It’s not the dead vengeful ghosts that scare me anymore. I’m no longer frightened by the idea of the dead clattering their ways down my halls, wailing into the darkness with wild abandon. No, there are other ghosts that are much more frightening. The ghosts that lurk in the corners of my mind, the ghosts that force themselves into focus with their vivid realities. You are one of them now, the ghosts of the past. Your laughter branded into my mind, and my failure etched onto my heart.

You were going down a path I could never follow, careening down a dark trail that I never had any hope of going down with you. In the beginning I accepted you. I watched you wander off the beaten path and I laughed along with you. I accepted your need for validation from someone besides me. I knew you weren’t getting that support from home, from the place that you needed it the most. If I were to guess, I would say that you hardly even noticed yourself careening, that you had fallen for so long that you could no longer remember steady ground. You had lost the strength that was your identity, you could no longer stand on the strength of who you are. You knew how to live vicariously through the attention, you had learned how to twist that charisma of yours into a lasso that could hook anyone who dared to walk by. You were falling, I can see that now. You were falling into a pit of despair that got darker and darker the farther down you fell, that you needed someone to see you as you fell, needed someone to catch you from the top. I know, no, I knew that you were falling. I saw you fall. It was easiest to turn my angry back.

    You hurt me. You broke me down. You trained me to be who I am. You betrayed me. The very thought of your dead shark eyes staring into me with your dead shark stare is enough to break my heart. You were a brother to me, a brother who I loved very dearly. You, my dear, had no interest in brotherhood.

    You’re in Australia now, drinking yourself into a stupor off of your parents money. You’re broken now, the light that I once valued in your eyes has gone out. You’re gone, my friend is gone, the person I thought of as a brother is gone.

And I am too weak to bring you back.

For that… I am sorry