There were these folks coming up to me after Gerard died, people I haven't seen since I was a kid, people I don't even know, people that shouldn't care about Gerard in any circumstance, approaching me with wary expressions flocking to their faces and asking why he did it. And I had to tell them that I was sorry to disappoint, but not even I, his own brother, knew why.

But that never stopped me from wondering. Tears on my bedsheets, tissues piled in my wastebasket, lachrymose conversations with myself at three in the morning, all screaming his name, all demanding the closure that they could never have.

And after all that suffering, all that anxiety, all that frustration at the psychologist for not understanding, those same people — and even more as time progressed and the ache fluctuated — painted a veneer of concern that was too powerful to chip away to reveal morbid infatuation, and they still expected a reply from me.

As if it were my fault that all Gerard wrote was one word and didn't bother to inform me of what that word was. As if I could communicate with the dead. As if I brought this upon him.

I gradually became his shadow — not Mikey Way, just the sibling of the suicidal head case who took it too far. I hated it so much. I hated how it made me look. It delayed affirmation of the fact that Gerard is gone. It dug up memories that I had thought to have been buried six feet under but were actually only an inch below the ground. It knocked the tools out of my hand in my endeavor to carve his tombstone and be liberated from sympathy calls and distasteful cards, like loss is a sickness.

And, in many ways, it is. Somatic, as well as mental. First, there's an odd, indistinguishable weight in one's limbs, feeling as though the devil himself packed lead into them and tickled their skin with fire. Then, after the initial shock of the discovery fades into a more capricious emotion, an existential haze plants itself in one's mind. Finally, there's the downward spiral into obsession and denial, and many would argue that it's not even the rock bottom — not just yet.

So I begged for sermon that would explain how these tortures could possibly make way for something more. "You'll know it when it comes," it echoed. And, for the most part, I believed that to be true.

With that, I waited. I waited for my unquenchable hunger to leave me alone. I waited for the voices to flee my head. I waited for the improbable epiphany to form a proclamation on my bedroom wall. I waited for anything apart from the agony of ignorance. Once I was done waiting, I concluded that the desperate search is rock bottom.

Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity but was actually a single day, I went back to school, and that's where my life became a mixing pot of anguish, queasiness, and death that crept up on me to claim my life, too.

The few kids that knew Gerard offered their condolences, but though tears hurried to their eyes, they were brushed away by the blatant seeking of attention circulating their visages, and they didn't aim to admit it. And that...that was the unforgivable part about this all; I somehow wasn't angry with Gerard anymore, but at them.

I recognized how the teachers stared at me. My teachers, not Gerard's, because they despised him — it meant something particular to them, how it affected their student and how much drama there would be in the faculty lounge. They tested out remaining discreet, but I knew how they hovered around. "It must have been so difficult for you," they would quake, while hushed bouts of mock surprise punctuated their tone.

Difficult for me? Gerard was the one who pressed that meager pistol to his forehead and cackled, because to him, this was the easy way out, and he realized it, too. He was cognizant of the concept that death is permanent, but much less threatening to the deceased than to the healthy.

Hospitals are for the sick, soup kitchens are for the poor, and the volatile experience of death is for the living.

I suppose Gerard left because of the chains that restrained him on every occasion, whether it be depression, his schizoaffective disorder, or his hatred for splendor. The thought that he committed suicide just to allow us to wither away winds through my mindset, and a sickening force pushes against the walls of my stomach.

Gerard developed many bad habits throughout the period after his diagnosis. He would huddle in his room, barely make eye contact, and skip meals. When my mother gingerly interrogated him about it after a month of this, utilizing the gentlest phrases available to her, he growled, "I just forget to eat sometimes," and though she was beside herself with lamentation, if she pressed further, Gerard's spite would shred her confidence to a million more pieces than it was torn to in that moment.

He didn't think he was psychotic. We all knew he was.

Grappling with acceptance was the most arduous ordeal that I'm not sure I ever completed. I was unable to face the fact that I don't have a brother anymore, that I will never get him back, and that this is my life now.

My psychologist said that it will never go away, not like a scrape on a knee or a cut treated by a disinfectant and an adhesive bandage, but if I so wish, I could cover it up, stomp out the match that Gerard and I were, begin to relight myself alone.

The thing about matches, though, is that they don't last forever. They break. They erode. They replace any passion that may have been present with the abrupt curse of temporal ideas. We shone like the sun for a short time, before chaos ensued, before rage consumed the person I previously called my brother.

And for a while, I was ashamed, because Gerard was still alive for some time and wreaking havoc upon everyone with whom he interacted. He repelled his potential companions and turned around to complain about how no one appreciated him.

It wrecked me. I was terrorized by the contradiction that he was playing, toying around with it like fire after numerous people told him that it was dangerous — he's always had a knack for danger, and I presume that's what got him a spot in the morgue without any trace of successful medication.

After Gerard killed himself, after his body was rushed to the emergency room, I was able to sneak inside of his safe place and witness just how horrible it was. It was like the aftermath of a storm, though bits of tornado still whirled in the places with more of the heat of anger.

The paramedics were gone, their hearts beating like a racehorse as they endeavored to transport Gerard to the hospital. They should have known that he was already lost, that bullets to the brain don't spare room for mercy. Neither should they.

Humans are too hopeful, after all. Weeping after they've lost someone. Draping black fabrics over their humbled bodies at the funeral. Crossing their fingers that their loved one will be back, yet they weave an irony, for any ghost that they've seen had sent them dashing towards the light switch out of raw terror.

Humans are liars. Humans are fakes. Humans are fruitless. Yet humans paint themselves as these saints that can do no harm and turn around to preach that nobody's perfect. They're all worthless.

Gerard fathomed that, and he never called himself one of them; I see the motive for that now. He hated humans with a burning rage.

I wonder how he would feel about being praised as one.

A/N: I'm walking the long road

experiencing the feels trip

the spite of my words

tangles my neck

oh my god I'm done

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thank 4 the apriseeashun

~Dakota