23 If you're sad and alone on Christmas

I lost my brother near Christmas, and now almost four years later, I am sitting alone in my pjs eating his favourite snacks and watching the Harry Potter marathon we always watched together on Christmas Eve. I don’t know how to adequately articulate the pain to anyone who hasn’t lost a sibling. It is a combination of desperation, mania, physical agoOntario, emotional turmoil, and complete and utter emptiness. I would give anything to have another day with him. Anything. I am broken, and I don’t know if I will ever be okay again. The loss of him has created a ripple effect that’s torn apart my family, damaged my mental health, created an intense fear of losing the people important to me, and has led to me spending Christmas Eve alone in my bedroom watching Harry Potter while sobbing into his pillow instead of celebrating with my friends.

If you feel unsupported, unaccepted, or unloved- please know that there is someone in this world who will grieve you forever. They will never be ok again, they will never get over the loss of you, and there will be a shadow cast over every celebratory moment in their life where you were supposed to be standing. Please, please, please ask for help, call someone who loves you, call a hotline, or send me a DM and you can call me.

Dear Miles,

Every year since you’ve died I’ve written you a letter on Christmas and sent it out into the internet because it feels like I’m talking to you somehow… but this year I really don’t know what to say. I miss you. I miss you so much it hurts. There’s so much I want to tell you, but you feel further and further away from me every year and the familiarity I want so desperately to feel from this letter isn’t there anymore. I can’t picture you in my mind anymore. I mean, I know what you look like, I have a photo of you in my room- but all the little details that make you you are fading from my memory. I can’t imagine your smell, I can’t imagine your laugh, I feel like I’m losing you all over again. You were supposed to walk me down the aisle, you promised me that you would when dad left. Now I’m going to have to walk alone, and know that you were supposed to be there with me. Death has made you a liar.