Dear Kat,

This is it. This is everything: everything that has ever been and will ever be for encompassed and sealed off. This is all that remains, for me, at least.

You can assume that if you're reading this that I have done something you wouldn't have wanted me to do, and I am sorry, and I'm asking you please not to cry, because every ending is a beginning, and surely something will come of this - I am not the be all or end all of anything at all, and please do not treat me as such. I am just a person. No, not even that. I was just a person.

For this is it. This is November.

It's been so long now: it's been months and months that I have planned this, and now, finally it's been... I mean, presumably, I have done it - killed myself, that is. Because November 1st has been a date holding too much meaning for a rather long time now - it's my suicide date, it's the end, and I'm sorry for anything and everything.

I hope you can forgive me, I hope you're not too sad, because this isn't the end, this isn't the end for you: you have this whole life, this whole world, whereas I... I am... I am nothing.

Don't argue with me, well I mean you can't argue with me. I'm dead. I'm a body at the bottom of the lake. I am peaceful, and I will know the greatest mystery of what it is like to die. You are more than that, you are more than me. Please remind everyone of that: that I dictate very little, and I should materialise as little more than a passing thought from now on, because in an ideal world, no one would be sad, but I know that is a cause for false hope, because I've been to funerals before, I've heard about deaths before, and people are sad, people are always sad, so I have no right or indeed no power to stop you from being sad.

I just wish and ask that at some point you do stop being sad, because you have this whole life ahead of you: you have everything and I'm just your brother, sure you may have known and spent sixteen years of your life with me, but if you live to eighty, that will only be a fifth of your life, and that's hardly anything at all. You will have so much more, you will have this life and you will enjoy it and you will have these experiences, and I- I don't know how to phrase this, but that's just not for me.

I don't agree with the concept of living happy lives, because I'm fucked up, aren't I? I can't do that. I can't live like that, because I'm fucked up in the head and I won't take pills because they don't help. So that makes me a headcase, just trouble, just a mess no one really wants to deal with. I don't see anything in my future. I don't see anything to do, in fact, it seems like the only date my life has ever built itself up to is November 1st, but by now we've passed that date: we've passed into November, and I am gone, but you, you are still alive, and I miss you, and I'm sorry, but this is how it is going to be. Let me decide that for myself, let me be selfish, let me scream at the top of my lungs, let me make a bad decisions, because it's the only thing that could ever make me feel alive.

I hope Frank is okay. I know it's bad timing. I know the morning after his birthday was not a good choice at all, but it's over now - it happened, there's nothing anyone can change about this - all there is left is the matter of acceptance and moving on, because you can move on, and you will, and everything will be okay, because you're strong, Kat, you really are. I do worry about Frank, though, because we never got quite enough time together, we only had a month, but November 1st was so much bigger than him; he was never revolutionary, he was never the be all and end all of everything - he's just a boy, just a boy I happened to like a lot, and I want him to say the same for me, but I doubt that it could be so.

Make sure that he's okay, though, look after him for me, but please look after yourself first. You matter a lot Kat, I love you so much.

Tell mum this wasn't her fault too, and please try to accept her, be kind to her nw, for my sake, at least, because she's lost a husband and a son. Don't let her lose herself again, you have to stay with her. She loves you, Kat, she's your mother - you need to stop overthinking everything.

You need to stop making assumptions, I think you'll be happier that way, because that's all I want of you - to be happy. For I am happy now, at the bottom of a lake, because water is the only thing that could ever bring me to a state of calm, and I know you don't want to hear that, but I think you should hear the truth, and that it most certainly isn't your fault.

I just had this fucked up head, and that was my fault.

Don't make the funeral a big deal. I'm unsure as to whether I even want a funeral, but I imagine mum wants one, but don't let people who never even cared about me come - just let it be a small thing, and dear god, don't make it open casket, I don't want you looking at this fucking body that you assume as me, for I am not the body, I am the soul, and I am gone by now. But I have this feeling, that everything is somehow cyclical, like how the water in the sea can one day rain down upon your face over and over again: it's the same water from the dawn of time, and in your body, your blood is the same blood you were born with: just circulated over and over again. So maybe somehow, you will see me again, and we will find each other in a form that I could bear slightly more.

I love you. Please don't cry. Please don't reread this a thousand times. Please live in the present and not the past.

I'm sorry that I lied to you so many times.

I'm sorry that I can never say this face to face, because writing it down seems so simple, but it remains the only option I have. You'd stop me, and I know that, and I know it's because you care, but you won't ever quite understand.

But I'm happy now. I promise you that.

Gerard.

