bring light

my cousin died when he was 13

i was 11

it was an accident

it happened right in front of my eyes

can i tell how insanely panful this was?

no. i can’t

but i can tell you that i’ve spent about 10 years struggling with life

until i realised that it was death i was struggling with

and then more death happened

and more death

and more death

and then i woke up

and now i know that every day is a a gift

even when i scream from pain

i know it’s a gift

love has shown me the way

love is the only answer

fear is what destroys it all

admit it

death is what happens to us

ALL

but it’s also what makes life worth

LIVING

ways_out

The first things I did after I came back from my cousin’s funeral I drew a picture of him. It was an awfully bad drawn portrait. Strangely enough only 2 years after, I tried to draw a human face and it worked out perfectly well. But when my cousin died I wanted to capture his face so badly I couldn’t actually draw his face at all. Even though I was 10, the drawing looked as if it was made by a 5-year-old. So I compensated by drawing the pattern of my cousin’s shirt. It was a white and light blue check-board shirt made of flannel. It suited my cousin’s eyes very well and the material was very nice to touch. Each check-board in the pattern was tiny. I took a light blue pencil and I’ve spent next 5 hours colouring each tiny square of his shirt. Methodically, I coloured one, and then didn’t colour the 4 next to it, to make sure they created the correct pattern. The pencil got broken in the end, and I finished the last bit of the sleeve with a marker. It wasn’t the same colour and I was disappointed. Nevertheless, after spending hours on this drawing I could reconnect with my cousin. His life ended very suddenly. As a 10 year old I couldn’t comprehend this sudden loss of a connection to someone I really loved. We were best friends. You take love for granted when you’re 10. And he was only 3 years older. It was the first time I became aware of how unpredictable death was. Plus, the idea of my own immortality hit me. I was 10. I could have been dead already then.

I started reading Bible. Each time ‘truth spoke to me’ I underlined the sentences I liked. This way I could come back and reconnect with the words of wisdom.

Three years later I found myself in a cult.