Dear Sherlock,
My limp is back. Now I have to stagger around London as if I've just aged thirty years. To distract myself, I tried to sort out some of your science equipment the other day, since the flat's going to the dogs. I stood there and looked at all of it, and my body turned to glass and I couldn't move and…
It's still there. Ah, well. I can survive without a kitchen table. I don't eat much, anyway. Not since you've been—not here.
I wake up at least once each night, and I know I've been crying. I get up and look in the mirror and make sure I'm still all there. Because sometimes it feels like sadness is consuming me, eating me alive. Then I see the wetness in the hair around my temples, where the tears have fallen in my sleep. I'm not depressed, Sherlock, because depression is when a person doesn't feel anything at all. No, I'm grieving.
I feel everything.
A couple of idiots—friends of Lestrade, actually—suggested that I head to the nearest pub and chat up some pretty woman, get my mind off things. I told them to sod off. Then I walked outside into the miserable weather and let the tears come. It was already raining.
After that, I limped home without bothering to hail a cab, and figured I'd order take-out and watch telly. Instead of the phonebook, I found your hat. Instead of my jumper, I came across your blue dressing gown. Instead of the remote, I found your violin bow, arrow-straight and competent as ever. Like you. How am I supposed to move on when pieces of you keep popping up?
It's the little things that make this so awful. Unimportant stuff, like the half-drunk cup of tea sitting at your desk when I finally faced going home that first night. Those are the things that make this horrible thing come to life in my chest; hot and twisting. I make it to the loo just in time to vomit, gripping the toilet bowl and trying hard not to think of anything.
Jesus, if anyone were to find these letters, they'd toss me in a psych ward for being mental. How ironic, a doctor who cracked up. It's a tall order though, not to lose your mind when your best and possibly only real friend leaves the world. See, a real friend is the one that walks in when everyone else walks out. I haven't got that. If you were still alive, maybe…but then, I wouldn't be writing this, would I? My body refuses to believe my mind. It won't accept the fact that you're dead. So I leave a note for myself every night before going to bed, leave it on my laptop so I'll be sure to see it in the morning.
Gone.
As always,
John
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