it's been four years since today and i haven't seen your face in longer than that

it wasn't a train wreck hearing that the coma you were in slipped from your grasp and you might not have even wanted to hold on to it; it was like someone taking your nightmares and placing them in reality

i wonder about where you are and what you're doing all the time and then i remember you told me you don't believe in a god and i realized that if we are the subject of our perceptions then there was no way you were anywhere but in the bottom of the earth with no air to breath through and with dirt encompassing all the inches of your body

i wish i understood back then what it took to go up and face your largest fears and all of your anger in the image of heaven found in that leather belt that was used so many times before, but i didn't get it and i don't think anyone really did and it was only when i understood what true pain feels like and when i figured out the delicate paths to madness and loneliness that i realized no one truly understood why you did it until we grew up

you weren't fourteen but your mind had the veins of someone much, much older than that and i will never forget the times when we were together because although they were few and far between they are enough to last a lifetime

the one thing that scares me is that oblivion is inevitable and this is not a john green book and i am not hazel grace and the fear in me pounds harder every day and i realize that one day i will look at the date as march second and not realize that it's the anniversary of your death and then one day someone else will look at the date i die and they won't realize anything either and if that is all we're meant to be, someone needs to explain what we're doing here

i miss you, man. i hope wherever you are it isn't half as bad as what you had to feel in the place full of the mirages of dreams. may you rest in paradise, in your coffin, in the blue skies, in the dirt.

3/2/2011 and still counting.