Each year I think about this stuff, losing Daniel, friendship, relationships. Sometime I write these thoughts down. Seven months after Daniel died I wrote the piece below. It was nice to read and realise how much I had changed. I hope in another seven years I can say the same.
“I am a boy in the school of many but yet none. Well that’s at least how I am feeling. There is always a cliché that those who are popular, in fact actually have no friends. They are in fact surrounded by people who think they must be liked not because they are friends. Anyhow that, as far as I know, only happens on TV on shows like Buffy. I am different though, I guess if I am honest I live in a TV show or my at least me alter ego does, my wants and hopes all in a TV show as they could never come true. Most would say I have had a happy life, some could even be jealous, but yet another saying; you always want what you don’t have.
At one point in my life I was very happy, I think anyway. I think I was happy because though I thought I was alone, I never was. I always had a friend. A friend I went everywhere with; shopping, cinema, park, the bus journey (you wouldn’t get that it was a personal joke between me and him.) We were friends that every week when we did something new or old we got closer. I think the reason I was so close to him was that he was the one to say it first. It made me feel wanted which I never feel now or had done before. It was a phone call, we were talking about a teacher, Ms Rucco or something, we always joke about her and her obsession with Bin Laden and Afghanistan. Anyhow he was telling me how he was talking to some people telling them that his best friend wasn’t in his year. Basically, he was referring to me. Which took me a while to get the grips with because I was, ok still am quite slow.
When he said that to me I felt so happy, he said it first not me I have said it to so many people before and the feeling wasn’t mutual that’s why it was so special our friendship or at least to me anyway . So I said he was my best friend too. And life carried on as usual. He taught me so much about collecting stuff, Buffy, Style, Room Decoration, Getting to Lakeside (shopping centre), he had a big effect on my life.
Then kind of out of the blue he gets sick, cancer of the blood; Leukaemia. When he told me, my reaction was “oh,” and I just felt nothing, not sad, not angry, not happy just normal. I treated it like he said he had got a cold. I feel so stupid now seeing that he’s dead. Anyway so yea, I feeling normal, mostly because he acted normal, didn’t speak to me differently or sound scared, just normal. So months go past and he starts to get better and I feel like finally I will have him back, things will be as they were. But boom on the May 14th, a Wednesday, I was on study leave for my GCSEs my dad tells me he has a couple of days to live and I stop feeling normal, I was shocked, oh and that shock turned into crying none stop for about an hour.
I was going to see him on a Saturday but he dies on the Friday. I was fine on Friday, on study leave playing my Playstaion, obliviously, and I get a call from my teacher Miss Eagle was her name and she said she was very sorry to hear the news, I thought oh these teachers can gossip. On the Thursday me and my dad went to school to collect some of his art work to give to his parents and told the art teachers the situation. I assumed Miss Eagle was talking about the fact that he had a couple of days to live. But then I said of thanks Miss I going to see him on Saturday. And she said oh at the chapel of rest. And I was like in a gasping for breathe voice are you saying he’s dead, she then realised that I didn’t know and covered it up. I then thought that’s stupid and I phone my mum she was not there the guy on the phone sounding like, don’t worry she will be there soon, I see her and a women coming, I release but don’t believe, mum comes in, I say, he’s dead isn’t he we both breakdown into tears for a while but that was it, no more did I cry not at the funeral or when I told people or when I spoke about him. Why? People told me which I thought was very patronising “people deal with grief in there own ways” and here’s another classic “what would Daniel want you to do.” Now it would be fine if that line came from someone who actually knew him but hello, did you know him? No. Then how would you know what he would want me to do or not? Then there was the whole “get on with your exams, he would want you to do well.” Oh I am mistaken, didn’t I just lose my best friend, and you expect me to do my exams and with such a confidence boaster like Daniel would want you to do well. Well I did the exam without much revision because to be honest, I really just couldn’t be bother. But I wasn’t feeling sad, it was like the feelings had just gone, and I was like, I lost my best friend and I am not showing or even feeling pain. I was laughing and joking with my friends most didn’t know that he had died and treated me normally, thank God. Those that did, most were ok. One was annoying and was saying all the clichés, totally pissing me off. Another was fine always made me feel better.
Whilst I was like this my mum told me, “I can see you are feeling sad, you just cant.” And I was like, “OK, that’s right you can clearly feel my feeling more than me,” leading to arguments. So she sent me to America for three weeks, which went terrible, I didn’t stop thinking about Daniel. I did, however, have an interesting dream of him telling me that he was ok. Whilst there I was lonely felt like there was no one there for me at all just couldn’t wait to get home. At home I still felt lonely, empty. I was morning Daniel not being here, I was upset that he left me, I was so alone, my friends seem like they didn’t even care, they thought I was fine. It didn’t help that I was hiding my sadness anytime I saw them. But yes, I was surrounded be people yet I felt so alone, I so get Lucas’s art piece in year 11 now, that’s so weird. Anyhow I basically hated every single friend I had. They didn’t see that all I wanted was for someone to be there.
But I was wrong then, I now release that they were there. I just wanted him, Daniel, to come back and that’s the same now. I am depressed, sad, sick, tired and have no idea what is going on in my head and I thought when I started sixth form, I thought the sadness and the loneliness had gone. I felt I was getting close to people, friends again, I felt better, I thought I was over the death but I wasn’t, I’m not. I oppressed it, I closed it in so I wouldn’t feel the pain but a week ago on 16th of January, I felt the feelings I felt in the summer. This was when it seemed a friend on mine, who I thought I was getting close to, she pick someone else over me. It reminded me of what used to happen before Daniel and now again its happening. God I swear she hates me, I’ve been talking so much crap to her. Anyway when that happened, I realised I still am hurting, even more so now as it out and wont go. The phone calls are not Daniels and the cinema, the shopping, the jokes, none of it is him. I just want him; he would know how to make me feel better. He wouldn’t let me down. No one is him; no one is like him apart him who left me. I don’t know, do I miss him or am I confused like with everything else in my life. God I am getting to paranoid.”
Dedicated to my best friend Daniel
Forever remembered
Forever loved
Forever friends
