I will always blame myself for your actions. People will tell me it wasn’t my fault and maybe, just maybe, for a split second, I’ll listen, but I’ll never fully believe that. You see, there are so many things I could have done to prevent your actions. Thinks I could have said. Hugs I could have given. Actions I could have taken. All things that could have helped, but I didn’t do enough. I didn’t do enough to save you.
I’ll never forget the first time you really worried me. It was that drunken phone call you made to me. You told me that you wanted to die. You said if it wasn’t for our mother, you would have already killed yourself. I tried to reassure you that she wasn’t the only one who loved you. I tried to tell you how many people it would hurt, but you didn’t listen. I should have said something that night, or even in the next few days, to one of our parents, or to any adult in our lives, but I didn’t. You had just started to trust me and I felt like we were finally forming a relationship that we hadn’t had in the past. So I stayed quiet. I did nothing.
My next clue was a phone call again, with the same reasoning for staying alive. This time, you were sober, but the hurt was evident in your voice. Again, I tried to reassure you. I talked to you. I told you I loved you. I told you I was there for you but was I really? I tried being there for you, but I was so caught up in school, and keeping a perfect GPA, and going to parties and being popular, that I let you slip to the back of my mind. I regret that every day. You should have been who I was worried about. You were hurting, and I did nothing.
The phone calls continued to happen in the coming months, and if not calls, then text messages. Sometimes, I would say I was busy, or I wouldn’t answer the phone because I would rather pretend that I was busy than know how badly you were hurting. I thought if I pretended it wasn’t happening, things would get better. That maybe you wouldn’t be hurting so badly. So as my responses got shorter, and I started to not answer, you started to call and text less and less. If I could go back in time, I would answer every single one of your calls, and send you extremely long messages. I would tell you every single day I loved you and that your life wasn’t meaningless until you believed it. But again, I did nothing.
I should have paid better attention at Thanksgiving. I was too caught up with wanting to hang out with my friends and having to work that I didn’t set aside time to catch up, or check up on you. I honestly don’t even remember seeing you that much during Thanksgiving aside from the actual meal. I was so focused on other things that I probably came off as not caring, or just like I didn’t love you. The opposite was true. I loved you to the moon and back. I cared more about you than probably anyone else. If I could do it over again, I would have spent as much time with you as possible, and less with my friends. I would have harassed you into coming into my work on Black Friday to annoy me so I could see you. But I did nothing.
My next clue should have come at Christmas when we were both at home and actually seeing each other a lot. We were under the same roof for a prolonged period of time again. Instead of being observant, and paying attention to you, I was either asleep or out if I wasn’t at work. Again, my friends, and my retail job, they demanded my attention, and I gave them a lot more attention than I gave you. On Christmas Eve, during the little, or big depending on how you look at it, family blow up, I should have paid better attention. I was so focused on getting the little ones out of the room while our uncle and father were practically about to brawl, that I forgot about what started that argument which was the overheard question someone asked you about how you had been and then the input unnecessarily put in that conversation. I should have noticed that while I thought it was one of the worst Christmas Eve dinners I had been too, it hurt you even more. But I didn’t realize it. I did nothing.
Christmas time was really the big time I should have noticed what was going on with you, but I didn’t. I just went on with my life. In the weeks before your decision to take your own life, you were blowing off our plans. You wouldn’t answer calls, or texts. You canceled dinner plans we had made far in advance. You distanced yourself. Again, my obsession with my friends, my own personal need to be happy, prevented me from seeing how bad you were getting. If I had just been more observant, or more persistent on making you come hang out with me, maybe you could have seen how much I loved you. I’m going to hate that the last thing I said to you before your attempt was not “I love you” or any form of “goodbye”. Instead it was a question about the sushi restaurant in town. That’s what I chose to say. I should have done, and said so much in the week prior to your decision, but I did nothing.
I got a phone call. Well sort of anyway. That’s how I found out. I was out with one of my friends and we were at a gas station, and for some reason, I checked my phone. I usually checked it early in the morning, but I hadn’t yet. So it was like 11:00AM and my phone was blown up. People had tried calling, I had a bunch of text messages about people praying and so-on, but couldn’t piece together what had happened. I thought it was our grandmother at first. That something had happened to her. When I finally got ahold of someone, and they said it was you, I knew immediately what had happened, and I got this sick, sick, awful feeling in my stomach. A feeling that has become more and more frequent since that day. I get it a lot.
