Amber

Chapter 48

December 14, 2015

Dear Hailey,

Everything is brighter than I remember it. Even the darkness. Especially the darkness. Nighttime is daylight to me. Daylight is painful—but in a good way, like being swallowed up and suffocated by color and light. It's beautiful.

I thought maybe I would forget how to feel things. How to see things as they are. That my body would be too numb and my eyes too used to darkness to know how to adopt the brightness and the warmth again.

I was wrong. It's all amazing, and it's like I'm experiencing it for the first time.

Everyone at the hospital was so nice to me. I guess that's probably normal when they all think you're crazy.

The thing is ... we're all sort of crazy. On different levels, maybe, and by different standards. Crazy is always there. We just hide it so well. But it's there. Deep down we're all unbalanced and unstable and one dead sister away from allowing it to surface. No. From willing it to surface.

Get out all of the crazy, right? Force it out into the open so that you can deal with it. Face it. Conquer it. Talk about it openly. Write about it. Write about how you ran away and made a whole town go searching for you. Write about how you cut yourself alone in the dark. About how you put a face to the type of monster that could only exist inside of you. About how you almost killed yourself with pain. With regret. With loss.

And then write about how you didn't.

How you came back.

How you plan to heal.

I've been doing a lot of healing lately. Physically. Emotionally. Mentally. Healing has become the number one priority on my daily agenda. Spending two weeks in a hospital will do that to you.

Those first few days were sort of a haze. A lot of pain medication and IVs and being asked questions and falling asleep and waking up and more questions and more medication.

Then I saw Mom and Dad ...

I let them hug me and hold me, and I hugged and held them back because I wanted to be sure I wasn't imagining it all. I wanted to feel the warmth of their bodies. To fall asleep absorbed in their arms. I didn't want to be alone anymore. They are the closest thing I have to Hannah now. I don't ever want to lose that.

The first night we all came home as a family, we watched a movie and fell asleep on the couch together. They were both out shortly after the opening credits. When they woke the next morning, they looked at me between them, and I thought their smiles would swallow the room.

I see the way that sadness and joy wrestle in their eyes. I feel so horrible that I'm part of the reason for that sadness. They haven't asked me why I ran away. They probably already know. Part of them probably even understands. They haven't told me how worried I made them or how selfish I was or how I'm crazy out of control and the worst daughter imaginable.

They just keep telling me how much they love me.

It's so much to deal with for them, but they must know how hard it's been for me as well. I feel like I fell asleep and dreamt every day of my life after Hannah was gone. A constant state of sleepwalking. The mind's defense mechanism of shutting down to avoid facing the pain.

But I know it was also more than that. I know it wasn't all about Hannah. I know that even before she died, I still wasn't exactly normal. I wasn't exactly happy. I know that if things were different, it might have been me soaking in the bathtub instead of her. I know that a part of me wished it had been me.

A woman comes in twice a week to talk about all of this with me. (Yes, she has sort of replaced you.) She gets me to open up about everything and to tell her all of the feelings and emotions I used to only tell you. Her name is Patty, and she's the sweetest lady alive. She makes me feel comfortable and normal talking about very uncomfortable and non-normal things. It's cool because I'm learning a lot from her too. Like about how to really listen to people and how to lead them to finding answers from the inside out. I sort of like the idea of being able to help someone in that way, being an ear for someone and a voice when needed. I, more than most people, know the power that can have.