Safety Net
Falling. That's what it feels like. You fall and fall and fall, never making impact with the ground. They say it's not the fall that kills you, it's the impact. That's when you blackout. That's when you lose reality and drift out of the world. That's when you get peace.
But when you lose someone, when you truly lose someone who you loved with all your heart... you fall. You don't make impact. You don't get peace. You constantly fall into the darkness, your stomach constantly plummets, your head constantly spins and the sickness feeling only intensifies with every centimetre you fall.
And that's what it is. At the end. When your world crumbles around you and you lose them... when I lost him, I fell.
I want the impact. I want to fade into darkness, to never feel again. But I'm falling and falling and falling and without someone there to catch me I will fall until my own life ends.
Caleb... it's him. The safety net. My safety net. He's meant to... he always is there to catch me. That's what a safety net does. Without the safety net you fall and make impact.
But there's no impact for me. With no safety net, all that's below is a giant cavern filled with only darkness and I'm falling in it with no-one there to catch me.
Death. It's peaceful for the person. No matter how much pain they're in it will end it. They'll make impact, lose reality and sleep for an eternity. But the people left behind? Like brothers? Like me? I fall without an impact.
And it's haunting. It's terrifying. It's like when you miss the last step on a flight of stairs and for a split second you fall.
Your stomach plummets, you see white, you can't breathe and you're sure your life is over. But your foot makes contact with the floor and normality is restored.
And that's what it feels like. But without the end, without the part where your foot makes contact with the ground.
Death doesn't hurt the person dying, it hurts everyone else. It tears them apart, fills – haunts – their world, their every cell, their every being. And it doesn't stop. It never stops. You never stop. I never stop falling.
Because that's what it is.
Falling.
And I want the impact.
