Soreth @Soreth@awoo.space

More cute monstrosities please.

I miss the friends I lost all those years ago.

I didn't get the opportunity to try that surprise road trip again. That was the last time for years that my finances were stable enough that I could afford to take that much time off from work. There was always another emergency, every time I started to get my feet under me again...

Two deaths and a betrayal, all under October skies. All interlinked strangely. All woven together from threads that broke unexpectedly.

This too, shall pass.

For both of those deaths, my ex, That Monster, was one of the first people I turned to. Making my discovery of his betrayal in early October even worse, years later. I think it had already started when Bear died.

When Anthony died, I'd taken the week off because I was going to go on a surprise road trip to visit my ex. But he died and I stayed put for the week because there was too much to do, and suddenly a funeral to attend.

There's a finality to seeing someone dead in front of you. I knew, even as I called 911, that there was nothing to do. I remember how calm my voice was when I told the dispatcher "I think my friend just died." I remember begging him to move a little later, even though I knew deep down that it was over. I remember how cold he was to the touch.

I remember the expression on my sister's face when she arrived.

I can't remember anymore what death smells like.

Anthony died in my home, very suddenly. He had undiagnosed hypertension, and had a stroke so massive that he died more or less instantly. "Dead before he hit the ground", they told me later. He'd been staying in our apartment after losing his own. I found him when I knocked on his door to ask him if he wanted anything from the store. When he didn't respond, and I opened the door to check, everything changed.

On their first wedding anniversary, on the same ferry run they were married on, my sister spread his ashes on the Puget Sound. There's a lot I don't - can't - remember from that day, but I still remember the color of the sky, and the water when his ashes began to mix into eternity.

He was married to my sister for a little less than a year when we found out about the brain tumor, and the phrase "18 months" was first uttered because it was _that_ kind of brain tumor. On his first day back from the hospital, his first day back home with his wife, their first day of privacy in a month, a blood clot in his leg migrated to his lungs and he died.

Hadn't even started chemo yet.

Everything's a guess at best, we get no guarantees.

My brother in law died yesterday, many years ago. My best friend from high school died tomorrow, a smaller number of years ago. These two passings together mark the last of the worst of October for me.

While I loved Bear like a "real" brother, it's been long enough now that the absence is diminished for me. The day still hits me because it's a recognition that all things cease, and some things cease very sharply and suddenly. We are temporary beings in this world.

That wonderful moment when you're invited overnight to a new discord server and the first thing you have to do when you find out in the morning is frantically search the user list to see if your monstrous fucking ex is in there too.

...By you I mean me.

He wasn't, so now I get to calm down some.

It does _not_ feel like it should be almost 5... o..o