Hi, ▇▇. My love. My beautiful angel.
Today marks 3 years you’ve been gone. Every day still hurts. I have no idea how or why I chose to stay here. You’ve missed so much … I’m a completely different person now. This time of year always brings back such terrible memories.
I know you’re content with the choice you made, but I wish I could have prevented it somehow. I wish I had been there—in real life, and not over the phone—so I could have given you a hug to let you know everything was going to be okay.
For a while, I was so mad at you.
How could you do that?
How could you show me that?
Why would you do that to our families and to me?
Unfortunately the older I get, the more and more I understand why you did that. The world is so cruel and the escape from reality seems necessary. They say life is short but I feel like it’s too long.
1095 days without you.
It’s funny because it’s not funny.
It’s funny because I have erased any evidence of your existence.
It’s funny because it still hurts.
I don’t want to be poetic, I want to empathize with you. But the question still passes through my mind every once in a while.
Who hurt you?
We had been friends since I was 9 and you were 8. And then one day you just … Changed.
Shortly after you passed I got raped. It changed me a lot. Not as much as what you did. But it changed me.
I spend every day laughing and trying to hide the fact that my emotional pain is unbearable. People think I’m a guy with no filter and no shame.
I think the reality of it is, ▇▇, I will never feel the way I felt when it was just us. When we would walk home from school together, and then the sadness I would feel when we had to go down different streets to go home. But then the happiness I felt when you texted me less than 30 minutes later asking if I wanted to FaceTime.
It’s a fleeting feeling.
And it fled too fast.
How can I only be 17? I feel like my life is coming to a closing chapter but people keep telling me I’ve just begun.
I’ve been getting really into my studies and trying to move out. I have 3 ½ credits left, and then I’m done. The issue of the matter, of course, is that my mom is so obsessed with me.
You probably remember that though. I’ve had Life360 since I was 8.
Actually, I think I’ve lost the incentive to keep telling you these things.
I thought about that night. It actually passes through my mind a lot. I tried going spiritual for a while, just trying to see if maybe it could help. I would look at the stars and say that you were up there looking down on me, making sure I stayed safe.
Now the stars hurt.
Now the sunsets hurt.
Being in the dark hurts.
And that’s what you did to me. You left me in the dark.
Now even the thought of you hurts.
I never thought it would get this bad.
You never think the one person in your life you can always depend on will just leave forever.
But maybe it’s not forever, maybe we meet up again somewhere after we’ve died. I have low expectations for that, but I can hope.
I think if there is a good and a bad place, I’m going to the bad place. I’m not a good person, even with all of the nice things people say about me, I’m not a good person.
After you died, I stopped eating. I dropped like 90lbs, I want to say thank you but all it did was fuck me up. I had to go into a residential program. It was absolutely horrible. They gaslit me and my parents into stuff that wasn’t true. Then they got me on medication just to numb me out, so I couldn’t truly feel the emotions I had. Who needs emotions anyway. I got off the medications they had me on. I have high days and low days, but most are pretty vanilla.
That’s part of the reason I’m writing to you. I found someone just like you.
Just like you…
But, since you left I don’t trust the same.
I don't feel the same.
I don't think the same.
I will deny it until I die to anybody else.
But,
You ruined me.
And I can’t forgive you.
But I miss you. I miss myself.