Now You're Gone, I Cry in my Dreams
On inhabiting a new landscape of existence in the aftermath of tragedy.
I am back in the very seat at the café where I wrote my first reflections on bereavement. This time, the tears threatened to pour when I wrote the title, even though these words are not new to me. Why? I suspect when I read my thoughts outside the confines of my mind, I relate to them as if someone else is speaking to me. Being able to convey, to express with clarity and precision, the sensations of human experience is a gift. I have long resisted the claim of possessing it. But alas, I do at the expense of having experienced a life replete with lessons.
I often feel that I am preparing for the worst of life and now I have graduated.
In the individualised socio-economic confines of modernity, everyone is given the false aspiration to be the hero of their own life. To be the so-called main character. The allure of total agency is irresistible and the best of us occasionally fall into the net of this asinine fantasy. Paradoxically, equality among all is a touchstone of popular consciousness in the West, the nucleus of the individualist capitalist mono-culture. This fundamental contradiction goes unremarked in the self-perception of most Westerners. In a society of nominal equals, the secret allure of personal exceptionalism thus manifests. But if we can be heroes of our own lives, who are the villains? Who are the tragic victims?
Who gives a fuck. YOU are the hero and need not concern yourself with such trifles.
Having grown up upper-middle class in the Indian Sub-continent and then come of age working class in Scotland, I gained an immunity to such delusions. For me, life exists in the collective, in the forging of emotional bonds with the people next to me. It was never a straightforward practice of collectivism, there were frequent lapses towards the narcissistic habits of Westerners. Yet I tried relentlessly to forge a mutual understanding with the inner lives of the people I encountered. And despite numerous setbacks that demonstrated the general unwillingness of people to open themselves to such connection with a foreign stranger, the few breakthroughs sustained me for years. I maintained an unreasonable quantity of space for people who would forget me in a day if convenient. That space has recently imploded.
The French philosopher Simone Weil wrote that “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Reading these words gave me a strong sense of affirmation in my practice of giving it abundantly to university colleagues, acquaintances, friends, or strangers. It was given without any implied obligation of reciprocation, only a hope. Nearly every friendship I formed in my time abroad, was formed on the strength of my initiative. I believed, and perhaps still do, that exclusion can be defied. But in our hubris, we begin to behave as if forces external to us cannot enter the stage with a thunderous force and render our endeavours misguided within an instant.
I know exactly when that bolt struck my chest: 09:38 a.m. on the 28th of January, 2023. My sister called me to tell me my brother had died aged 20. At once, I became exiled from the life I had until then led.
And I do not know when, if ever, I can return to that life I was leading. Now there is only the vastness of the uncharted landscape of turbulent emotions. Of regrets. Of anger. Of bewilderment. And I am left asking myself if any words are worth uttering or any actions worth committing. Whether I should walk forward and explore this new landscape during my exile. Or if I should simply squat outside the walls of the old life and wait for death to take me. Yet both options are tainted by their futility. There is no reversing the totality of my brother’s death. A man I did not know, not at all really, but one I will never encounter again no matter how far I search or how loudly I call for him. Thus, all illusions about becoming the protagonist of my life, lie shattered at my feet.
I am changing against my will. My dreams have become vivid and faintly memorable, something I have not experienced since the end of puberty. Last night, I remember crying profusely over the death of my brother, in a manner I do not cry when I am awake. In another dream, I remember holding a young, dying man in my arms after he was shot in the stomach. I cry out for help in German for some reason, and nobody responds, actively ignoring me instead. As dreams go, mine aren’t subtle.
And I am made alone against my will. Where previously it was a challenge to relate and to be relatable, now it feels quite impossible. The gap between my subjectivity and that of others, which previously posed a challenge to bridge, has been pulled apart into a yawning chasm. And one ought not hope to meet people who suffered comparable tragedies even if that seems like the only avenue for forming meaningful connections in the future. I do not like the concept of creating bonds on the basis of shared suffering, even if it is more convenient in a tragic world. Yet all joy is tainted by the impossibility of the joy I hoped to share with a brother I had barely had. Instead, I rue the misguided efforts to relate to underserving people.
The attention I concentrated into forming relationships with the vacuous people at Edinburgh University now feels like it was stolen from my family, particularly my brother. I cannot resist feeling anger and regret for withholding it from someone who had more right to it than any of the narcissistic assholes I encountered. Why did I reach out of the cold routinely to people that never made an effort for me? I tolerated such people before but now I despise them. And there’s no point imploring the shameless to feel remorse. People with an active conscience project a sense of decency on to people who only project villainy on others. I refuse however, to carry my resentments within me. I wish to externalise them if only to clear space in my heart for better people. Pain is not for me to bear alone. Pain, distress, discomfort. Some of it shall be borne by those who were absent in my moment of need.
The pustules of anguish suddenly appearing on my body will take time to excise and yet more time to heal fully. Even then scars shall remain. In the chaotic aftermath of this earthquake within my soul, where I struggle to achieve any coherence nor conform to any way of being, a new landscape shall emerge. I am powerless to determine its contours. I can only roam in exile until I discover a new home. There is no returning to the safety of the walls I inhabited before his death.
Your thoughts make sense and the pain is so palpable - your regrets make sense and I hope that instead you are able to turn them into tributes for your brother through better choices in the future.