Hi Stephen,
I keep starting this letter out with 'Dear' but it looks wonky because I'd never have called you that when you were alive. Not that you weren't dear, we just always had more of a 'howya' thing going on than a 'Dear' one. Yesterday I went to vote & I did it with big, snotty silent tears running down my face because just before I left work to walk to the polling station I came across the invoice for your Christmas present from 2008. 2 years after you died & sneaky things like that hurt like I'm a peasant in Game of Thrones (which, by the way, you would have fucking loved) who's just gotten an axe through my breastbone. Luckily I am adept at crying in public at this stage. Silently & soaking up tears & snot with my sleeve. Disgusting but I'm not a girl who remembers to carry tissue & you'd be surprised how little absorbant material is in my bag.
I've been thinking about you so, so much this year, I have a feeling it's because my sneaky hope that you had just run away has puttered out. In my head I know you went into the water that day in December (or early that morning to be very precise) but in my heart I knew you were immortal. Little siblings do not die. Little siblings do not develop huge addiction & depression issues in their late teens and never recover from them. Little siblings may be selfish, unpleasant, self pitying fuckers but they live to grow out of it, after all we were all selfish, unpleasant, self pitying fuckers in our time. Little siblings do not fall, drunk, into tidal rivers & drown. If little siblings disappear it's because they're off having amazing adventures somewhere. Maybe they met a girl (or a boy, I was never sure of you that way) and moved away. Maybe they just aren't arsed talking to various family members anymore & packed up a bag & walked off. Blast this island for being too small for someone to disappear like that. And feck you for not having a passport so I could pretend you hopped on a plane. And feck the Gardai for being so careful & thorough in checking that you didn't get on a ferry. And feck all the incredibly helpful charities who passed your picture around the UK in case you showed up at a homeless shelter there. Maybe if people had been a lot less helpful & a lot less kind & a lot more crap my half baked idea that you're living on a sheep station somewhere could be a fully fledged conviction
Yesterday I realised that this day 2 years ago you were alive but that it's sneaking up on the day that 2 years ago you were no longer. Every time I think that, every time I think of the 4th of December I stop breathing. Squeeze my eyes shut & stop breathing like that might stop it from happening. The idea that you died, that you fell in a river and you died, that you were by yourself & you drowned alone slays me. Cold comfort to you but I wish I could have been there with you, even if I couldn't have stopped it I would have liked to hold your hand. I don't want you to have died alone, of all the worst parts of this that is the worst worst. I know you were off your head & I bloody well hope that helped you not suffer If I could go back in time & walk beside you as you went through last month of your life I would, just to see how you lived it. Sometimes, in my head, I can see you. Like I'm watching a security camera, you walking around Galway with your backpack & your long sleeved white top. Hiding the scars on your wrists. I can't stop thinking about you lately and my letters to you are getting longer & longer so I think I'm going to throw them all down. I don't want to forget about you so might as well make my memories safe by pinning them down in words. Get me through till the the 4th anyhoo
Lo x