-

Kat's hands were shaky with knuckles white in places and bruised and bloody in others; they had tried to sleep so many times, they had tried to listen, they had tried to regard Gerard's every word in that letter, but November had been the hardest month of their life. November had been a horror show from start to finish and at four in the morning on December 1st, they sat cold and empty inside in their bed: the house was empty and quiet, for there was an empty room that no one dared to walk into or touch, and too many chairs, and the kind of foods he liked still left in the fridge, and his toothbrush in the bathroom, and simple things like that which cut into Kat as they had attempted to continue living that month.

They'd had some time off school, as had been expected, but they weren't entirely sure as to whether that had been such a good idea, for all they had accomplished was the matter of sitting in a huddle and crying as they clutched and reread Gerard's last letter to them.

It was getting to the point where they could perhaps memorise every single word of it, and that was when they knew that they had to stop - put a stop to this somehow, to this loop of questions and answers they could never provide.

And that was what drew Kat to their desk at four in the morning: flicking the light switch on, they grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper and hoped to settle this within them to some degree: acceptance and all of that bullshit that seemed to have passed him straight by.

-

Dear Gerard,

I don't know why I am replying. Why I am writing a reply you will never read or receive, but I am, and it's four in the morning. It's been a month. It's December now and it still fucking hurts. Everything fucking hurts, Gerard, why the fuck did you have to do this? Christmas won't be the same, you know? Nothing will ever be the same.

The house is all empty rooms and questions we don't ask and subjects we avoid, and mum tries not to cry, but she is always crying, and I hear her sometimes in the kitchen, when she has the radio and she's cooking, because she thinks about you, and she thinks how she doesn't have to cook to accommodate the fact you'll hardly eat anything, but now she wants to - she misses that.

Everyone misses you.

And I know, that this is just a small fraction of my life, and this is just, this is first grief, and this is- no, you know what? Fuck that. Fuck that, Gerard, you're my brother, you're my fucking brother and I love you and you fucking drowned yourself because you decided there was nothing for you because you needed to take pills?

Fuck that, Gerard.

Of course there was something for you. There was the whole fucking world for you. There was so much more than November 1st - that never had to be the fucking end, why the fuck did you have to die at seventeen? You died a child, you died before you even got out of high school, before you could even figure out what living means.

I went home that morning, the morning of November 1st, at about nine, because Frank's house was a mess of drunk passed out people and I wanted some time to myself, and I went into your room just to check, you know, after the pills thing, because I was fucking worried about you - I'd had this feeling for so long that something was off, and you know what? I was fucking right, but fuck, what could I possibly have done? What the fuck could I have done?

I found what you left, I found the notes and at first it felt like I had died because I couldn't fucking breathe and I couldn't believe it, so I tried to convince myself that this couldn't be somehow, that maybe you hadn't done it yet, so I called Frank, and tried to convince myself that maybe you were still with him and that maybe we could still save you, but you weren't. And I told Frank to go to the lake, to see if you were still there, but you weren't there either, there were just your shoes by the shore.

I don't think drowning was peaceful at all. And I think you know that now. The doctors told me it burns. You were being fucking stupid. I love you, though. I fucking love you.

A police officer showed up about fifteen minutes or so after Frank had arrived there and talked to him, and I stayed on the phoneline sat in your bedroom, clutching your letter, fucking shaking all over, and I listened to the officer and Frank talk, and I noticed how everything seemed to be drifting away from me, and how I felt like I was dying too.

But I will never know how it is like to die, none of us will, and maybe that's for the better, because I don't at all imagine that it could be pleasant.

More police officers, a fire engine, and an ambulance were called, and I stayed on the phone, because I couldn't bare to be there: I couldn't imagine moving, but Frank was there, and he watched as the firemen got your body out of that fucking lake, and he watched you laying lifeless on the stretcher as they carried you into the ambulance, and they didn't let him ride in the ambulance, but the police officer was really nice and drove him to the hospital after you.

You were pronounced officially dead by eleven that morning, and as we stood in that hospital room: me, mum, and Frank, and saw you motionless, dead, pale, laying there in that bed, I felt like I should be crying my eyes out, but I felt so empty, I felt nothing at all, and mum was all sporadic sobs for days afterwards, and Frank went into an angry mess and gave at least twenty people a black eye and got excluded from school, because he just couldn't deal with anything at all.

But it was like I had no reaction. I was just there motionless, and I simply reread your letters, and I'm trying to move on, but this won't fucking go away.

The image of your lifeless face on that hospital bed a month ago won't fucking go away.

Frank figured it out, you know?

