I Swear You Will Be Fine

Dear Josh,

I think we used to be people who only had first-world problems. These varied from the price of my coffee at the local cafe increasing to the ranking of the universities I applied to. I miss when these were my biggest issues. Someone said to me recently that this should be the best part of our lives. Our mid-twenties should be generally stress- and responsibilty-free. This should technically apply to you, Shalini and me.

And yet, I spent a good amount of last year locked up in my room crying. Shalini has to go a university where you’re not there and visit a house where she can’t see you. If this is supposedly as good as it gets, I’m unimpressed. Frankly, I think I could make a solid arguement for why this has been the shittiest part of our lives. Not just part, but forever changing our lives for the worse.

From 0-14, my biggest problem was staying overnight away from home. You definitely remember me behaving like the world was ending when I was sent away for camps. I think your biggest issue may have just been being naughty. From 14 onwards, it was Dad. The problems stopped being first-world problems, and became ‘are we safe’ problems. Maybe it was naivety, but I thought that was as bad as problems get. And then we lost you, and now I think I know what a real problem is.

Please don’t think I am reducing your passing to an invconvenience. I have enough faith that you know me well enough to know that’s not what I mean. But at the same time, it’s just always there. The knowing we lost you is a constant, massive problem that none of us can solve. We’re all type A personalities. We have this giant box on the mental to-do list that none of us can tick off.

Despite all of this, none of it compares to what you went through. How bad were the ‘problems’ in your head that the only way to solve it was to pass on? I still can’t comprehend the extent of what you were going through. Everything you could physically and mentally do on the to-do list to make things better, you did. But you had an unsolvable problem too. I do think you’re the type to choose to carry it over your family/loved ones, but how I wish we could have taken it from. you.

I’ve attended multiple support groups in an attempt to tick the ‘feel better even without Josh’ box. The last I went for reinforced what I knew. This is a box that can’t nor should be ticked. We talked about how it was wrong to ask loved ones with such severe mental illnesses to stay on for us. It had been a relatively ‘dry’ group in that no one was sobbing massively, but with a few minutes to go, I told them how Mum had been the first one to tell you it’s ok after you passed. If she hadn’t, I don’t think any of us would have been able to before the funeral. She loved/s you more than anyone on earth, but that might be why she knew she had to accept that the only place where you wouldn’t suffer wasn’t with us. Someone told me later that the support group was far from dry after sharing this. I couldn’t tell because of how much I was contributing to the tears. This isn’t something I talk about much because it’s too hard to remember, but I’m glad I did. As unfortunate as it is, a lot of people resonated with it.

Thank you for my birthday. You sent me the best birthday present ever (as always) – sunshine in London. I gladly used it to spend the day at Hyde Park, my favourite place on earth, and had dinner with friends who have been there for me through all of this. Dealing with my birthday wasn’t a first-world problem, but it wasn’t a real problem either.

I think a lot of life may be like this now. First-world problems may never hold the gravity they used to, but they shouldn’t. I think you’d approve of this. Again, I swear I’m not reducing losing you to a ‘problem’. But it’s something we’re trying to learn to live with. I know we’ll see you again. So till then, maybe the first-world problems will serve as good distractions for problems we can’t solve.

Love you and miss you a ridiculous amount.

Love,
Acca