Disconnected.

Eight months after a friend's death, how am I doing?

It's the aftermath that kills you. Not the moment that you receive a phone call about the dreadful news, not the moment you almost pray for it to be a joke, and not the time you meet everyone at the venue of grieving to confirm that it was real. It's the days, the nights, the weeks after, the months after, and the year after that makes you feel the sorrow; the time you spent alone knowing that there is no one else that can help you grieve but yourself.

I should admit, Big James and I weren't as close as I wish we we were during his lifetime, but we co-existed with the same group of people for years that I could not imagine, now that he's gone, being around everybody without him there. Silent and gentle, I can still remember some of his phone calls like it was yesterday: "we're going to tuts...wanna come?" "we're going to a movie...wanna come?", and as I type those words in quotations, I can almost hear his voice saying them. I rarely got those invitations directly from him. But when they did come from him, I usually said yes. All of them, however, had gone away completely the moment someone said something about HIS autopsy on the phone. Maybe he was, in his own way, who held everybody together in a place of fun and affordable group entertainments. And now, I feel more disconnected from the group than I have ever felt before he passed.

For a while, I took solace on hanging out with his best friend. But I found that I could never match his energy of "let's go here" and "let's go there" the way James had. In my world, there was only the TV and the Internet, and a place like the hookah bar or the pool hall is something I couldn't bring myself into unless everybody else, including James, was there. I couldn't, however, bring everyone together the way that he did. I never had that talent. Now, I'm left with the memories of all our the laughter and all I have are the rare occasions of fun with my closest friends who are, if I'm not mistaken, as much lost from the group as I am to this day.

Before, I use to know how to tell myself that it's okay to retreat into my own world because when I'm ready to come alive, a simple phone call to the rest of the world would set me free. I can't do that anymore.
Not while everybody else is still grieving.
Not, while everyone else, is still disconnected from each other as well.