When K.B lost his junior brother, the world turned quiet too quiet, tears flowed uncontrollably. He was like a child sobbing uncontrollably with mucus hanging fromhis nose. It was the kind of silence that stayed there, heavy and suffocating, he cried and cried, he tried to swallow the pain but it was choking. The accident was random, stupid even. A drunk driver, a rainy night, a split second. One moment they were laughing on the way home from a football match and the next, K.B was holding his brother’s hand, lifeless. In the days that followed, people came with condolences, soft words, pitying eyes, promises that “time heals all wounds.” K.B hated them all. Time? What did time know about pain? What did it know about waking up every night replaying that one moment again and again? So he found another mechanism. Anger. It gave him something to hold on to. It was simpler than sadness. Cleaner. When he was angry, he didn’t have to feel weak. He didnt have to cry. He stopped talking to friends. He fought strangers over nothing. He shouted at his mother when she told him to pray. He poured all the noise inside him into rage because it was easier than grief. And when the police finally caught the driver that killed his brother, a thin frightened man with tired eyes K.B’s anger exploded.
He wanted to hit him, to see fear in his eyes, to make him pay. “You took my brother!” he shouted across the courtroom. “You destroyed my family!” But the man didn’t defend himself. He just said quietly, “I wish it was me instead.” K.B froze. Those words hit harder than any blow could. For the first time, the anger cracked. Behind it was something worse, and that was emptiness. The mechanism, Anger had worked too well it had built walls so high that no comfort, no healing, no peace could get through. It took years for him to learn that anger had only kept the wound open. He started volunteering at a rehab center, meeting people who’d made mistakes like that driver. He listened. He forgave. Slowly, painfully, he began to rebuild the bridge. Sometimes at night, he still talks to his brother’s memory. He'd go to his room and reminisce with this properties, his room had stayed untouched. “I thought being angry would honor you,” he says softly. “But it only made me lose more of you.” Because sometimes, the wrong mechanism could just break you.