I find there is never an appropriate way to begin a too-selfish and too-misleading letter. There is nothing I can say that has not been said before. I write this now, the moon reaching an end at 4 AM, with the constant black under my eyes blacker than ever.

So I begin,
I was walking through the streets of empty prose and emptier satisfaction, smoking (though you always tell me not to), and listening to my iPod in a complete haze. I have to admire the technological age, where music is confined to a few inches of metallic silver. We were born into an era where everything just keeps getting smaller and smaller; and nothing weighs at all. Jack told me, before it all began and ended, he told me that I would regret it. I can’t say it’s regret; my feelings are scattered around the room, mingled with dirty clothes and empty beer bottles.

I miss the sleepovers and all-nighters we pulled watching romance movies knowing that romance does not fit well with us. I miss the meaningless sex that slowly transformed to meaningful sex. I knew you were getting drunk and high, and sleeping with other women. I never expected that sort of loyalty on your part; we knew each other long before the sleep-overs and the sex and the screaming. Hell, we grew up together. Remember how we met? I walked in on you and Julie McMahon kissing in the school bathroom; you were like that even in the sixth grade.

It’s been over a decade now. Just over a decade. Fuck, Sam, it’s been a lifetime. And now you’re gone fighting a war that doesn’t belong to you. Maybe I’ll end up sending this letter; I think I will, just in case. I will never forgive you if you die, though. So try hard to live, because you know that I will kill you when we meet up again in hell, with the rest of our group of amazing debauchers.

I hate this urgent need to thank you; it makes me feel like something has gone too wrong and too fast. You sat next to me for three days straight, in dead silence and a gut-wrenching stink of sweat and sick, after my mom left. You let me live in your house for years-on-end while my dad sat selfishly drinking himself away. You are my family; so if you die, I will kill you. I have to thank you for dismissing all my girly theories of soul-mate love, of happily ever afters; I thank you for being there when soul-mate after soul-mate broke my heart and left me weeping pathetically in public restrooms. I thank you for letting me make my own mistakes; though sometimes I wish you had warned me. You had a knack for guessing what would happen next. You always kept that to yourself.

I remember beginnings of conversations and the endings to most of our fights. “You never see straight ahead” you said once, “your goddamn perspective is all messed up. You have selective emotions.” And I cried. But you went on, “see, like right now. You’re sitting here all sexy with my old Pink Floyd t-shirt, crying as if there's no tomorrow." And then you kissed me, and took off my-- well, your-- t-shirt, and that was the beginning. We were fifteen. We were babies. We still are babies, but now you’re off fighting a war and I scattered what was left of my dad along the highway last night. I kept the urn, though. It’s pretty, and has a gold lining all along the bottom.

I thank you-- though hatefully-- for not loving me back. We were never meant to be that way. I realize that now, a few years and too many drunken nights too late. I can’t help but miss you. I have David now, but he is not my everything. And you are my most. You are my almost. I saw Kate a few days ago and she seemed to be doing all right. She was going to the hospital to visit Jack. They haven’t found a good heart for him yet and I can’t- I’m too scared to go see him. I know it’s selfish but I am, in fact, my mother’s daughter. If you were here now you would punch my shoulder for saying that, but my grandmother still says that I look just like her. I thank you for always saying I’m much more beautiful and much less seductive.

Most of all I thank you for the teddy-bear you bought me on your trip to New-York two years ago. It was the most cliché thing to buy, so I was rather taken aback. I pressed its belly so many times that it had stopped saying "I love you" quite a while ago; but still, it sits on my bed empty of thought and full of unsaid and desired "I love you's". And it reminds me of you.

Come home soon, all right? Don’t try to be a hero.
Love,
Michelle.