Dear Eva

Dear [Eva],
I guess you could say that this letter has been nearly two years in the making. I'm not going to get angry this time. All this is going to be is a letter to an old friend.

I don't know if you'd recognize me these days. I'm not just older, (and assumingly, more mature!) I'm also different. Hardened, I guess. Or maybe I'm a dreamer now grounded.

Do you remember the summer we were eleven and you and your mom and I went to the Badlands in South Dakota? Even though we all got slightly dehydrated and no one could figure out how to put up the tent, I still consider that trip the best few days of my life. Sometimes it's the little calamities like that make it all the more special.

The sky is a beautiful deep blue today, the same hue that it was the day you left. Sometimes I think back to that day and wonder why you chose it. It's not as if it was remarkable in any way; nothing noteworthy even in the weeks previous. What was it that pushed you over the edge, [Eva]?

I do still feel guilty for not being there that summer; maybe something happened then that I would've noticed. And then you could still be here, instead of wherever you are now.

[Eva], I'm rambling. It's not that I don't have much to say, quite the contrary, but I can't put the wild emotions and racing thoughts into mere words. Broadcasting my thoughts to you, if it were possible, would be so much easier.

I haven't seen your mom in the same amount of time I haven't seen you. She moved to Alberta, Canada, to be with your grandparents. She took your remains with her, if I remember correctly. Funny that I don't know your final resting place. I guess I could look it up online, but it wouldn't be of much use. I wish your mom and I had kept in touch. She was a mother to me too.

It's strange, [Eva]. I should be used to this by now, but a few weeks ago, when I learned I had gotten the coaching job, my first impulse was to call you. Will I become accustomed to living without you as the years fly by, or will I always feel that that there's something missing, and as hard as I may search, I can never find it? In which case, the years might not fly, but instead crawl.

I see a road stretched out ahead; it is winding and endless. Anyone's guess is good as to where it goes. I, and I always assumed you, thought our lives were clear-cut, but now I realize it was never so. The future isn't set in stone; it is more like a footprint on the beach: it shifts and crumbles, and may disappear all together, but it is easily re-imprinted.

I loved you. No, I take that back. I love you. Still, even after everything. And I have a feeling it's not going to change anytime soon- maybe not ever. Is that why I can't seem to move on? Sometimes, I think, I'm waiting for you to call or to hear the ping that you've IM'd me. I know it'll happen the day pigs fly, but still, I catch myself.

News? You want a summery of the last two years? [long section of stuff that happened after the suicide attempt that I don't yet feel comfortable putting online]

Well, that's me- what, you want to know about the rest of my family too? They haven't changed that much:
Mom still burns everything.
Dad still screams at everyone constantly.
Naomi still routinely paints her toenails that awful hot pink.
Hayden is still getting beat up in football.
Martin and his fandom are still going strong.
Ben continues to be a cute, but evil, little (but now slightly larger) pest a good portion of the time.

"Have I said too much?/ There's nothing more I can think of to say to you..."

Goodbye, [Eva].

Love,
Mariah