Dear PIC

Today I am just mad.

I am mad that you deleted all your old social media accounts.  You were so much better at taking pictures than I was.  So much photographic evidence of our visits and friendship, gone!  Pictures of you with Maraea, at the baseball game, in NYC... gone.

I am mad that I was apparently fasting from social media during the times you visited, and don't have photos of my own to look back on.

I am mad that you're gone.  That YOU are GONE.

I am mad that I won't ever get to visit you in Indiana again.

Today I am leaving to drive out there for your service, but I won't even get to see you.  I won't get to be in your presence.  I won't get to see your face one last time.

I am mad that you are gone.  That my future does not include you.  Or your daughters.

I'm mad that you're gone.

Dear PIC

I am writing this because I have felt the need to write to you since I heard that you took your life almost a week ago. 

I was shattered when I heard.  I screamed when I read the words.  I shook and I cried and didn't know what to do.  Do I finish working for the day?  Log off?  There was nothing I could do from where I was.

I sat in my room and texted our mutual friend and just cried and cried and cried.  Aaron came home and hugged me.  My face was so red and puffy. 

I know we hadn't been close in the last five years.  And it turns out I carry a lot of guilt for that.  Admittedly, I hid you on Facebook because it was really hard for me to see you living your life but not really allowing me to be a part of it.  I never had a phone number for you after October 2015.  I never had an address for you.  We used to text constantly, send each other little gifts and care packages.  We told each other everything.  My friendship as I knew it with you stopped at that point and was never the same again.

I was very, very close to coming out to Indiana to find you in person and talk to you about this.  I was so close.  I wish I would have done it.  If I could relive October 2015 all over again, I would do it.

I found out you were pregnant with Natalia via Instagram.  I remember being so devastated that this wasn't something you could reach out and tell me directly.  That this wasn't the thing that ended our arm's-length friendship.  We had been so close for so long, and I know you wanted to be a mother so badly.  I know how excited and elated you must have been, and to think you didn't even want to share that with me outside of social media, really hurt. 

I didn't know what was going on.  I don't know (officially) why our friendship changed so suddenly.  I had my theories, though.

Over the last five years I think we kept each other at arm's length.  I don't know why you kept me at arm's length.  I don't know what I did to you to deserve that.  But I kept you at arm's length because you put me on that list of people you needed to shut out.  And it hurt me deeply to do it.  But it also hurt me deeply that you shut me out in the first place.  I felt like I had to protect myself from that happening again.

I fully expected that someday I'd get a phone call from you, that you had come to your senses or were in need of help.  My number never changed.  I waited for that call for years.  I would have been by your side as fast as I could. 

If you had called me that night last week, I would have answered.  I knew your area code, but not your number.  I would have been there.  I wouldn't have hung up on you.  Or left you alone.  I wouldn't have abandoned you in a time of need.

We could have picked up right where we left off.

You just needed to let me back in.

I keep wondering if you had second thoughts at the last minute and nobody was there to help you out of it.  Did you wish you hadn't done it?

I wish you hadn't done it.

I miss you.

I love you.