Letter 10

November 17, 2014

Dear Jesse,

I’m not sure where to start today.

There are so many thoughts running through my mind at once.

Where are you, Jesse?

My days are filled with this question.

There are moments that I feel you, I can hear your voice, hear your laugh, but I cannot touch you. When you were alive I had lost you to your addiction and your pain. I wasn’t able to have the relationship I longed for. The last time we spoke you had just walked off train tracks near moms house. You had called our sister hysterical because you had been laying on the tracks waiting for a train. You had told her that you couldn’t do it anymore, you didn’t have it in you. Aimee sped all the way to Ridley from her house in New Jersey to get you.

She had called me on the ride over.

She was at the end of her rope. I could hear it in her voice. She wanted to save you so fucking bad. She didn’t want you to be alone in this pain. She was doing everything she possibly could except taking care of herself.

After we hung up I stood there for a minute.

“My brother was just on the train tracks trying to build up the nerve to kill himself.”

I called your phone even though we hadn’t been communicating.

It rang and you actually answered.

“Jesse, what are you doing, I want you to live!”

“Oh really? well I don’t feel very fucking close to you right now!”, you yelled. “What do you care anyway, you don’t even fucking call me!”

The anger in me rose.

“Because you started doing heroin! You are a fucking heroin addict right now! How the fuck am I supposed to have a relationship with you?”

You hung the phone up on me.

That was the last time we spoke.

You killed yourself three weeks later.

I’ve had an extremely hard time accepting that that’s how it happened between us. That’s how our story as siblings finished here on Earth. I would give anything to rewrite the ending but I cannot. The only thing I can do now is write you this letter. So I’ll write this, if I could, I would go back in time to that moment on the phone and tell you this…

“My brother, my only brother… my god you are so special. Since I was a little girl, I always looked up to you. You’re really lost right now. You’re swimming in a sea of darkness but I need you to trust me and take this life line. Grab it. Don’t think of anything else right now but this rope I’m throwing you. You have it in you, I promise. It may not feel that way and you may not even feel like you know who you have become, but it’s okay. I still love you. Aimee still loves you, Dad still loves you. We all still love you.”

Wherever you are Jesse, I hope you can read this letter.