Alex's Nirvana

Nirvana

Waking up was hard, brutal even. My mouth felt so dry, like I was chewing on cotton, my head felt like it was stuffed with a grenade that had exploded during my, what appears to be, extensive surgery. My entire body felt like someone was holding it down, as if there was a  bolder placed on top of me and there was no way I could ever push it off even though I really wanted to. I couldn’t talk either, the doctor said that it all had to do with my brain surgery and he said I should regain the ability to speak soon enough.
Despite all that is wrong with me, it all seemed like nothing in comparison to Alex. I saw him, he walked up to me, and he had tulips in his hands, I felt all of my pain melt away and I felt calm, cool, and collected. He was like a panacea, he cured all of my cuts and bruises and incision scars.
The pain came back and tripled when I watched him fall. It started with a single drop of blood falling, and he had this look on his face, this “I’m about to collapse” look, and then without any further warnings, he fell down and collapsed.
Alex was rushed away from me, pulled away the second he was brought back to me by a nurse and many other doctors, as well as my father who ran to him and pulled him up and screamed out for help.
From what I heard and gathered, he was due for a CT scan but he had left the hospital when a doctor came to get him checked out, so they missed it, they missed the aneurysm, which was in his brain like a parasite even before the accident, which claimed his life. He was a walking ticking time bomb that exploded right after I saw him, how morbid is that? His family simply kept him on tubes because they didn’t know what to do with him, another one of their children dead and gone and they never got the chance to get to know this one.
He’s gone, I still can’t admit  it to myself, even as I am standing in his room, surrounded by his things, inhaling in his intoxicatingly beautiful scent, he’s gone.
His room is still a mess, his bed is still unmade, his clothes are tossed around the room messily, his towel is still hanging on his door from his morning shower, his video games are even still on, and he must’ve forgotten them in the morning or the night before and never got the chance to turn them off.
I have his phone in my hands, and I’ve been going through it for days and days, trying to hold onto whatever pieces of him I have left, I’m afraid I’ll forget his voice, or the way his dimple popped out when he gave me one of  his cheeky grins, or how messy his hair looked in the morning when he just woke up, or even how his breath never seemed to smell bad, or the way he used to say my name or sing songs and break out into the corniest lyrics ever known.
I am supposed to be at his funeral right now but I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t force myself to stand there and watch his parents cry over a son they never bothered to get to know as my parents cry over a boy that they loved like a son.
I haven’t left his room since he died, since his heart stopped beating and I let go of his hand, I was in his room that very moment, I was with him until the end.
At exactly midnight, a doctor woke me up from the guest chair in his room and told me that it was time, time for what? I had wondered but then I connected the dots and understood what he was trying to say, it was time to unplug Alex.
I have been lying down on his hardwood floors for days, staring at the words he wrote on his ceiling. So many quotes and so many memories wash over me every time I see his handwriting so I just prefer to lie down with my eyes shut, that way, nothing can hurt me anymore.
My parents tried dragging me out of here, so have his parents, and a psychiatrist, but evidently they all failed since I’m still here, I’m still on his floor, clutching one of his shirts to my chest, as well as his phone.
I haven’t finished reading what he wrote, I can’t bring myself to do it and I don’t think I ever will. I should just burn it, but I know I won’t be able to do that either.
I am half of myself right now, I was better off before I knew him, sometimes, for a single moment, I close my eyes and wish I never met him because then I wouldn’t have to feel like a lost soul in search of someone that has  been snatched away from me so cruelly.
I keep on reciting lines and verses from “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. I find comfort in his twisted, yet somehow relatable, words.
“On this home by horror haunted- tell me truly, I implore- is there- is there balm in Gilead? - tell me- tell me, I implore!” I repeat the lines that I have come to memorize by heart all over again.  I remember first reading this in the ninth  grade, my freshman year, and I cried the first time I read it, Edgar’s words possessed such raw emotions, such pain and such torture that I couldn’t help but be moved by his poem about his lost love. Never did I ever think that I would be in his shoes, mourning and grieving over a lost love of my own and wondering what the future has in store for me now.
“Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, it shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore- clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
His words really do hit home this time and I wonder now if he ever did get back to his beloved Lenore, the fact that he was talking to a bird showed me exactly how desperate he was to hear her voice or see her again, but did he ever get to hold her one last time and tell her he loved her?
I told Alex I loved him but he was unconscious, I just had to be there every single day towards the end, there was no place I would’ve rather been at than right by his side, I wanted to be the first thing he saw when he woke up, I guess I’ll have to live with being the last thing he ever saw.
I wonder what he thought, did he fail any pain and suffering towards the end or did he feel free and happier once he stopped holding on and let go. Did he know I was there? Did he feel my presence and know that I didn’t let go and up to now, I am still holding on oh so tightly?
Will I ever be okay?
Most likely not.
Will I get over this?
Never.
Will I live through this?
That’s highly debatable.