I forgot your birthday.

A letter to friend that can never read it.

Trigger Warnings: Grief, loss, death, implied suicide

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Pearl of Grief

Hey Kev,

I forgot your birthday. November passed through me like the ghost you have become. I didn’t forget you though. You are still on my mind more than you are not.

But still, I did forget your birthday.

I feel you slipping in between the cracks that only run through me because you left in the first place. Your laugh fading from my memory. Your smile. Your eyes. Your voice. Cracks I try to patch by smelling the perfume you gave me ten years ago. Perfume that evaporates little by little each year, each month, each day. Perfume that will soon run dry as it too fades, leaving me with just an empty bottle with no meaning. I stare at it in my medicine cabinet as it mocks me. Like it knows that emptying itself will bring me pain but it does it anyway.

All I have left is that perfume bottle.

All I have left is the glassware you bought me because I was too scared to buy it myself.

All I have left is the three second audio clip of you saying something like “but they’re clones bro.” on one of the last times I spent with you. The night I fell asleep on your couch with my legs in your lap, missing my flight to Arizona.

All I have left is the photo of the card I got with the flowers you sent to my house when we were fifteen on Valentines Day. I love you - Kevin. I don’t even know where the actual card is anymore.

We weren’t right for each other. We were so young. It killed you when I ended it. But we stayed friends. I still talked you through your bad nights. I still begged you not to do it. I still wished you the happiest life that you could ever live.

I wish I didn’t leave you behind but I had to. I was scared. Your life scared me. The man tapping on your car window asking for his money scared me.

I distanced myself. Then I got sick. Then I didn’t talk to anyone. Then I thought about messaging you. Then you didn’t call me. Then I woke up to you dead.

I wish I didn’t leave you behind. I wish I didn’t get sick. I wish you called me that night. I wish I didn’t know exactly how you died even before your mother told me.

I wish I saved more pictures of you before she took them all down.

I wish I knew exactly how that night went for you.

I wish I could have saved you. I wish you knew that. I wish I messaged you.

I wish I went to your funeral.

Grief is weird. Some days, I forget who you were and your birthday passes by without me realizing it. Then it hits you like a truck, and I am wishing that I could forget you forever. Not forget you. Just forget the pain of losing you.

Then I feel guilty for thinking about forgetting any part of you.

Then other days you pop in my head every couple of hours, plaguing me with your absence, with the hole, the darkness, the emptiness, the deep drilling pit in my stomach that you simply will never be you again. You’ll never be here. You’ll never come back and you didn't fucking call me that night. I wish you just called me.

Regret is similar to grief. They’re both based around people, time, and words you can’t get back. Some days they’re just feelings you can swallow down but others, when life gets slow, when you don’t have any distractions to keep them down, they bubble up to the surface and consume you before you can consume them.

As time goes on I start to question whether I even really knew you at all. Were we close? Did you love me? Did you ever think of me the way that I think of you now?

If I had told you that you could have called me, would you have? Did I just need to tell you that? I thought you knew.

My life probably wouldn’t be that different if you were here today. Ours paths still would have split away from each other. We wouldn't be together. We probably wouldn’t even be friends. But I would check up on you. I would go to your Facebook page and see how you were doing. I would smile warmly when you reached milestones in life. I would feel happy for you when you got married, bought your first house, got a dog, and had a child. I would always be rooting for you. You deserved those happy moments. You deserved those milestones. I wish you knew that. I wish you knew that you deserved those moments and that they would eventually come for you.

I wish you knew now how much I am still rooting for you.

Your next life will be good. Your brain will be healthy. You will retain all of the good parts of yourself and be able to give them to the people that deserve them. You will be happy.

I forgot your birthday but I will never forget you.

With so much love, Kev. I wish you the absolute fucking best and I know you’ll have it.

-meg

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