I just found this piece of writing in a book of notes that I was looking through for something else entirely. I think I wrote it a few months after my brother died in 2009, I just edited it a bit and posted below.
Once my current book Coding: a user guide is submitted to Penguin, deadline 1st January 2018, I’m going to write my autobiography. Suicide is a really hard subject to write about, this piece of writing is what happened and my immediate thoughts after my brother died. I’ve written a few other pieces related to this one:
Falling into the abyss: what depression feels like to me
Young Rewired State and my brother Stephen
Raymondos
Happy Mother’s Day
If I can do it, so can you
I hope you enjoy them. I’d love your feedback on anything I’ve written about. Going on an Arvon writing course a couple of weeks ago has really made me realise how much I love writing and want to do more of it.Â
Thanks for taking the time to read my work and I look forward to hearing from you â¤Â
The day my brother died
My phone rang. Well actually it didnât ring, it barked. Iâd spent some time recently changing some of the ringtones on my phone so that I would know who was ringing before I looked at my phone. Iâd chosen a barking dog ringtone for my sister because she loves dogs.
It was 11.30pm. My sister Sarah never rang late in the evening, so I knew something was seriously wrong.
 âItâs only me.â Sarah said.
âHave you got someone with you?
I felt a terrible tightness in my chest. My existence suddenly came into sharp focus with an acute hyperawareness of everything around me. The room seemed to buzz with silence.
âYes, Paulâs here.â I managed to whisper.
Dread filled my heart. I somehow knew what she was about to say. I fell onto the sofa, moaning.
âItâs Stephen.â She said and started crying, a dreadful animal cry.
âOh God.â
My head started spinning. I knew what was going to come next. There was a pause which seemed to last for ever, but was probably just a second or two.
âHeâs dead.â She said finally.
âWhat happened?â I said. Inside my head my brain was screeching.
âHe hung himselfâŚin the garage.â
âOh God.â
âWhereâs Rachel?â
âSheâs at the hospital with him, she had to cut him down.â
âOh no, and the boys?â
âTheyâre with Rachelâs parents.â
âOh God.â
I started wailing and couldnât stop. My whole world started collapsing in my head. My little brother Stephen was dead. By his own hand. My little baby brother. Dead.
Paul put his arm around me. I sobbed and sobbed.
âMy brotherâs deadâ I cried.
âHeâs hung himself.â
***
I thought we had all escaped. I thought we had all put that pain and abuse behind us, and moved on with our lives. But now that Stephen was dead, I knew that wasnât true. We had not escaped. The dreadful experiences we had gone through as children had caught up with us.
I thought we had beaten them into submission and walked away the victors. But Stephenâs suicide now meant that Iâd been kidding myself. We hadnât escaped at all.
We had tried to escape, but some of that rotten, maggoty existence had stayed in our minds. It had stayed in our minds for thirty long years slowly and almost imperceptibly gnawing its way through, rarely lifting its head.
Now, the game was up. Iâd spent thirty years congratulating myself on escaping, on my brother and sister escaping and feeling ridiculously proud of what we had all achieved in our lives. But now?
What now?
Now that Stephen was dead, now that he had killed himself, my life, our lives were exposed as a sham. Suicide is the opposite of success.
I had thought that we had escaped and gone on to lead normal, even exemplary lives. But no. The maggoty rot had returned.
Our lives had been a sham. We were dragged back, like it or not, into our past lives where we had no control, no self-esteem, no life.
We had lost.
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