Dear [...]

Dear Jeffrey

Dear Jeffrey,

How did you do it? There are many days when I would like to do what you did, no matter how much the rest of the family hates you for it. It took balls, I'll say that. To pack all your shit and just leave. It's been over a year since I last saw you. It's been almost a year since I last heard from or about you. I don't think any one has moved on, as it's not easy to forget a family member. Especially when they're like you.

You were a jock. You played on your school's varsity lacrosse team. As long as I can remember, you were Jeff the prodigy in sports. First it was ice hockey, then it was football, and then about four years back, you fell into lacrosse. I'll always associate lacrosse with you.

I'll associate some other things with you as well, and let me say, those aren't as pretty. I don't think I'll ever touch drugs or alcohol, I've been scared off of dating entirely, my ideas of male mental illness in this family all root from you, not to mention my perceptions of how this family splits. How quick it happens. How easily. In two weeks, your parents went from trying to get you back to completely abandoning the idea, it was like they tried to forget you ever existed.

What happened? I know, I know, you were depressed, you had anxiety, you were always a quiet kid, but this wasn't expected at all. Everything seemed so perfect. I remember your eighteenth birthday. You were with your then girlfriend, you seemed so happy. A week later, you broke up with her. A month later you were caught in your room with weed. A few weeks after that, your mom found out about your new "girlfriend", though I would hardly call her a girl so much as a woman, nearly twice your age. What the hell, Jeff. Though those were still the happier days, because right fucking before Christmas, you bolted. They tried to move you to Colorado to live with your dad so you'd get away from this woman, this woman with a son older than you. Then she bought you a ticket to live with her. Just like that, you were gone. 

I haven't seen you since Thanksgiving of 2015, and I'm starting to doubt if I'll ever see you again. But I hope you're happy with her. I hope this is really better for you. Dropping out of highschool to date a woman who has been arrested twice for drug possession. Really sounds like good times.

I guess this is the part where I update you on my life. In case you wanted to know. I played a season of lacrosse, mostly because I wanted to make your dad like me a bit more. A little bit because I thought maybe it'd make me... understand you a bit more? I don't know. It was fine, I guess. We went undefeated. I played defense, just like you. You know it's funny. I really thought I'd miss you at my first game. I thought that the memory of me seeing my first lacrosse game (the one you played in) would trigger something, anything. Nothing. I was numb the entire time, engrossed in my objectives. Just like you used to say, The tough don't cry. 

I came out this year, as pansexual. I don't know why you'd care. I don't know. Maybe it's because a higher percentage of bisexual identifying people were victims of some form of sexual assault as children. Not that I was. Not that, I know I was. Well. I don't know how to write some things down, and this is one of them, becuase I'm still struggling to figure out what the fuck this memory is. I don't have many memories of my childhood, even fewer that are clear. But there is one that is still vivid in my mind. At least the picture is.

I was roughly five or six, you somewhere around twelve or thirteen. Already it seems strange that we ever were somewhat close, you were such a quiet kid, and I don't remember ever playing with you. I just remember... being close to you. I remember laying in my bed one day as our parents talked downstairs, your body pressed firmly against mine. I remember you telling me it was okay, I remember feeling safe. I remember your hands, twice the size of mine, sliding under my shirt. I don't remember anything else, it's like my brain was a tv, and at that point, the reception went down, and everything turned into static. 

I'm not going to accuse you of anything. I'm not going to tell anyone this, because I could be wrong. I could have this memory confused, hell, I could've easily merged something innocent with a dream. But there's a part of me that disagrees with all of that. There is a pit in my stomach tying knots of emptiness, getting bigger and bigger, making me nauseous and tired. It can't be healthy, to worry this much. But what else can I do?

You know the feeling, I know you do. Paranoia and anxiety, crawling up your spine, creeping into your brain, they're like parasites. Once they latch on, it feels like they're there for life. The worst part it no one seems to be able to see them entirely, just their ugly physical manifestations. The scars, the bruises, the screams, tear-filled red eyes, but never the feeling itself. It lurks invisibly, leaching on your thoughts, you can't seem to get rid of it, cutting it out seems like a good idea, so you slice at your wrists, literally pouring yourself out. It never works, does it? Instead, you're always left less of a person, with graffiti on the walls of your arms, showing that this is run down property. They're like the tags of your angst. 

I guess this is goodbye (again). I'm sorry for being a downer here, it's just that I guess you've affected me, more than anyone else in the family. I just needed to put these things out here. 

Have a Merry Christmas, Jeff,

Alice