Relationships Bring Healing to Broken Lives

Relationships bring healing to broken lives

Internal monologue

My brother Fish Lamb.

Before that day, Fish was the favorite. He was the cheekiest most audacious bloke you’d ever meet. Everything about him oozed wit and cheek that you couldn’t help but adore. He was the funniest, stupidest kid in the whole bloody world, everybody loved him.

After his accident, we didn’t get all of Fish back. A part of him was still in that river. Oh the river. Nothing else in this world made the kid happier. It’s like he was stuck somewhere. Not the way all the living are stuck in time and space; he was in another stuckness altogether. Like he was half in and half out.

After that, all I could think about was him. I blamed and tortured myself for years. It messed me around alright. I was paralyzed by it- it ate me alive. I knew it should have been me. I punished myself every day. I used to imagine myself under the net, trying to remind myself of what I’d done.

From the moment I realized what happened to him, I thought that I wasn’t allowed to be happy. I thought that as a result of my mistake I had to deprive myself of joy.

 I remember a feeling of content one afternoon down by the river, by myself. There were no images of incapacitated or homeless people in my head, no feelings of self loathe, no flashbacks. Just me. Once I consciously became aware of this freedom, I did everything I could to banish in an attempt to remind myself of what I had to give up now that I made that mistake. I couldn’t be happy? Who was I to be at peace? I’d ruined my brothers life? All the potential he had? How could I just sit back and accept that for the sake of my own happiness?

But fish. I depended on Fish more than I knew. Fish cared for me. I remember, I just wanted to leave it all so badly. I was boiled to my brim. So I did. I left him and them behind, and moved. Isolated myself and put my mind to my job and tried to forget about it all. And y’know what? It worked. I develop a routine. I blocked it out. For a while. Eventually I was overtaken by dreams and visions of my mob. It all came flooding back. I felt Fish with me all the time. I could hear his cry ring through me every single night