The Heart and Mind Don't Always Communicate

It's not an easy task to be around people all the time, yet it's a lonely place to inhale the day with my lagging heart and the terror of reality.

Reality is waking up one day and facing the truth that Charley will never run up on me and tickle me as I swat his hands away and giggle in delight. I'll never have the opportunity to express how much his laughter fills my heart with relief and how the quick movement of his eyes assure me that he is always listening. The truth would signify the colors of my world will switch to a palette that is neither familiar nor daunting; but embrace the world I step out into and gently sweep away the pieces of my shattered heart. When I'm moving about and living in his home, I feel safe and free of all the prying thoughts and the dimension without Charley. I'm in a melancholic bubble of comfort and the deep-toned voice within the guarded walls of my fists. And I feel okay. Until I step out the front door and place one step in front of the other into black and white, and sometimes gray. The sound of my footsteps sound hallow and anything but firm. Shift, drag and rapidly move with a low tempo beat, unlike the music I once loudly listened to. My steps feel tired as my brain encourage my two left feet to walk, damnit, walk. They make it to the car to run errands, to the well-manicured green front lawn and seeded back yard, to and from the crumb-floored kitchen to Mia's beautifully well-lit room, and finally rest in the nook of Charley's cal-king bed. And no matter how much I force myself to move and step, time will not bring my brother back. Time will only numb the shock but not the harsh reality that I actively deny. And truthfully, even when I try to face the truth, it's still such an ugly truth, and is one I swat away like the annoying rowr of the cat he once had.

It's been three months now and not much has changed. At least I personally don't think it has. Just like the breakdown in communication that occurs in just about any social setting, my heart and mind play phone tag with one another, so the clarity of the message is distorted and difficult to convey. I won't say that I'm trying, because that would mean that I'm either pushing or defeated. I'm just...just. Living with the good-natured intentions of my brother's life and desperately aching for him to return and make my life whole again. He and I have a spiritual bond that envelopes that softest parts of our souls and the depths of our commitment to one another. I feel him racing through the beats of my pulse, the heat in my glands and the vibration of my blood.