Dear Brandon,
Do you remember the last conversation we had? You wanted to swim with dolphins. You told me that if you ever got to go to Hawaii that’s the first thing you would do because it had always been a life-long dream of yours, and you wanted to take me with you.
I don’t know why I keep going back to that conversation. We had countless ones during the few years I spent getting to know you, and yet this is the only one that seems to stick in my head. Why??
I think that’s when I should have known. You always had a bright smile on your face and a twinkle in your eye, even if you tried to hide it under shaggy locks of brown hair and square-rimmed glasses. I still noticed you, every little thing about you I noticed, except the pain. I never saw the pain behind your eyes, the one that you hid behind a mask of wonderment and glee. I thought that you wanted to see the world, see the eiffel tower or the northern lights, but I was wrong. You were using it all as a cover, to make me think you were normal so I would want to hang out with you.
It’s not fair, it’s not fair that neither of us got to tell each other how we really are, got to know the real Violet and the real Brandon. I’m getting there now as I ponder over our conversations, the way you’d grab my hand and hold it in yours when you wanted me to know that you were there, just that you existed and took up space. I’m learning that you weren’t the person I thought you were, that what I should’ve seen inside of you is what I see in me everytime I look into a mirror. It’s what you saw, it’s what you lived with just the same as I do, but I never told you that it hurts me just as much as it hurt you.
I would tell you that I feel guilty all the time for what happened to you. I knew to look behind your eyes, I knew to dig deep behind your words and fidn the inner meaning, seek the inner pain. It’s what I wish people saw in me, everytime someone is getting to know me I think “Maybe this one will see the real me, maybe they will care enough to figure it out.” I’m sure that’s what you must’ve been thinking about me, and I let you down. I didn’t look, didn’t listen, didn’t SEE.
I keep going back, trying to convince myself that it wasn’t true, that maybe all of this is a mistake and I am going to be sitting in the library one day and your going to come walking in there to sit down next to me and you’ll say “Salutations” in that bubbly voice of yours and grin at me from ear to ear. It will be just another day and I won’t have to be sitting here like I am now, waiting for the boy with a skip in his step to come and ask me why I’m crying, to tell me it was just a bad dream and I can pinch myself to wake up.
I want you to tell me that you didn’t kill yourself.
I know it’s silly to let my imagination wander with the impossibility that your going to come back, but I can’t help it. I should have been a better friend to you Brandon, I SHOULD HAVE, I SHOULD HAVE, I SHOULD HAVE.
I know you’d tell me that none of this is my fault, but your wrong. Out of all the people’s whose fault it is some of the blame has to fall on my shoulders. I saw the bullies, I tried to stand up for you and I ended up making it worse for me. I wanted to fight your battles because you were my friend and you didn’t deserve to be treated the way you were, but I only succeeded in making the taunting worse, the fights more frequent. That is partly my fault, and I thought you were strong this whole time. Why was I so stupid…
Brandon, my close friend, I hope your happy wherever you are. I hope you find whatever peace of mind your looking for elsewhere then on this earth. I wish I could have given it to you while you were here but it’s too late now. I will always think fondly of you and remember you as one of the greatest kids I ever knew, because it’s true, you were.
Who knows, maybe your up in heaven right now, and your finally getting to swim with dolphins.
I love you and I’ll miss you forever and always,
Violet
5 comments
You’re a great writer. The only thing better than swimming with dolphins is swimming with sharks.
Aquatic life doesn’t live in Heaven; the environment is all wrong up there.
This is touching. I’m sorry you lost your friend. It’s normal to feel guilty after you lose someone. Especially with a suicide. Questioning what you could have said or done to change things. But, you should know that it isn’t your fault. If anyone should feel some form of guilt, it should be the bullies that tormented him. You have to know your friend Brandon made a choice. An irreversible choice – to take his life. It is truly heartbreaking that he didn’t reach out to you or anyone before he made that choice. I don’t think you should weigh yourself down with unnecessary guilt, though. Hopefully he is at peace – swimming with dolphins.
GoodGirl has it right.
I fully agree, this was very touching. I’m very sorry you lost your friend in this way. Especially a friend like that. But please don’t blame yourself, it’ll bring you down a never ending road of beating yourself up. It wasn’t your fault, and he is the one to make this choice. And like GG said, it is heartbreaking he didn’t reach out to you or someone – but he did make that choice. I’d like to think he is swimming with those dolphins and in peace now. I may not have known Brandon sadly, though he seems like the type of person who wouldn’t want you, Violet, to weigh yourself down with such guilt. Maybe he wanted you to be one to swim with those dolphins too or to travel. The only people that should feel guilty are those who caused him pain purposely. So try to live your life, please. I wish you good luck, and hope you don’t be so hard on yourself.
I lost one of my oldest friends to suicide a year and a half ago. We were seventeen and had been friends since we were eight. So believe me when I say I know how you feel. I know it doesn’t help, but I’m really sorry this happened to you. Just remember that you were the reason he woke up each morning while he lived. You were his friend, and he knew you cared about him. Take solace in knowing that you knew this amazing person better than most. You should know that you’re amazing for seeing through whatever it was that made idiots pick on him. You are one of the good ones. Don’t forget it. At the very least, live for him. Go swim with the dolphins, do the things you two talked about.
You cared and you spent time with him.
That is all you could do.
Maybe he did not want you to see.
Maybe that is why he always gave you the smile and the effervescence.
He may have seen the real Violet, your pain and tried to protect you from his own.
Saw it as being a good friend to you not to add to your problems with his own even though you would have shared with him in that manner. And he tried his utmost to brighten your life because of his care for you.
As the other posters said, go to Hawaii one day and swim with the dolphins in his honor.