"MATT!"

I wake up calling his name, tears staining my cheeks, my body and the sheets drenched in cold sweat.

Every morning I wake up the same way; with the same horrific realisation that my dreams are all real. Every single minute of them. Every night my dreams go from my best friend listing off everything that makes him happy, to him dying in the back of an ambulance with no one there to comfort him.

It's been nearly four months since he died, and almost two since I decided to cut myself off and move here. But it hasn't helped. None of it has helped. My plan backfired massively, and all I have to show for it are over eight weeks of restless nights, and I know they're only just getting started. They aren't letting up, and if anything, I think they're getting worse.

I'm tired.

I'm so tired.

I haven't had a proper night's sleep since August. I can never get more than hour's sleep before the dreams take hold, and after two months I'm really close to my breaking point, wondering if I should just end it all.

I could do it. I could. And then everyone else around me would be better off... But then, whenever my thoughts start to think that low, when I get that desperate for sleep, I think of what Matt would want.

He would want to live. And when I feel like I have nothing else to live for, it's that thought alone that keeps me going every day... That is the thought that keeps me alive.

But that's just it. I'm living for a memory of what was. And I'll be damned if I give it up, because it's the only memory that's keeping my dying spark alive.

***

MY DAYS ALL GO the same.

Every day I wish for the sound of Matt's laughter, or his bright but husky voice. Every day I wish to be able to watch him fly through the air again, saving goal after goal. I would give anything to hear him hurling profanities at the referees and players at Brighton games. I want to hear him getting annoyed at me every time he misses my penalty shots. I want him to throw cushions at me because I'm talking through a good part of a movie. I want to ring him to ask what I should do about...

I swallow.

I want to ask him what I should do about Tessa.

My mouth goes dry thinking of her, and I attempt to swallow again, remembering how it feels to say it.

Tessa.

God, I'm living in Hell in both reality and dreams because I don't have either of them. In my dreams, I lose my best friend. But in my reality, I know I've lost them both. And it's all my fault.

What happened to Matt was beyond my control, I knew that. But it still hurt because of how it happened, and the way in which he died. He had tried to hide how bad his injuries were when we were waiting to be rescued, but I saw it. I saw all the blood running down his shirt, his arm and his face, and I saw the blood he kept coughing up whilst trying to assure me it would all be okay.

But with Tessa, everything was completely within my own control and I completely fucked it up.

All I had to do was let her in and talk to her. I only had to smile and let her be there for me, just like she always had been. But I couldn't. Most days I could barely look at her. I could barely look at anyone. It was all too hard.

I'd taken away someone who was so central to all of our lives, and despite saying otherwise, I knew they set the blame squarely on my shoulders. Seeing them all so sad, knowing it was because of me... well, that's something I'll carry around with me for the rest of my life.

I knew that shutting her out wouldn't feel like the right decision straight away, but I knew it would soon. I also knew I have no one to blame but myself for this situation, and the faster I accept I deserve to be alone for the rest of my life, the better.

But that has been easier said than done so far.

Despite being over four months since the accident everything is still so painfully raw, both physically and emotionally. I haven't spoken to anybody because I know they will remind me of what I did, and that's how it's going to be until I can get my emotions under control. At the moment, my grief is controlling me, and until I can go a week, or even a day, without breaking down, shutting everyone out is just the easiest way to go.

But when it comes to the physical pain, it's not been the smoothest of roads either.

To list a few, my injuries were three times as bad as last time. Some kind of shrapnel ripped through part of my liver and kidney - which both had to be removed - and my shoulder was so badly dislocated there will be a slope to my shoulders for the rest of my life. In that first impact, my left leg had been broken in four places and the ligaments in my right from tearing myself free were almost torn beyond repair. I'd been back and forth to hospital a lot in the last two months, and after an unsuccessful second surgery, doctors were starting to worry if my leg would ever heal.

But finally we're getting somewhere. Now that they've mainly fixed the breaks in my left leg, rest and recuperation are being relied upon for now, and after a few more months of letting the other parts of my body heal, the doctors could finally start putting me back together again. Surgery was scheduled for a few months time, and I was just hoping the metal fuses in my right knee would hold and not pick up any infection like the left one did.

But as well as surgeries, the doctors have given me a lot of promises; that I'll always have a limp, that my shoulders will never be straight again, and that I'll never not know a day without pain. And so far, it's all down to the letter.

It made me angry.

After nearly two years of freedom, without Dad hanging over me, he'd come back and completely destroyed everything I was. He destroyed and disfigured me in such a way that no one will recognise me, because I could barely recognise myself. But if I was being honest, despite it being a painful one, I wanted to walk the road to relative normalcy. But I don't think I'll be walking down it any time soon.

I wasn't even nineteen yet, and I was broken. I was utterly broken, in body and in spirit, and it was getting harder and harder to find the energy to go on much longer.

But then that thought pops up again, the one where Matt would want to live... would want me to live. And each time I think about that doctor's list of surgeries and rehabs I was meant to endure, I knew this was nothing compared to losing my life. But even then, there wasn't anything I wouldn't do to have my best friend back, and for our family to be whole again. I'd give my own life for that.

***

RUBBING MY SHAKING HANDS over my face, I sit up in the large, empty bed, and look at the room.

Due to the way I left, I hadn't had any time to sort accommodation when I arrived here in New York, so I just checked into the first hotel I could find that had space. It was small, and the bed wasn't that comfortable but it fits my mood and my headspace. I was crippled, and I was alone, and sitting in a dark hotel room after waking up from a everlasting nightmare, so yep. Fits perfectly.

I hobble across to the window, leaning on chairs as I make my way, and look out at the wishing for a miracle.

I wish to reverse every decision I'd made since Matt died. I wish that the last six months hadn't happened, and that I'd never decided to study at Columbia. My dream had been shattered, and was now in freefall, which is not where I thought it would be.

Out the window, the night is calm in front of me, despite the storm going on in my head. It's just past two in the morning, so the only evidence of the bustling city is the distant sound of sirens. As I focus on the sirens, closing my eyes, I feel my mind wander on its own.

All I can see is Tessa.

I see the trip she's supposed to make here in December to visit, and the travelling we were supposed to do. I see how her green eyes match the remaining green in the trees in Central Park. I see how her warmth is trying to wrap around me as the seasons change from Summer to Autumn. I can see so many things, but before my mind spirals, I shut it down and try to think of something else. Anything else.

As I stare out, trying to block out the memories, I realise how still and beautiful it is, and I know I would have loved it here under different circumstances. I know it could have grown to become a nice little haven for me here.

But right now, New York is just another Hell away from home.