To: yikes!izzy
Date: Friday, March 2—10:50 PM
Subject: losing it
Dear Isabel,
I did my best at pretending things were normal, that I’m not terrified every second of the day, that I’m not having trouble sleeping because I’m awake worrying about you. I’m not really sure what I thought I’d accomplish by pretending you’re there. Maybe some people can lie to themselves like that, but I can’t. I can’t not think about the fact that you’re missing. I can’t not think about the fact that you’ve been gone for five days. It seems like my mom is on the phone with your parents all the time now. She’s never even met you, but it’s like you’re family, like your family is family. And I guess there’s some comfort in that, having this connection. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one falling apart.
I talked to your sister today, and of course I immediately liked her. It’s probably impossible for me to not love someone you love. When you come back, she said we should come over for dinner, you and me, like a double date with her and Karen. And something about that made me so happy, the thought of us doing something so normal and couple-y, and I was smiling like crazy, and Gennifer even said, “I can hear you smiling,” and then I laughed a little, then all of a sudden I don’t know what happened, but that little laugh turned into crying, and the crying turned into choking, and then I couldn’t breathe. I could hear your sister asking me what was wrong, but her voice got smaller and smaller until I hung up the phone, and I was just sitting there trying to suck in air but nothing was getting in. It felt like my eyes were burning, my throat was burning, everything was so hot and tight like my head was going to explode. And somehow I made it downstairs, and my mom took one look at me and she got this look on her face that just made me lose it, like seeing me like that hurt her, like actually physically hurt her, and something about that just made me let go inside, like I didn’t have to hold everything together anymore, like she could hold some of my pain for a while. So I let her. I went over and threw myself on the couch and let her put her arms around me and rock me like I was a little kid. And even though I was crying harder than I ever remember crying, even though I was sick with fear that I lost you, something about being held like that made it bearable. Somehow just knowing there was that space for my pain, I don’t know, maybe it didn’t hurt so much.
Isabel. Come home. Someone needs to hold you like that. We all need to hold you like that. You don’t need to carry all your pain alone.
Love,
Connor