hello, Stephanie.

Dear Stephanie, It's coming up to Christmas '07: I'm sending you this letter from the past. Imagine that. Today I probably irretreivably ruined my and Ryan's friendship. I'm still not sure if I was wrong. The thought of being without him is destroying me. I love him like I love my brothers: but you know that, don't you? What do you think? You have the benefit of hindsight. If you regret it, then maybe I should remind you of how he treats me: like an annoyance, like something to be tolerated. Stephanie, he wasn't your friend by today. He wasn't. He was someone you lived with. He was someone who answered your overwhelming despair with sarcasm and fury because it inconvenienced HIM. He was someone who accused you of guilt-tripping him when that was NEVER your intention, when all you wanted was for him to give a shit about you, like he used to. Don't feel bad. Don't. What happened? Did we stay friends? Did you ever find out why Ryan treated us like that? Did I move out of this house that I love so much but just cannot tolerate, when the boys bring strangers home and I feel violated in my own home, intruded upon, privacy shattered? Did I limp back, defeated, to my parents? Or did I cope? Does he hate me? Are you better? Or do you still spend night after night crying, tearing yourself apart from the inside, glowing with hatred and misery and the pure raging agony of this torment I live through? Are there new scars on your arms and legs? I hope not. God, I hope not. Please, be better in a year's time. Please be alive and well and healing. Please be alive. I'll understand, if you're still how I am today. Hell, I'll be proud of you for making it a whole damned year without killing yourself, if this never stopped, if it never got better. It's funny, how much we can go through. For the sake of my parents, whom I like and adore as well as love, and my beloved precious brother, I haven't tried yet. I hope that's the same. I hope that if you're still unwell, that at least the love for your parents and the desire to never, ever make them unhappy is keeping you alive. Maybe you've even started college again. I'll let myself be a little optimistic. Maybe you have. Maybe you're doing well. I hope so. I hope so, so much that you're happy. It's been seven years at the least. Seven years of depression and self-hatred and utter despair so thick and heavy that it suffocates until even my crying is soft and silent and unnoticeable. We don't deserve this. We never have. We never asked to live like this and we've fought so hard to make it stop... On December 21st 2007, the depression was winning. Remember when I said that I thought 2007 would be a better year? It nearly was, sweetheart. It nearly was. I hope 2008 treated us better. You'll be twenty-one when you receive this. Please be well. Love, 20-year-old Stephanie