One year ago, I was in Ine, Japan, one of the most beautiful places in the world. It’s hard to even describe how different things were then, and not just because I was sharing food with strangers on a cramped bus, flying internationally, and all those garish pre-pandemic things. I was also working on a video game that would have been announced by now, having meetings with the publisher while on my trip because there was so much to be done on the project, and collaborating with my brother after a lifetime of wanting to. I was planning for a family, children, and thinking about how I would fit those things in between my PhD and the launch of our game. I was astonished that my brother and I were both doing so much better, healing from our traumas, and wondering how we could possibly be this happy.
That solo trip to Japan was a reminder that I could thrive on my own. I didn’t know how much I would need that skill in the year to come, how isolated I would be at times, how many people I would lose—how much more loss the world would face as a whole.
There is too much that is horrible about the death of my brother and the events surrounding it. So much that can’t be explained or said publicly. I’ve gotten good at compartmentalizing it, because sometimes that is the only way to survive, but every so often the flood gates open and wash me away.
Somehow, mostly, I just feel grateful. Astonished that I have seen such beautiful things as this, that I get to spend my mornings tangled up in rose bushes, that there are still people who remain by my side, who believe in life and love, who dig their fingers into the mud of the world with me and laugh at how dirty we’ve become.
I miss Japan, I miss my brother, I miss everyone I’ve loved and love, I miss today as it slips between my fingers, as the air grows cooler and the sun dips down.
Original Song: Silhouette
Original Song: Verdammt
Original Song: Armselig
Songs for the Cure: Anumbra
Photos: Who Killed Eileen Holowka
