizes that he’s going to lose my note, he starts chasing it along the shore, barefoot. But to his great misery and my sorry expectations, the paper returns to the sea, where it belongs.

Jacob doesn’t stop whatsoever and wades his way through the water to reach for my paper. He replaces it and holds it, only to cry for its lost contents. Without being close enough to him, I can tell that the seawater erased all I’ve written, leaving behind an ink-smudged, drenched paper.

And it makes perfect sense. All that the sea has taken away is all that shouldn’t have existed anyway. My dead, rotten breaths and words. It’s only fair.

Or my brother is just clumsy and let the paper slip. I’ll go with the former.

Meanwhile, Tobias stands, making no remarks as he watches my brother wade his way back to the shore, wet up to his waist, loosely holding the paper with slumped shoulders.

“Welp, that was illegal anyway,” is what he ends up saying. “Too good to be true.”

I nod, not surprised. “Yes, but he got the message anyway.”

“Won’t be able to show it to the world though,” is what Tobias says. “No-one would believe it.”

“I don’t care about the world,” I say. “He’s my world.”

Tobias smiles at me like he’s proud. “That’s the whole moral, isn’t it? To finally know your world. The world you should’ve lived for.”

I nod slowly, sadly. In fact, I’m too sad to even replace words that sad. I don’t think someone has been as sad as I am to create a word that expressive. Because this kind of sadness is reserved for the dead and damned.

Maybe, I think, I should work on my own dictionary; like how Tobias came up with ‘cycles’, ’Darkoom′ and ’dimensions’. A dictionary with words only we would understand. Because words aren’t defined by their letters, but by the meaning they carry. Context.

“What should’ve been your world?” I ask Tobias.

Tobias smiles half-heartedly. “I don’t know?” he says. “My parents? Rita? Discipline? All of them?”

I look away and back at Jacob who’s dragging himself to Mom’s car that he’s parked nearby on the sand. When he gets to it, he fishes for the keys in his pockets before looking at the plum sky (the sun has disappeared a little while ago) and letting go of the empty paper to the wind.

He then lights a cigarette and draws in a few breaths, watching the wind pick up and swirl the paper away with it. He then gets into the car and starts the engine.

And know by heart, Jack, that I’ll be watching you and loving you dearly even in my death.