You are missed

I want to tell you that I loved you, that I wanted to be there for you, but that I was so young, so preoccupied with my own miserable existence, that I forgot to show up.

I want you to know that you were my hero, that by the age of twelve, you did more than I ever will. I never recovered. I knew I wouldn’t. The second I was told you were gone, I knew my life was going to be a shit show. I wish I could say that I am different, that I took all of the good you did in your life and turned into a positive, but it would be a lie, and you know that. I am as fucked up today as I was the day you left us. I said that I would have traded places with you. That it should have been me. But it is one of my many lies. It shouldn’t have been either of us. You should have been here for me to infect with my insidious ways, and you could have taught me to have compassion, to see love in pain, understanding in incompetence, and freedom in a cage, but you aren’t. I admired you, and wanted to emulate you. You laid the ground work -- I left it to rot. I have, once again, failed you.

I am young. You were younger. I have no excuses. I made a promise to God on the way to the hospital – if you were okay, I would change my ways. He didn’t keep his end, I didn’t keep mine. That excuse is getting stale. I have everything you didn’t. You had everything I don’t. But I am still here. . . .