An Open Letter to Josh
Dear Josh,
Or maybe, “Dear Drug addled scumbag inhabiting my brother’s body”.
What. The. Fuck? And once again for emphasis. Seriously. What. The. Fuck. Man? What on earth are you doing? And more importantly how do you justify it to yourself and not realise the irreparable damage you are causing, not only to your body but to all of your important and close relationships. Seriously, I would like to know. So I can also live a life without guilt. Do you even know what the word means anymore? Do you feel guilt, or remorse, or…actually do you feel anything? Cause from where I sit, the only thing it seems like you feel is the need to “get fried”, or “get loose” or whatever other bullshit fucken term you wanna use for getting absolutely fucked up on hard and illicit pharmacological substances.
Is it still fun? Cause, I gotta be honest, I would assume the shine would come off a little after a while. Hell, even I get bored of video games some times. Apparently though you don’t suffer that particular affliction. Maybe that’s the problem. “Hmm, I’m bored. I know, speed.”.
“Hmm, bored again. Better do some Ice”.
Shit man, when I get bored I just wank.
Honestly Josh, you have become a thing. You are no longer a person. People don’t talk about you like a person. You are a thing, a problem to be discussed, or solved. Only there is no solution. You’re a fucking Rubik’s cube. Ok, I know some people can solve them, but I can’t. I’ve looked at it/you from every angle I can think of and I can’t see a fix. Maybe you’re just a broken Rubik’s cube. Some fuckhead tried to pull it apart and put it back together to cheat the solution, but they lost some of the blocks, or snapped them or something.
I know that most people experiment with drugs. Some people make them a career. Some make them a lifestyle. But you have turned them into a fucking art form. And not good art. Incomprehensible, pretentious bullshit art. Art that tries to please everyone at once and by doing so pleases no one. After a big night at “Tramp” getting high on nothing but the “music”, what is the first thing you think when you wake up? How does your head feel? Your body?
Oh and by the way, can you enlighten me? You know I’m not “down with the drugs lingo”. Is “music” the name of a new pill? Like “Red Mitsubishi” or “White Diamond” or something. Or is it just a really clever attempt by you to misdirect us all and make us believe you aren’t using? I’ll let you in on a secret………..it’s not working.
I’ve been thinking back and trying to figure out how it all went so horribly wrong for you. I can’t understand the event in your life that was so horrible, that you need to forget everything all the time. I don’t know who you are any more.
As it stands, if you weren’t my brother we wouldn’t be friends. If you weren’t my brother you wouldn’t even be someone I would want to talk to. If you weren’t my brother, you would be one of the fuckwits that me and Shane and probably even you, back in the day, would have made fun of. You are a person now that I wouldn’t let in my house. If I had a baby I wouldn’t let you hold it. I wouldn’t even let you wash my car, or mow my lawn.
I will would have done anything for you. But, the only thing I see myself doing for you now is carrying you out of a church in a wooden box and putting you in the ground. I can see it clearly in my head. It would be a nice sunny day. The church would be full of friends and family, some would be crying. Most would be sad but some would be breathing a sigh of relief. I know that sounds incredibly insensitive but I’m just being honest. Finally, we would know where you are at all times. We would know that your journey towards self destruction was over.
Thinking about you getting closer and closer to death from your “mad partying” I used to get mad. Really mad. But then that passed and I started to get sad. Really, really sad. But now. When I think about the possibility of getting a call from Dad or Mum or Joel to say that you are now a corpse I think, “Man I wonder how many days off from work I’ll get”. Awful isn’t it. But I can only care for so long. I can only sit up nights wondering about you. Hoping you’ll get clean. Praying to a God I don’t believe in. I can only do it for so long until I can’t care anymore. Until I can’t carry the burden anymore and I have to let it go. This, from what I can tell is what’s happening to you a lot. You are loved by a lot of people, and they won’t stop loving you, but they will, and have started to stop caring about you and what happens to you. What’s the point when you don’t care yourself right?
I remember a night a few years ago at the Prince of Wales in Seymour, when you told me you were a heroin addict. My hear t broke. All I could think was, how did this happen? How did I let this happen? You were my little bro; still a child and I hadn’t protected you. I wrote a song for you and for a while it seemed like all was well. But over the last few years you’ve gone back down that road and never looked back.
I think about the little blonde kid with the too big glasses. Always riding his BMX, or going fishing. Remember when we built the prickle tunnels? Remember grass sliding? What happened to that kid? I remember the little kid who used to love going outside and having fun. I remember the kid who loved skateboarding and had the talent to go pretty far with it. I remember the kid who played “A Link to the Past” with me. We named out character “LeJosh” and took it in turns. I remember the little guy we used to call the Milky Bar kid. I miss that guy. But he’s pretty much gone now. I know he still exists somewhere deep down inside you, but he’s trapped. Stuck inside this prison you’ve built out of drugs. Its like, that guy I remember is caramel, covered in Carob. Nobody likes fucking Carob man. It tastes like shit and everyone knows it’s fake. But caramel is fucking awesome.
I hope you do read this letter. Forgive the rambling, incoherent nature of it; I just have a lot to say. But I do hope you read it and maybe it reaches that small part inside of you that’s still you. Maybe it makes you realise what’s happening and gets you to think about making a change. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you read this and go “Fuck you” and that’s fine too. But I get the feeling if that happens, in the not too distant future you’ll be in the ground and ruining one day a year.