It took him a few days. It took us a few days to pull ourselves together to the most basic level, because fuck, no one is coping: you left a fucking hole Gerard, and nothing is ever going to fill that fucking hole because, yeah, sure, people can try, but no one is ever going to be you, and therefore no one could ever fill a you shaped hole. I'm going to have this hole forever - it's going to be there, and it's going to hurt, but it's stopped bleeding now, at least, and the initial shock of everything has numbed, but that's only because fucking everything else has numbed too, and it just fucking aches.

It fucking hurts everyday.

And it's going to hurt.

Forever.

And I fucking wish you could have understood just how much people care, and how much people love you, and don't even try to consider arguing that it's only because you're gone and that people only care once you're in the grave, because that's a whole load of fucking bullshit that is, Gerard. We love you. We've always fucking loved you. We're always going to love you.

Your death isn't going to change that. It just makes it hurt more.

But Frank figured it out, and I think I yelled at him too much, but he had it there: he had everything, all the fucking letters - everything. He had all he needed to figure out what was going on weeks before it actually happened, but he didn't - somehow he couldn't do that, and now you're dead, and I feel like that's his fault to some degree, but of course it isn't, and of course, that's horrible thing to think, and it's not going to accomplish anything at all.

But you wrote so many letters, and reading them all fucking cut into me. It's been hell. And don't even tell me that I didn't have to read any of them, because fuck, of course I fucking did, I need to understand: I need answers, I need to come to terms with this, I need to understand you, and I'm trying - I'm trying so hard, but I think maybe you're right, because I don't think I ever will be able to comprehend how you could possibly think that this wouldn't affect people that much.

I'm not going to move on.

It's fucking alright for you. I'm glad you're fucking happy. But you're not happy at all, you just lack the capacity to be sad when you're dead, and that's not fucking happy - that's the fucking bullshit way out and I-

I'm sorry.

Don't talk about the days you won't see, don't talk about this being your final year, your final November, your last October, the last halloween, because it's not fucking like that for me. Those were just my last days, my last months, my last year with you, and I have to face November 1st again next year, and I have to feel this all: all over again, each year for the rest of my fucking life.

You left a hole, Gerard. A really fucking big hole.

We had your funeral on the 11th. It was a kind of a small thing, as you had requested, and it was fucking horrible. We had the service on the beach - that was mum's idea, she thought it best, but it just made me fucking think of every time we'd spent together there, and have those memories poisoned with such a horrible fucking affair clad in all black in November chilled winter air and the empty space next to me where you should have been standing, not in that fucking coffin, but not standing at all - just laid there, just fucking dead, and I couldn't cry, I felt like I was going to be sick: I felt like everything inside me was burning up, and the air was heavy with salt from the sea, and I couldn't fucking breathe: I was suffocating right there on the beach, with Pete by my side, and I think I would have fainted if he hadn't held me tight and let me breakdown in his arms.

You need people like that at funerals. People you love, to some degree, people to hold you, people to kiss you, people to understand, people to hear you cry. I think that's why dad came back. He came for your funeral, and stayed home overnight, and he felt out of place in our living room like he didn't belong and the chair at the table wasn't really his and we didn't have the kind of tea he drinks anymore, so he had coffee even though he doesn't like coffee but he drank it because mum made it for him and he wanted to be polite.

And it was all fucking smiles.

Fucking awkward smiles that don't mean a thing because you're dead and you're not here to see them. Mum and dad are back together now, and things are getting better, but that doesn't fucking matter at all because you're not here to see it, and you would have liked it: you would have cared for it more than I would have and I see that every time I see them.

I see that every time I see a smile, because you would always have found more light in it than I could ever have.

I see that every time I see or feel anything, because you would always have appreciated to a greater extent than I was capable of doing.

Frank cried so much at the funeral. He didn't leave the beach for almost three days. I had to bring him out meals, because he just sat there at the shoreline for days, and you know what he said when I asked him why?

He told me that he could feel you, your spirit, part of you in the ocean, and that he couldn't let you go. And I thought that was a whole load of fucking bullshit.

And yet I held my fucking hand in the tide for hours with him.

But the thing was, I don't why or I don't know how, but I could feel you too. It's hard to put into words, and maybe you were right, maybe as you died in the lake, that water came back up to the clouds, and rained back down upon the ocean.

Or maybe that's a whole load of bullshit

But I'll never know.

It just makes me feel better, to think that maybe you're not gone fully. And I think I'll put this letter out there in the tide and watch it wash away in the ocean - whether just to avoid the matter of reading it over again and again, or if I really do believe you'd read it or feel it or find it somehow out there.

I guess I'll never know.

I will always love you so much, Gerard. I promise you that.

Kat.

-

this is the end and everything hurts I'm so

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