For you...



I have never been one for anniversaries, let alone anniversaries of bad things. I just can't bring myself to try and focus on bad things, but sometimes they just can't be avoided. No matter how much I will try to spin the good, the day will come once a year, when I will try to let it slide but just can't. I will try to think of you as little as I can on February 25th, because on that day, the memories rushing forward will be ones that haunt me, so I will think of you today.
Today is the last time we spoke, two years ago. Two years. It is so hard to believe. Although the chat wasn't what I would wish to hear from you, and your voice wasn't as it had been in years past, it was your voice, and I know I will never forget it. Two years ago today you asked for help from me, and after two years of nothing but time to think about you- and that day, I know that I did what I could for you. It may never seem like enough, and it may never seem like I showered enough love on you, but I believe that on that day I did all that I knew how to do.
I have become a different person since you decided to take yourself away. I am still me, and so much is still the same, but so much inside me has been altered, and I think I like the change, although I would reverse it in a SECOND if you decided to stay that day instead.
I don't think I was ever a person who kept things inside, that was kind of what we loved about eachother, that even though much of what we both said was nonsense, and said just for argument's sake, we could say it, and it was ok. There would never be hard feelings about words said between you and I, and I know for a fact that many of the things I could say to you so easily, and so freely, would and have rubbed others the wrong way, and have even strained relationships. But not with you. What kind of friend would I have been had I not been honest with you? And honestly, I don't think I would have loved you so much had you not been so, "tell it like it is."
Since you decided to take yourself away, I have become more open with the emotional side of me. Only slightly more open in the words that I use to express my emotions, but loads more open in the words I put on paper, or on the computer to express my emotions. I have learned that not all feelings need to be shared with someone, most times it is ok to just get them out and send them away. Maybe I send them away to you? If so, hank you for hanging on to them, and not sending them back. I write and I write, and I write, but choose to share what is inside with only a few people, and I like it that way.
Since you decided to take yourself away, I have become more aware of the things that people go through when they lose someone they love. I have lost people before, but I was always self-centered about my grief, as maybe most people are, but no more. For always I will live with the grief I feel for the people you left behind. Not necessarily for myself, but for your family, for your daughter, for some of your friends - for them, I will always have a heavy heart for their loss.

I wonder if you would be happy for all of the media-related "attention" that mood disorders and suicide have started to receive in the last year and a half or so. Would you be happy for the change, for the change that could help others, that could keep others ALIVE, as I am? Or would you share the other feeling I have about it, and be frustrated that ALL of this is happening too late to save you? Why now and not 2, 3, or 4 years ago? I am SO proud of all the figures in sports who have come out to share their story. In all of these athletes, many of whom you looked up to, would you have found the strength to share more of your struggle, or would you have still rather kept it is as your own struggle?

I have been going back through past emails from you, and it saddens me to see how far back the sadness actually went. For a long time, in my mind, the majority of the struggles came as your relationship with your ex-wife began to dissolve, but in looking at past emails from you, they began so much earlier than that, but I didnt recognize it then. I do believe that I recognized the struggles in a way that allowed me to help, to lend a shoulder, to send you the appropriate song to listen to, to point you in the direction of a book I loved that might change your mood. But I do know that I did not recognize your struggle, and your pain, as something that I could not fix, and as something that could end your life as soon, as I could have. I thought that much of your pain was fixable with a joke, or with a night out, or with time away from relationships that were causing you pain. I didn't know that this pain was far greater until you told me, only a couple of years before you took yourself away. And Mike, I am so, so glad that you knew that you could confide in me, and that you did, but it also hurts me that it took you so long.
It is funny, I found an old "diary" that I kept through highschool, it seems that it is mostly grades 9-11, and perhaps 12, but I haven't gotten that far yet. It brings a smile to my face how often you have come up in my childhood journal, although our relationship was drastically different then from how it finished. You just LOVED to torture the three of us, Carrie, Jen and I.  I remember being so glad that you were my friend's brother, and not my brother, because I am just not sure how I would have handled such a protective, smart-ass brother. But on reading through the journal, it seems as though I thought you were pretty damn funny (and even a little cute!), just I couldn't tell Jen, because I was supposed to be annoyed with your shenanigans, just as she was. It was kind of cool when I read a page about your friend from Scotland being in town, because when I wrote it, it meant nothing, and was just another daily event to write about. I don't remember ever meeting your friend from Scotland, and I know for a fact that I NEVER would have thought that your friend Steven, from Scotland, would become a crutch for me throughout your funeral service, and in the months after you died. You had a good friend in him.
I feel like I could write forever, and I will continue to write for you, and about you, but for now this lump in my throat is getting bigger and bigger and the tears have soaked my face. I continue to burn your candle, I continue to look at our pictures, I continue to think of you with happiness. I continue to smile when I hear Ray, or John Mayer, or Adele- and even many new artists that I feel like I discovered, but you were probably listening to years ago. I continue to think of you when I read a book I just know you would love, and I shudder a little when I realize I can't share it with you. And on days when I am feeling really low, and when I miss my friend more than I can bear, I look at the emails that two of your friends sent to me after you left us. In those emails, I understand so clearly that our friendship was so very important to you, and your leaving had nothing to do with me, or with any of us - it was just about you.
Every day I will wish for things to have been different for you, and pray that things are different for those going through the same struggles. I will reach out to those in need, because being a friend to someone in need can never, ever, be a bad thing. One thing that I need from you is for you to always stay close. I read a quote, from Sarah Burke's Mom that said, "Those whom we love and lose are no longer where they were before. They are now wherever we are." I will make myself believe, because that is all I have left to do.
I love you my friend. So very much. In high tide or in low tide, I'm gonna be your friend....