Bret

Dear Bret,

I don’t want to do this anymore. There are some days when I’m tired of breathing, walking…waking up. There are some days when everything feels like it is miles away, and I’m walking barefoot on broken glass just to cross a room.

If I can feel all of this and continue to live everyday; if I can wade through these emotions, the ones that drag me beneath the surface and try desperately to drown me in angst and sorry and pain…always so much pain… I can’t even begin to wonder how lonely you really must have been.

I was your girl once, even if for just a brief flash of time, supplicant to your will, and exposed to your ignorance. But part of me loved you, which is why it all hurt so badly, why the end of us was even more terrible than I wanted it to be.

Can you read this? Are you staring over my shoulder right now?

It’s been raining for three days, and I haven’t seen the sun for a while, but a few minutes ago, there was a bright spot coming through my window at work, a stream of light. It disappeared like smoke, and I wanted it desperately to come back. It was as if I were clinging to hope and it just slipped through my fingers like fine grains of sand. Like life, just, slipping away. I felt that brief fear and panic as it turned dark again.

Is it dark where you are? I don’t want you to be in the dark. I don’t want your skin to be cold and your eyes hidden in shadows. Red for the warrior and Green for the Thassa. I remember, perfectly. I thought you had a passion for life, and I think somewhere in there, you did, but it obviously didn’t match the pain and the loneliness, because in the end you’re not here anymore. You’re not …anywhere.

Maybe it’s selfish of me to feel so sad. I know we didn’t have the chance to remain friends even after we split apart. But I never wished you harm, even through all the anger and tears, I never wanted this, I never dreamed you were capable of giving in.

And I’m angry, I’m angry and I’m hurt and I want you to be here so I can yell at you for being so selfish and not…reaching out. But you wouldn’t have, would you? You never would have really reached out and told anyone how lonely or hopeless you felt. Always so concerned about appearances, about being strong and being able to withstand anything.

You lied. You lied to me, you lied to the girls, you lied to your friends and the people that love you. You lied. And I could forgive a lie, I forgive it now, but I don’t want you to be gone. No one wants that, and now you can’t turn around, you can’t come back and you can’t change your mind.

I have so many questions…and I’m so sad for you, for your family, your friends, for your comrades.

Do you remember what the last thing I said to you was? I told you that you had a lot of audacity coming to me for help with anything, after the way that you treated me. And I was right, but we all know how audacious you are…you were. I hate referring to you in a past tense…

Didn’t I see you on Yahoo messenger last night? I was a click away, I could have said hi…after all, I hadn’t put you on ignore, I just pretended you didn’t exist. You were the reason I left JAG, I just couldn’t get away from the situation, no matter how hard I tried. So I left you there, I guess for nostalgia, to remind me….but I never messaged you, and all the messages you sent me, I ignored.

Maybe I shouldn’t have ignored your messages. I shouldn’t have ignored Roy’s either. It’s been 3 years and a few weeks since Roy pulled a trigger that ended his life, and now you’ve done the same thing. How do we recover from this? How do we not be scared to get close to someone? How do we wipe away the guilt, or the anger of the frustration? How do we get past the tears?

You’re gone now, and I’m sad, my heart weeps for you and the loss of a life that I didn’t realize I cared this much about. Maybe it’s the fear of death that really has a hold of me, but if I can fear death, and care that much more about life…

I will, because I am a survivor of your suicide, of Roy’s suicide and of Tommy’s suicide, and my Father’s suicide, and there are only so many tears I am capable of shedding before my well of compassion and sadness dries up and I become a quiet, empty husk of myself in order to sink inward to coax my heart back to the surface.

You didn’t take your life just from your self, you took your life away from everyone else.