A week ago I stood in a room
and read your life out loud.
My brother.
My mate.
My own blood
in a coffin
while I tried not to break
in front of the crowd.
I delivered your eulogy
with a voice that somehow stayed,
while every word inside my chest
felt sharpened like a blade.
Then we gave you a wake
that turned into a fucking rave.
Music loud.
Glasses raised.
Crying,
laughing,
dancing through the pain,
because you were never going out
in silence
or in shame.
I had been moving for months,
not living,
just pushing through.
Survival mode kept me standing
while my head was in retreat.
Before you died
I was already buried deep.
My daughter being groomed.
The whistleblowing.
Promises people did not keep.
Speaking out
and watching truth
get twisted and fired back,
like telling people what was wrong
somehow made me the attack.
A relationship fell apart
while I was doing much the same.
CPTSD kicked old doors in,
dragged out memory,
shame
and pain
I thought I had locked away.
Unmasking at forty,
trying to work out who was me.
Which parts were real,
which parts were built
so the world would let me be.
No sleep.
No peace.
No quiet in my brain.
Just caffeine,
stubbornness
and pain.
Then November.
That bridge.
A dissociation so deep
I did not know what my body did,
or where the real me went
when my mind just slid.
I did not walk there wanting death.
That is the truth
I need understood.
My brain shut down,
the lights went out,
and trauma did what trauma could.
It took the wheel.
It took control.
It nearly took my breath.
I survived an attempt
I did not even know
was dragging me towards death.
Then came Christmas.
The sort of Christmas
that stains the word for life.
Christmas Eve,
my brother at a cliff,
and grief arriving like a knife.
The world split clean in two that night.
Before Ben.
Then after.
While other houses filled with lights,
ours filled with tears
and forced fake laughter.
Just trying to understand
how someone here
was suddenly fucking dead.
Then January thirtieth.
Your funeral.
I stood there
and did the hardest thing
I have ever done.
I spoke for you
because you could not.
I told that room
you were more than how you died,
more than Christmas Eve,
the cliff
and all the tears we cried.
Then the music came.
We sent you off
with noise,
love,
drink
and chaos,
before the silence caught us.
Now it is a week later.
The funeral is done.
The music stopped.
The wake has ended.
Everyone has gone.
Only the inquest is left.
One final date.
One final room
trying to explain
why Christmas turned to gloom.
And after that?
I do not know.
That is the bit
I cannot shake.
When there is nothing left to face,
what is left of me to break?
My body is not fighting now.
It has gone still.
The adrenaline left without a word
and dumped me with the bill.
Burnout did not tap my shoulder.
It dropped me where I stood.
My body stopped surviving
because it thought the danger had gone for good.
My bones feel made of concrete.
My head feels far away.
I can sit for hours doing nothing
and still feel drained all day.
I do not know what I am meant to do
when crisis is not shouting,
when there is no next thing to get through
to stop the grief from mounting.
People ask what I need.
I do not know.
They ask where I will turn.
I do not know that either.
I just know I am fucking tired
and everything still burns.
I feel lost
in a life I know
but cannot find my place in.
Like the world kept walking forwards
while I stood still,
just waiting.
My kids are my rock right now.
Their voices pull me from the dark
when everything starts to burn.
Their faces.
Their laughs.
The normal things they do.
They stop the grief
from swallowing me too.
They do not have to fix me.
They remind me I am still Dad,
still needed,
still alive.
Some days
that is the ground
that does not fall away.
The reason I face the day.
I wish the funeral
had closed the door.
It did not.
It showed me
what the silence had in store.
I wish the eulogy
had let some pressure go.
It gave the pain a voice
then left me with the echo.
Now the noise has stopped
and I can hear it all.
The grooming.
The betrayal.
The bridge.
The breakdown.
Every fall.
The sleepless nights.
The mask pulled off.
Christmas Eve.
Your empty chair.
Your coffin.
My voice cracking
while pretending I could bear
to say goodbye
to someone
who should still be fucking there.
All of it has landed now.
And I am tired, Ben.
Not tired like sleep will sort it.
Tired somewhere beneath the skin.
Somewhere no one notices.
I do not know what comes next.
I only know
I made it here.
Through every day
I thought would finish me,
through every sleepless year.
So I will hold onto my kids.
I will write
when speech feels wrong.
I will breathe
when breathing is all I have.
I will keep trying to move along.
And I will try to learn
who the fuck I am
now the danger has all gone.
Because survival finally stopped.
But somehow,
I am still holding on.