A letter to Michelle

Dear Michelle,

It's been four months and it lingers. It all lingers for all of us. To be honest, I'm getting a little sick of it and starting to get a bit mad. If I think about you almost every day, I can't imagine what Ryley goes through. There are moments that melancholy and bitterness wash over me and I can't shake them. Of course, this happens sometimes without though of you, but it's often thoughts of you that bring these feelings over me.

I miss you. I have missed you since you left. I know that we weren't close, that there are many people that were closer to you than I was, but I have to say that you leaving us took a toll on me. I cried unexpectedly for weeks. It wasn't until the end of August that I could tell friends what happened without crying uncontrollably. It made me very tired, and I didn't have anyone to talk to but Cavan. He was so tired. More tired than me. And I couldn't talk to him and give him that burden.

I owed it to myself to write you this letter. After four months, Cavan doesn't really want to have a conversation about it. We learned a lot about grieving with each other through this and I think I learned how we are different in this respect. He doesn't want to talk, and I do. It doesn't matter what comes of the conversation, I just need to have it. I need to think about you and talk about you and build my life, my imagined future life without you and with Ryley without you.

I'm not even going to say that I don't understand why you did it. That goes without saying. You didn't understand either. Maybe you didn't know, but you gave everyone thousands of questions when you thought you found the answer. People loved you. More than Ryley, more than your sisters and your family, people loved you. You probably never even thought that I would be one of the people that your action would affect for months and years.

I miss you, Michelle. As much as I try not to miss you, as much as I try not to think of you, I do. I think of you when I drive through a particular part of town, when I go to a restaurant or bar, when my friends go to a place that you worked, when I hear certain music. It's sickening how much I wanted to get to know you and how much I wanted to love you like a sister. You obviously had your own family and not even those people were important enough to you to stop you from doing this. I wish I had been. I wish you gave me the opportunity to love you like I could have.

Please let me let you go now. I want to be able to move into your old house, I want  to be able to get through this next month with Ryley and Cavan and not have my new life dripping with you. Please. Please go away now. You made the decision you did, and now it's over. Let me go somewhere else with my mind.

I love you.
Kaylie