A Letter to the One I Lost.

I miss him more than I remember him. Every year on my birthday I become older than he ever was. I used to be younger than him. It's hard to be at my birthday party, when all I want is him to walk in. I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do I want to tell him something. I miss him more than I remember him. Whenever I get news, either good or bad, He is the only person I want to call.

In a dream, I see him again. I know he has been gone for a long time but it still feels so real. He hasn't changed. He still looks like that 18 year old kid. He hasn't grown older. I am the only one who appears older. I know it sounds strange but I still look at his apartment on google maps. It says "image captured May 2015". There is a light on in his bedroom. It's still his home. He is still alive. I am still visiting every few weeks, on the 6 train. I just want it back the way it was before. I just wanna to see him back on my front door. He was the only know who knew how to slow me down, When my mind was spinning. For almost a decade it was us against the world. Now it's just me.

The first year he was gone, I moved states two times. I thought leaving the state would help. It didn't, I ended up leaving the east coast all together. Loss doesn't care if you left the state, or the coast. It still hurts. Grief is such a funny feeling because suddenly you're replaying mundane moments. Like yes I do want to see him sitting on the couch watching tv again. I have gotten really good at not flinching when I hear his name anymore. I always knew that the world moves on. I just didn't know that it would move on without him. We were fifteen and we were convinced that we were evil and irredeemable and completely insane but it turns out we were just fifteen.

In another universe, he still has my photo in his wallet. In another life, my window is open and we are laying on my bedroom floor. Nothing bad has happened yet. Someone has to leave first. I kind of always thought that it was going to be me and not him. A part of me died that day too. He is gone, I know that. But I still set the dinner table and make him a seat. He died right before christmas. His mother kept the tree up for over a year. She couldn't take it down. Cause if she did it would be real. He would be really gone.

Ever since his death I have not let someone get close to me. My mother told me that she has never seen me so angry before. Of course I'm angry. I have this insane amount of guilt. I'm not sure how to move past it. I'm writing about him in the past tense. It still doesnt feel real. I don't think it will ever feel real. I have been talking to his mom, it makes me feel so sad that if I think about it too much I get sick to my stomach. I've been praying to god and I don't even know what I believe in. In a way, I envy the dead. They don't have to remember that they are gone. I just want to be myself again. I want to be 17. I want to stop knowing everything.