I miss you. I can’t see your smile anymore. I can’t hear you laugh anymore. I can’t play Final Fantasy with you anymore. I can’t look behind me and see you standing there smiling up at me anymore. I need to hear your voice again. I don’t have a single recording of any kind of your voice. Memories of your voice are slowly fading away with the rest of me. I miss you. I miss your son – our, son, misses you. I don’t get to see him anymore. Your daughter misses you. She’s getting so big. She wonders where her mother went and when she’ll be back. What am I Supposed to tell her? Being a single dad is rough, but I have help. You were the glue that held us together. I’m still trying to figure out what went wrong, but you’re no longer here to tell me – if you would even tell me. I’m searching through your diary and your journal and it leaves more questions than answers. Why did you leave me, Asilee? I thought we were fighting your darkest battles. I thought we were winning. You were seeing a therapist and making progress. God, I wished you would just talk to me. You kept everything bottled in and wouldn’t let the main person in your corner in. You kept building walls up as I was knocking them down. Why did you fight so hard to keep me out? Your battles were my battles and I’m sorry if I went MIA. I didn’t mean to. I hope you understood that I had battles of my own and I got lost. Look at me, here I am telling you that your battles were my battles, but I didn’t let you help me win the war. Asilee you were my best friend and now you’re gone and I don’t even know what killed you. I know it was the suicide; I have all the details to that. I just don’t know what killed you. I tried my best. I hope you knew that. I did everything in my power to help you; to help us. We had hopes, dreams, and tasks that we wanted to accomplish. We were supposed to get married. We were supposed to go to E3 together. We were supposed to learn how to drive together and pick out your car. We were supposed to build my first rig together. We were supposed to go into business for ourselves to leave a legacy for our children. What kind of legacy is this going to be when the person who gave me hope is gone? The person I wanted to be with for the rest of my life is no longer here with me. I just need this to be a nightmare. I’m trying so hard to wake up. I want to wake up and see you lying next to me asleep or hear you out in the living room playing Final Fantasy. This letter is too little too late, but I’d give anything to see your face again; to see you smile again. I would give anything to be able to hold you in my arms again. I know I sound selfish and I’m sorry. At least you’re not suffering anymore because I could tell that life was eating away at you like a disease. Taking more and more pieces of Lee away from me. I watched you struggle to hang on and I felt so helpless; Lee I tried. But I guess my best wasn’t good enough. This is an exercise I thought of when I was talking to my therapist. I decided that I needed to remind myself of what I’d lose and who I’d hurt if I decided to end everything. All of what is mentioned is true; things that have been said to me and discussed. It has opened my eyes. -Asilee