As I held your hand, and saw you connected to all the machines keeping you alive, I felt…confused. I had seen plenty of people in the same exact condition from volunteering at the hospital, but seeing you it was…different. My heart began breaking. I wanted nothing more than to crawl in a corner and cry for the rest of my life but I couldn’t do that. Our parents were completely broken. Mom was worse than Dad, but both needed someone to be strong. I had to be that person. So I was the one that made the phone calls to all of your friends so they could come and say goodbye. I was the one who held people three years older than me as I cried. I had to be the rock. It was completely exhausting.
As I sat with you after they took you off the ventilator, as I stayed with you, I couldn’t help my tears. It was just you and me, just the way we started life. The two of us. You held on for a lot longer than most people do after being taken off life support. You were stubborn up until your last breath. And as you breathed your last breath, the gravity of the situation finally hit me like a ton of bricks. You were gone. I would never get to sit and talk with you. I would never go to Disney World again with you, or just random road trips. Our sibling bickering was over. My future children wouldn’t have an uncle. We wouldn’t grow old together. You were gone. You were gone and there was nothing I could do about it.
I trudged back down to the waiting room, to where the family was. One look at my face, and they knew you were gone. Mom broke into sobs, Dad sat still as a statue. Our aunts and uncles looked shocked, the same as our cousins. Our grandparents just sat staring into space. Someone eventually had to explain to our baby brother and our youngest cousins that you were gone. I was glad I didn’t have to do that part but that’s not to say I didn’t have to re-explain it later when our baby brother came up to me and asked when you were coming home.
Your funeral was almost as hard as those days in the hospital. Again, I was forced to be strong. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people attended your funeral. I was supposed to be strong for all of them. I had older kids crying on my shoulder. I had adults weeping. You were so loved, so cared for, by so many people around you. You never saw it though. If you had seen how many people your death would affect, maybe you wouldn’t have done it.
I get you were hurting. I understand you felt like suicide was the only way out of this hell we called Earth, but your decision hurt me. It hurt me so badly. It’s like a deep wound. It was sort of treated, stitches were given, and it healed some, but there will always be a scar. My heart will never heal from your death. That scar, it’s permanent. It’ll be there to remind me of what you did and how I lost you. It’ll be there to remind me that I did nothing.
The quote that says “Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.” has become so much more accurate through grieving your loss. The truth is though; I’m not learning how to swim. I’m trying so hard. Therapy. Medication. Alcohol. Nothing helps. I’m drowning, and not even a lifer preserver can aid in saving me. Your choice to end your life will haunt me for the rest of my life and being as young as I am right now, I’ve got a lot of life left to be haunted.
Before you died, when everything seemed much more simple in my adolescent brain, I was always filled with joy. We went through a lot of crap together, but the difference was I could find joy. This is the first time I’ve struggled to do that. I can’t find the joy anymore. You did that to me. To be perfectly honest, I’m mad at you. I do understand you were hurting so bad, but by you killing yourself, you hurt me too. You hurt all of us. Everything has fallen apart since you died. Mom and Dad have decided that they don’t want to be parents to me without you being here, so you took away my parents. You took them when you took yourself away, and my grandparents. You have made it so every day I live out hell on Earth. I used to think it would get better, but now I’m not so sure. This January will mark a day since you died, and I’ve yet to cope with it. I’m starting to think I never will. The memories of what happened will hopefully grow foggy with time, but there is one think I will always remember: that I did nothing.
You were supposed to be the strong one. You were the oldest. You were supposed to be the one I could call and cry to. You were supposed to be the shoulder I could lean on when I needed it, but you’re not here anymore. You won’t ever be here and I don’t even know what to do without you. So I’m not really sure if this letter thing is more of a rant and me expressing how angry I am with you, or an apology. I could apologize all day. If you were still here I would tell you how sorry I was for not being the little sister you needed me to be. I would tell you I loved you as often as I could. I would pay much better attention to you and hopefully see your need for help before it was too late. I wish I had just done something before it was all too late.
