Survivor's Guilt

It's almost weird that I'm typing this post while I'm sitting in my room in New Haven, which essentially means I'm on my third continent this year. It's been 2 months since my last post, and it's been a very, very insane two months. From my month-long trip to Europe to starting college and now, summer immersion at Yale University, I am truly blessed.

But I'm writing this with a heavy heart mainly because I'm blessed. Sure, scoff and say I'm an ungrateful brat. I'm dealing with the worst survivor's guilt I've ever had at this moment mainly because I'm so blessed and everything is falling in place and I'm seeing so many amazing things that my brother would have wanted to. I know he is proud of me, I know he's really glad that I'm doing all these stuff, living the life he was meant to, but whenever someone says that to me, do you know how goddamn awful I feel? It's almost like I'm enjoying all this because he passed away, and frankly, it's partly true. I'm in the position I'm in now because his memory has spurred me on, because I live everyday trying to be the best person I can ever be for him just so wherever he is, he's looking down at me, proudly saying, "That's my baby sister."

That's not to say that I don't think I would have achieved similar successes if he was still around. Hell, my life would be infinitely different. I often think about the choices I have made that has led me to this moment in time, and it made me realise how often those choices were shaped by answering the question, "Would Abang be proud of what you're doing now?" This is not to say that I'm living my life solely for my brother. I've made a lot of difficult decisions that I know my brother may not have approved of, but would have understood. I've fucked up so many times because I just felt like making mistakes. And yet, at the end of every damn day, I still ask myself that question.

I'm not ashamed that I'm who I am today because of my brother's legacy. But if I had it my way, I wouldn't have him gone. I would want him here every day to see that I turned out good, that despite all the stupid mistakes I made when he was still around, I managed to turn over a new leaf and come out stronger. I know that 8 years on, all the people who knew and loved him still miss him very much. My entire family, his friends, his girlfriend. I know that we're all dealing with the loss in very different ways, and I am acutely aware that none of us have actually "gotten over it". I hate it when people tell me to "get over it", by the way, as though his death is as simple as losing a pen. Anyone who has ever dealt with the loss of a loved one would tell you straight up that we never, ever get over it. The loss is always there, profoundly present in ways we could never explain. We just learn to be stronger, deal with the pain a lot better so we cry a lot less, but we never get over it.

Thinking back to when I was 11, freshly in mourning, I think I've come a long way. I've never actually admitted that back then was one of the hardest points in my life because I was dealing with a whole new emotion I had never felt before, and there wasn't anyone to help me handle it. But I took all that pain and confusion and I became a better person (I like to think I am a better person than I used to be, because I was horrible as a kid). It's sad that I lost both my brother and hero, but I turned that around and I live everyday trying to make sure I make the people around me happy. And it's this very knowledge that keeps me going every single time I fall back into melancholy, every time my heart aches because it misses him more than usual, every time I feel like I'm the one who should have died that day.