Dear ---

Dear —,

I don’t know how to respond to your post. I’m not even sure if mine would ever reach you. So maybe I like to think that if that’s the case, then maybe you’ll see this, someway and somehow.

If not … then I need to make sure this is here. Because the silence will stretch and I wont know.

And then I will.

And it’ll creep up on me.

And I can’t think of that right now, or I’ll be too scared to think.

So I need to write you a letter.

And one way or the other, it’ll get to you.

One way or the other, it’ll find you.

Whether I tell you scraps of it late at night.

Or not.

And I need you to see it in some way. So here I am.

I’ve watched you lose yourself. Over and over. Ups and downs, until the downs might never have an up.

And maybe that happened this time. And maybe that’s what I’m seeing now.

So I need you to know something. I need you to know I love you. That that night you didn’t feel like you had anyone. You’re alone. And you’re in a position where you couldn’t hear me saying that I was there, that you were this amazing star in my life, that you’ve helped me though this year maybe more than anyone else.

It hurts that I can’t help you though this.

That I can’t reach through the screen and show you that you really were all those things to me.

Sometimes those things are beyond me.

That you’re my best friend.

That I’ve found myself thinking about you every week with a smile on my face.

And watching this latest spiral hurt.

I sometimes wonder what it means that the thing that sticks to me about suicide is something that my father taught me. After hearing so many bad things about him over this year, you probably don’t think very fondly of him.

It was my old father who said this. The man I loved. I think you would have liked him, actually. I wish you could have met him.

But well … he said that his brother killed himself because he saw it as the strongest way that he could face the world. That it had thrown his brother all the bad cards and that this was the only hand he could work out to play.

If that’s what happened with you, I hope …

… I just hope that you have peace from that.

My mother warned me about you.

Did you know that?

Ha.

Not in a bad way, I guess.

Just in a way that’d hurt.

But I told her that, even if this is the usual outcome from someone in your position, that I’d do it anyway.

Stay your friend.

Any hurt losing you will cause me is a dark corner of a beautiful painting.

You’d always worry that you were being too much or just trying to get attention. I think you were very self-aware. And frankly I would have given you the attention. And I don’t think you believed me when I said I could take your dark side.

I don’t think you ever showed it to me.

Not really.

But I’m okay with that. You weren’t ready to. Maybe you never would have been.

But any attention I gave you was freely given.

You were very respectful to me.

Maybe I have a bit of my mother in me. That I’ve tempered myself to hear the same things she hears on a daily basis. That I might not know the same things to say, but … well …

I hope I brought half as much joy to your life as you brought to mine.

You should have had more.

I’m not sure how to move along with this.

I want to say something to you.

I’ve heard so many people say I have a silver-tongue, but no words are going to fix this. I can’t speak the universe into changing. I can’t change you. Or where you are or how you are.

I can’t change the bad people in your life.

I can’t bring back the good people in your life.

And though I tried, I can’t be the excuse for you to stay.

Your life is and was in your own hands.

I just wish I knew what you did with it.

And I’ll stare at your last message and I wont know if it’s real.

Will I know how to properly grieve.

Do you want me to grieve?

I feel like you deserve better.

I find myself checking things to try and find you in them.

I remember that time you tried to leave - when I was there. And then the next couple days you tried to tell me how sorry you were. As if I would somehow hate you for it. There isn’t a proper way for me to say that at that point it was never going to be about how I felt. All I felt at that point was wanting to help you so badly it hurt.

Same now.

Same all last week.

I don’t know how I grieve.

I haven’t lost anyone since I was five. Not like this.

But I want to for you. Things are cold right now though.

How do I think about this?

I want to write you a letter about how much you meant to me. That if you’re gone and never coming back, that I wont forget you.

That you had meaning.

That you meant a lot to me.

That you got me through this year.

And that I would keep going.

But that feels so petty.

What does that do for you?

But what can I do for you?

There is either a friend, who will be back tomorrow or the day after, or you’re gone beyond me doing anything for you.

It’s not a nice feeling.

I hope you’re there tomorrow.

Please be there tomorrow.

But if you aren’t …

If you’re gone …

I love you.

I wanted you to escape from all you were in as hard as I could.

I would have done everything possible for it.

But I can’t change anything. I can only do what I did.

And I can only do from this point what I can.

Be there.

If not for you, then the next person.

And I’ll think of you.

I regret that we never hugged.

//hugs

It isn’t the same.

I hope peace finds you.

Whatever that means.

Bye.