Dear... Makenna
It feels like I've tried and failed to start this letter a hundred times over now, so let me open with what matters most:
Happy birthday.
I really wish we could have celebrated today together. I wish you were still here. I hope that, wherever you are, you're at peace.
Admittedly, I've been meaning to write to you for a while now. My therapist suggested I do this two months ago, mere weeks after you'd passed, but... I just couldn't do it.
It's always been too big, too much. The grief gnaws incessantly in my chest and roils sickeningly in my stomach every time I've tried to sit down like this, to submerge myself in the reality that you're gone. Even now, I feel as though I am at risk of drowning in it, but I know I cannot avoid the feeling forever. I have to learn to float eventually.
God, you'd hate the fact that I'm still mourning you. You'd understand, but I swear I hear you in the back of my mind sometimes, scolding me and insisting that I move on.
I don't know if I'll ever have the tenacity you did. I've learned to bottle things up better, to put on the face everyone expects from me so they don't get worried or uncomfortable. On the inside though, I think I'll always be soft to a fault. I'll always buckle under the weight of my heart, always carry my aches a little longer than most. I'll always keep the little pieces of you that you left with me, and remember you even if you believed no one would.
Even if you wanted me to forget you, I can't. I won't.
Especially not on your birthday.
I'm sorry I took so long to write to you like this. I'm so, so sorry I took too long to respond to you before you took your life. I know you understood why I was distant, but I also know that my absence took its toll on you. Sometimes I wonder if I had pushed myself to say anything sooner, would things be different now? Could I have saved you with even a single message?
Probably not, I know. You had so much going on in your life. You were suffering for so long. You made a choice that was yours and yours alone - it's not my place to entertain the notion that I could have said or done something to change that.
I just hate that I was the one to leave your world a little dimmer before you decided to go. I hate that I left you feeling lonely and anxious over whether we were even still friends. I hate that I made you doubt like that, even if you realistically knew my distance was born of the grief that preceded yours.
Again, I know you wouldn't want me to agonize over this. I try my best not to, but the longer I avoid it, the worse it gets. Better to face it all now in total honesty so I can eventually learn to let it go.
That being said, there are some parts to this that I'll never let go.
I'll never stop missing you. I'll never stop thinking of you when I see or hear something you would have liked. I'll never lose the urge to share things that would have made you laugh or cringe (in a fun way, of course). I'll never stop wanting to tell you all of the little things I should have said (and still think of saying) in the mundanity of daily life.
My heart breaks every time I remember that none of that is possible anymore.
I miss talking with you. I miss laughing and joking with you. I miss making you smile. I miss having a friend who cared and loved as deeply as you did.
I know it's too late to want all of that now. I know none of this will ever reach you, but there are a few small and silly things I still want to share with you anyway. Maybe they would have made you smile. Maybe somehow, somewhere, they do make you smile. I hope they do.
• The new Tomodachi Life game is great. There's no filter on what the miis are allowed to say. Anyone in the game can get married and have kids together, so technically speaking, it has mpreg as well as yaoi. You always joked about getting Ben pregnant, so my mii went ahead and did that one for you with his mii. I hope that would have made you proud.
• Franchaela was announced as the lead couple for season five of Bridgerton. I'm sorry we never talked about season four like I said we would. I hope you loved it as much as I did.
• I'm actually committing to drawing again. I've made a good handful of art lately that I'm genuinely happy with, and I know you would have been so excited to see it. To be honest, the first thing I drew again was you. I did a silhouette portrait of you in profile from memory, and I'm still shocked at how well it resembles your likeness. I haven't been able to look at any pictures of you since you died, but somehow I managed to put you to paper as if you'd been sitting right in front of me the whole time. I wish I could show it to you.
• Whisk and Theo have bonded so well that Theo is convinced he's her boyfriend these days. They groom each other and cuddle twice as much as they smack each other, and they often fall asleep curled up together with Whisk's front leg draped over her shoulder. Theo reminds me a lot of you sometimes. She's an absolute spitfire with so much love to give.
I'm sorry that this letter got so long. I know you always hated overly lengthy messages. Though, in my defense, it is little difficult to condense multiple months' worth of thoughts, feelings, and grief into a single letter.
Anyway, since it's your birthday, I'll be lighting a candle for you tonight. I haven't decided yet if it will go in the brownies or the banana bread I made yesterday - I never got to know which you preferred (though, at a guess, the chocolate-heavy option is probably the safer bet).
Ben and I will be celebrating you, even if you're not here for it. We miss you so much, Makenna.
I miss you so fucking much.
Happy birthday.