Six months ago when we saw each other, my focus was heavily on
the last 10 years of your life. “How do we fix this?” I asked you drunk
on my bedroom floor. I could see your pain, and your worry, and more
than anything I wanted to make it all go away.
I wanted to see you succeed, and selfishly, I wanted to love a healthier
version of you. I believed in you, and I knew if you needed
me, you would call. Others got angry and resentful, some were just
sad, and others I’m sure just tried to take away all of your personal
space. Loving you was hard, but you know that, you struggled with it
more than we did.
There’s no actual road map to loving someone who struggles so
deeply. And I know for certain you weren’t handed the directions either.
Everyone now is wondering the same thing “what could I have done
different.” And I’m sure that most of us have a pretty long list… but for
myself the one thing I know I could have done was not convince
myself that this could never happen.
And there comes a point where stopping the struggles seemed
to overshadow simply just loving each other. Phone calls, texts and visits
started to come out of necessity and not desire. The 5 hour drive became
the easy answer to any invitation, and we both just accepted it…
And any distance I put between us, it didn’t actually save me from any pain.
Because it really could happen, and it fucking did.
You died.
You fucking died.
At first anger took over my life you wouldn’t believe dude. Not even a
rational anger that had any direction, just hot rage coming out of every
pore of my body. I spent a week walking around in a haze trying to
catch my breath and get the brick in my stomach to go away. People
keep asking me how I’m doing, and I’m running out of bad jokes and
fake smiles.
You fucking died.
But I’m not angry anymore, not for a single thing that ever happened.
See, the thing is, I KNOW how hard you tried. I know how deeply you
loved everyone in your life. Most of all I know how badly you
wanted to love life and yourself. I know, if you could have ended up
doing this differently, that you would have.
My heart will never truly understand how this could ever be real, losing
you has been the worst experience I can actually remember. But you
haven’t let me down love, because I know you always tried.
-Anonymous
EDIT: The guest writer wishes to stay anonymous. I do not own the rights to this letter.