Unpublished Blog Post

John writes a blog post a year after Reichenbach, never published. It's a bit of a downer...especially if you listen to Jacques Brel's "Ne Me Quitte Pas" while reading.

Sherlock...you were the most human person I ever knew.

And sometimes I just sit here and contemplate how human you really were and how well you understood people, really, as much as you blustered about Not Understanding.

And some time ago, as I was thinking about how human you were, and how well you understood me, I came to realize that...maybe in your sadness you thought your death was a gift, in a way. There was something so purposeful about it. It felt so random, but I wonder a lot if I should have seen it coming. There was something...a bit not quite right about you for a long time before it happened.

I wonder if you were hoping I would notice. I admit I did notice, but I was too much of a coward to approach the subject. Especially when so much of my time was trying to forget the sadness in my own heart. Running away from it, letting you lead me on fantastic journeys and never letting myself look inward from the perspective of someone who was enjoying their life.

Never really looking into you, either, always holding you up on some fucking pedestal. You were stunning. You were brilliant. You were my bloody savior. How could you be suffering?

I see now that I really was an idiot.

And the way you spoke to me on the phone that day, I felt like you were trying to tell me something. Afterwards, I spent a long time hoping that you were telling me where to find you after your 'magic trick' was over, but it's been a year and I don't think you're coming back at this point.

I knew you for real, Sherlock. And I think I get it now. Not all of it, I'm too much of an idiot, but at least I understand a little of maybe what you were trying to tell me.

I feel like you knew, in a strange and terrible way, that I needed something like this. Not that this would have your sole reason for doing what you did, of course.

I'm surprised Moriarty could get to you - I would thought you were above falling for his mind games.

But then again you did almost take the poison (?) that night with the cabbie. And of all the things I ever said to you, I can't help but remember how I said once that you spend your time "risking your life to prove you're clever." Putting the emphasis on the 'prove you're clever' at the time. Now, I realize I probably should have just put the emphasis on 'risking your life.'

Were you always like this? On the edge of the precipice? I'm sorry. I should have noticed. Heaven knows I spent enough time there, looking down into myself.

I wonder if somehow, in some convoluted way, you were proving how clever you were to Moriarty by jumping from St. Bart's?

But I feel, again, there was something that made your death a gift to me. And eventually I figured out what you might have figured out might be the best thing for me.

I needed something tangible over which to grieve. We were running, Sherlock, running running running. And never really stopping for breath, and when we did, we threw fits because we weren't running.

It wasn't just you acting like a drug addict searching for his next high. You were probably picking up on how deeply anxious and miserable I myself would get in those lull times.

How in the moments we weren't running I would start to slow down and get stuck, because I hadn't properly come to terms with what had happened to me in the war.

So if you got a little wound-up during those times, I'm sorry, it could have also been in part my fault.

But I think you knew that running isn't sustainable forever. And that something big would be the only thing that would make me stop, properly, and do the self-examination necessary to move on without all the ghosts haunting me.

Because I was running from ghosts, Sherlock, and I think you know that. And every time I stopped, they began to eat me alive again.

The death of a best mate, when you're a civilian, does something to you that you can't deny to the world. A soldier can be expected to keep a stiff upper lip when he comes home, war wounds or no, but when something like this happens, I can finally cry. I have a reason to cry that everybody here can understand, on some level.

So thanks, I want to tell you, for that, Sherlock. It's the only good thing that came of all this.

With I guess the exception of the fact that I'm so much wiser now, Sherlock. Life just makes so much more sense now. Before you died...nothing made sense. Not me, not you, not the world, nobody. Nothing. All was chaos.

But something about your death brought me order, and clarity, and I could finally cry about the war. And my failure as a friend and lover. And my inability to function like a normal human being.

Sherlock you somehow, in the course of your life, unlocked me like a door, and you opened me, and you put your foot right in the doorjamb so that I couldn't close again.

And when I wasn't looking, and when I thought you had lodged yourself there permanently, you left your shoe but slipped your foot out of it, and you quietly removed yourself and died.

But you left your shoes as a gift, and since it will always be there, stuck between me and the doorjamb, I won't ever be closed again.

Unless of course someone tries to remove the shoe from where it is, Sherlock, but that won't ever happen because people don't approach this faded old door with its unfortunate paint job and its tarnished handle and its plain-looking design, so rest assured I will remain an open door for the rest of my life.

You compelled me to admit light, Sherlock, into the room of my darkened heart, and I can't thank you enough even though you're gone.

I guess I never noticed until now that you even did this.

I should have thanked you before.

Maybe then you'd still be here.

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