That Night | ✓

11:47 a.m.

Dear Hope,

I'm writing this on a private message because you once told me that you didn't want people to be affectionate when you died because it's all lies. Actually, you told me that yesterday. Last night.

You'd be really angry right now. You've got hundreds of wall posts on here.

But this is mine. This is my real goodbye.

I told you that we were like Romeo and Juliet. We were fated to be. I just didn't realise how twisted things could turn out.

They're saying that you had a hole in your oesophagus, Hope, but that you died from taking too many paracetamols. Do you know how you get a hole in your oesophagus? Prolonged forced vomitting.

They say it was an accident, that you mustn't have known, otherwise you would have told someone. That you accidentally took the pills, thinking that for some bizarre reason they might help. I really, honestly, truly want to believe that it was, that you were holding onto the thought of Saturday just as much as I was. But after everything you told me last night, I can't be sure. I feel like I know you so, so much better than everyone else on here and I've never even met you. But you told me everything. And I told you everything.

So now I'm going to tell our story for the very last time. I'll type it out through my tears and hope that you're up there and you'll read it one day when you have time.

I went on Omegle yesterday because I was about to kill myself. But I couldn't do it without telling someone why. I needed saving, Hope, but I didn't realise it.

Until I met you.

You taught me that there is far more to life than what I can see now, that I am far more than my mental illnesses. Having depression or an eating disorder doesn't define me. You certainly didn't let your bulimia define you.

You taught me that the best kind of help comes from the most unexpected places. From the people who don't really give a shit what happens to you. The people who can be brutally honest because they don't care about offending you are sometimes those with the wisest words.

You asked me not to kill myself. Not because of the people that I would leave behind or because you didn't want my blood on your hands.

You asked me not to kill myself because you told me that I hadn't actually lived yet.

That hit home, hard. It was what I needed. I went on there to say goodbye, but instead you introduced me to a whole other world of possibilities. I will forever be indebted to you for that.

We said we were doomed from the start, Hope. I think we both knew that we weren't both going to make it past last night alive. I just wish it hadn't've been me left over. I sort of wish I'd never met you because that way, I would be dead right now and you'd still be living your sarcastic, intoxicating life. The doctors would have stitched up that rupture in your oesophagus and I could have watched you from up there and laughed and you could have been happy. You were stronger than the bulimia. You would have beaten it. I'm sure of that.

It's almost funny in some kind of sick, psycho way. Because you spent all of last night convincing me that I could make it until the morning. We didn't even consider the possibility that you might not.

But now, in some weird, warped way I am left and you are gone and I feel like I owe you my life. I feel like I owe it to you to try and live it out, be reckless and brave in your memory.

Hope, I said I'd miss lots of people in my life if I died but I missed you off the list. Now, I realise that you were the one I'd miss the most. You made more of difference in one, virtual night than anyone has ever done in the entirety of my eighteen years on this earth. You were incredible.

You won't see me at your funeral. I don't want to be mixed up with all the people who you didn't want to remember you fondly. They didn't know the real you.

Yet somehow, I did.

My only real hope is that you don't rest in peace. I hope that you rock it out up there, show off the mad guitar skills I'm sure you have to anyone who will watch.

I promise that I'm going to try to be something more. Someone more.

Someone that a girl like Hope Waterman would be proud to call her friend.

So this is it. This is a fucked up version of the goodbye I should have said to you yesterday, before we even began talking. I missed my chance to save you and for that I will be eternally sorry. But you saved me. Even though you weren't sure you could. You still did it.

I love you, Hope Waterman.

And one day, we will meet. I'm just going to postpone that day for now - for both of our sakes.

Love,
Aaron