3 months since 3 became 2.

'One day, years from now, you're going to look back and wonder how on Earth you managed the last 6 months. But you will.'

- Maria Guarnieri

There's literally not a day I don't think about either of them when I wake up or fall asleep. I know I'm starting to get better because I'm not as obsessive as I used to be. I don't lay in bed all day tormenting myself with 'what ifs' but now I think up ideas for 'what can'. Death is one of the cruel sacrifices that comes with having the ability to LIVE. See things, meet people, have an impact. I don't want Nik or Jasmin's death to be in vain. It's so cringey and cliched to say 'I'm going to live life to the fullest now' (and also kind of rude - did it take someone to die for you to realise not to waste the few years you have here?) but that's just the way it is.

Anyone who knows me will know how seriously I take dreams. For as long as I can remember, they've been really vivid and sometimes seem to foretell stuff that's going to happen later. Recently all my dreams are about change and how I don't want to accept it (today's for example was about being forced to marry in a purple dress I loathed). Politicians preach 'change' to get votes but you're VOTING for it, it's optional. When your own life overhauls, when there's an extra bedroom in your house with no one to sleep in it or a phonecall to be made that cannot be received, it scares the shit out of you. Because when someone dies you're crying for many reasons: the things they never got to do, the things you never said, the things you did say but ultimately, it's the fact that from this moment on your life will never be the same. It was a horrible realisation that from now on I only have 1 brother. Or do I say 'I have two but one died'? I still haven't worked this out. I feel like I'm still the middle child because that's all I've been for the last 20 years (bar 8 days), but as Nish (the younger one) pointed out 'one day we're going to be in our 40s and remember we had an older brother'. Just typing that made me sad.

When Maria said those wise, and comforting, words to me in her office I thought to myself 'what's been getting me through?'. I honestly have no idea. Maybe it's a mix of embracing my nostalgia (listening to songs and going to places I associate with them, telling stories, staring at photos and reading old messages) and developing new tastes (watching episodes of 'Have I Got News For You' that I know Nik will never watch, eating foods that used to make me gag). Maybe I'm just forgetting what it is I miss. Or maybe it's my long-standing belief that 'everything happens for a reason'. I just don't know what it is yet.