Anniversary of my best friend's death was a year ago today. That feels like a weird word to use, but it's the only one I can think of.

It's 2:30 AM here. I knew I'd be up this late, no matter what's going on tomorrow, so I prepped in advanced with a bag of chocolate and Arkham Knight.

I don't care about Batman. Honestly I always found him to be a crappy super hero. But Clay loved him, so that's what I'm playing.

Clay loved comics of all kinds, really. DC, Marvel. He could quote 300 line for line. He loved horror movies, even though he had TERRIBLE taste in them. He was wicked smart and funny as shit. He could write circles around me from middle school onwards. Really going places. But he was discontent, and I guess that was enough.

I'm not gonna try to write in his honor or anything. I don't have the skill. He'd probably think I was being stupid, to be honest, heh. I just...dont want people to forget, I guess. Soooo I guess I'll just talk.

I distinctly remember the middle of winter break, a few months after he'd died. I was staying up until 4, 5 in the morning, playing Diablo for hours on end, eating bad junk food, and marathoning episodes of the Office, then Parks and Rec, then Jessica Jones, so on, so on, so on. I’d wake up one or two hours later and go to work from 9-5, then do the same thing as soon as I got back home. It didn’t matter how much sleep I got because I always felt as exhausted if I got 2 hours of sleep or 10.

I didn’t particularly care about what I did or how I was ruining my body and all that jazz. I would wake up and just be like “ugh why even.” The word to describe this would most likely be “aimless”. It was ridiculously hard to care, and it was also ridiculously hard to understand WHY I didn’t care.

I eventually stopped playing videogames or reading or basically any of the hobbies I usually have because I was just like “meh why bother” which became my default setting. I would lie on my bed and listen to music/ocean sounds for hours and wish I was somewhere else. I was a hot mess.

I'm still a hot mess, don't get it twisted. But I'm a hot mess with a litte bit more purpose. I still have bad days, where I wake up and have to roll myself out of bed via sheer force of will. I’ll still feel like a sloth-slug combo that should just have salt poured on it now and then. I still speak too quietly for people to hear me because I don’t want to disturb…the world, I guess. I’m trying to be more mindful when listening to people or responding to them in a genuine way.

All that said, I hope I'm doing a good enough job to make you proud Clay. Wherever you ended up going, I'm sure you're laughing your ass off like you always are. Peace, dude.