The Competition that Never Was

You’re Still Falling in my Mind

“I remember that we were walking along the concrete trails that paved our way through the exhausted suburban forest when we first spoke of how we could help each other with following our dreams and creating a better world to live in. We talked about those lonely trees that surrounded us, just as we talked about everything else that viciously attacked your misunderstood twenty-two year-old soul. You didn’t tell me that you were going to die, but you let everyone else know by jumping off of that god damn building. You’re a selfish, inconsiderate, sophomoric pile of human shit, equal to the weight of the world on your shoulders.

I wish you were still alive to disagree with my erroneous opinions and I would do anything to bring you back so that you can demolish my hypothesis with your brilliance. You’re such an idiot. I mean, you were smart enough to glide through high school without any issues, you spent five hours a night studying for your SAT’s just so you could rub your perfect score in my defeated ninety-fifth percentile face. You graduated to bigger things after high school, mostly a grand sense of fashion, a titanic perception for the fine arts and a huge affinity for schedule one narcotics; that’s what the millennial suburban environment will do to you. I wanted to follow you until things went wrong as they usually did, leaving me an open position for saving your ass with my pragmatic strategizing and premeditated lectures over responsibility and critical thinking. You may have been the smart twin, but I sure as hell wasn’t the evil twin. I still think about your senior prank at Hillcrest High School, and how genius it was to release 4,000 ladybugs into the principles office during his morning announcements.

You’re gone, but nobody actually misses you, except for when the NYC fire department missed catching you entirely. Sure, fifteen-story buildings are colossal, yet it’s disappointing to see seven fire fighters drop your still alive body on the pavement. Someone in the crowd filmed your jump and I laughed while I watched it, thinking that this was another one of your practical jokes, but after your first two front flips and your infamous crash landing, all I could think about during the video was a smashed pitcher of sweet cherry kool-aid; a bit gritty for most people’s tastes, but still wasted on the unforgiving floor. I watched the coroners as they moped up all that remained of your lifeless, useless and abandoned carcass that once contained a spirit strong enough to faithfully leap from the top of a Marriot hotel, the same spirit that lied to me about your intentions. As I recall, you informed me that you were going on a business trip, and that was the same day you urgently begged me to drive you to the airport for your flight to New York.

You said I couldn’t go, and like a good friend, I just shrugged at you and let you go on about your business before your plans fell through as a result of my loneliness. I was alone, but you kept me company during my search for isolation from this planet of discomfort. But that's who I was, the twin that was born two-minutes after your grand entrance, the plus one to your fantastic life, the lonely twin who was only friends with your friends by association; regardless to this, you were the best friend a boy could ask for. You were always in control of the situation and I was just your brother that stuck to you tighter than the Boy-Wonder’s spandex. My own brother was the man on the inside, but you knew what we had went beyond blood. Brothers or not, I would have followed you, even though I hated all that you were doing behind your facade of a 4.0 GPA and a full ride scholarship to any school in the country. I could have gone anywhere, but Mom and Dad never cared about where I should go to improve myself. Funny story actually, both Mom and Dad blame me for you jumping off a building, because according to Mom’s impeccable hindsight, “if the family never went to New York for my college visit at NYU, you would have never seen that Marriot to begin with.” Another thing, those were the only words she said after you died, and we both know that woman never shuts up.

I mean, remember the time our high school basketball team won the big game again Chino Hills and all mom was doing during that time was talk to the news stations about how smooth your three-point shot was. She always called us Scotty Pippin and Michael Jordan, but not necessarily in that order. James, since you died, Mom hasn’t said a word about the funeral, her divorce with Dad or the fact that she still has another son living. There’s just too many questions I never got to ask you, and I know for a fact that I could have saved you from this, thing called manic depression, whatever the fuck that is. Those quacks never received the privilege of getting close to you, so how could they even consider diagnosing a person as happy as you were with a temporary problem like the one’s we always solved together. You were my brother, my twin, the better half and I’m all that’s left? Fuck you dude, and happy birthday jackass. It wasn’t enough for you to enter the world first; you always pushed the envelope. James, you beat me at everything, including the race to end your life, but it’s not your fault. I guess some people are just born to be winners.