Dear Daddy,

I bet 16 years is long enough to hold on to a grudge. But even if I've let it go, I still hate you for what you did. And no matter how much I love you I will never forgive you.

My life has been fractured since you died. Its like looking into a mirror but you can't see anything clearly because the sheets of glass are cracked. Everything is distorted. I've grown used to looking into the mirror with this twisted point of view. My heart has healed but part of it remains hollow. That's where you belong but these days I can barely remember you. I'm not sure what your voice sounded like. I have to look at a picture to remember what you look like sometimes. Its getting harder to keep your memory alive.

I used to have these fantasies that you weren't really dead. That you were in witness protection, in hiding. And that one day you'd come home to us. It wasn't the pain that made me long for these dreams to come true. I suppose it was the slow loss of my sanity. After you died I was pushed out on to the edge. For years I stood there, always tempted to cross over. I spent years in anger, anything anyone said could set me off. When the anger subsided I was just depressed. I stopped sleeping, I stopped being who I used to be. And home changed too.

Sister was always gone away with her friends. Mom always worked and when she was home I was still alone. No one saw that I was only existing. That I wasn't really living my life like I should have been. I mastered, at a very early age, how to lie properly, so no one knew. And no one cared to look deeper. Everyone else was too concerned with what was happening in their lives that they didn't see me on the verge of losing.

I was 16 when I starting cutting. I couldn't take this existence anymore. I was always alone. I couldn't bother myself to go to my friends, they couldn't honestly understand how I felt inside. I didn't want their pity or remorse. I just wanted my family to heal together but I was alone. No sister and no mother, both still alive just never around. I know they had their own suffering to deal with, I understand that. What I don't understand is how they could ignore mine because if they were hurting then I was too so how couldn't they see that? So I hurt myself and I tried to take my life.

And that is why I hate you. You took my entire family away from me when you took your life. I will never forgive you for what you did. And how could I? There are some pains that never stop hurting. There are some wrongs that can never be made right. And sometimes, when a life is this broken, its not about fixing it. Its about learning to live with the broken pieces.

-S

Dear Mom,

I felt like I should have said something. Anything. Sometimes I look back on it and think about what I might have said, and many things come to mind, but I don't think I could have said them. Usually I am so full of words, bursting to come out, but your complete absence left me speechless.

There's a lot I'd say to you now.

I don't know why it took me so long to realize you were leaving. And then, once you were gone, how completely and utterly gone you would be. How unreachable. How blank and empty and dark that whole part of me could be. It was as if I had played at being blue my entire life, my sad little tragedies that prefaced this cataclysm were just pretend, a little kid playing dress-up. I was in no way prepared for your sudden absence, though there is no reason why I should not have been.

I remember the very instant I realized you were dying. It was quiet and it was night and we were alone. I think I really saw you then, not just as you lived in my mind and in my heart, but you as the body before me, plugged into dripping bags and beeping machines and hissing mask. How many times had I come to you, broken, and you with just a few words and a knowing touch made all my pain and sorrow fade? Here you were, slipping away, and I never even said good-bye.

I held your hand and whispered to you. I told you we would be okay and that we were strong enough. I gave you morphine as soon as the machine let me. I panicked when the seizures took you. I fought with you to keep the mask on. As if it would help, as if it would make it better. You always spoke of quality of life. I wish you had even that, at the end. You were such an amazing and strong person, someone I always looked up to. You were the person I wanted to grow up to be. I know that a part of you lives on in me and Amanda. That part is just a shadow of the greatness of you that could have been if you were still here, still the rock in our lives you were intended to be.

I miss you so much every day that when it overcomes me I wonder how it is that I can still get up in the morning, still pull myself together and go on with my life. For so long you were all that I had. Everything came and went and nothing else mattered but you. There is this hole inside of me that is filled with the absence of you. Sometimes it threatens to yawn open and take me in. What do we do to keep on going? I have seen the bravest, toughest person in my life reduced to yellow skin and jutting bones. You who never asked for anything, begged me to make the pain stop. And I couldn't.

There are so many things I didn't do, and it's hardest to not regret. I could have been a better daughter, I could have realized sooner that I had so little time. Why couldn't you watch me blossom into the woman I am today? Why couldn't you see me graduate high school, go to prom? Why did I have to wear my white dress without you? Why is everything beautiful and grand and special so empty without you in my life?

I'm sorry. I wanted to write this letter to show you what a strong woman I've become. That even without you, I remember you, and I try to live every day to make you proud. I remember how you used to wait for me to call you when I got home from school, and that when I didn't call, you missed me. I remember playing Neopets with you on dueling computers. I remember how the little things were so special to you. I remember the way you laughed. I remember how perfect you were and, bitterly, how damaged the world is now without you.

You were so beautiful. I don't want my strongest memories of you to be the ones at the end. I want to remember your smile, I want to remember the way you always smelled like coffee and cigarettes and the sun. I remember how soft your skin was and how we were always going to be your babies, even when we were thirty. I'm almost thirty now, Mom.

It's been eight years since you died, but sometimes I feel like I'm just waiting for you to come home. I can't look at that hole inside me for long, because I just might fall in and I don't think I'll ever come out. I want you to know how much I love you, I still love you, I love you I love you I love you. And I miss you so goddam much.

With my entire heart,

your daughter, Jen