Dear Jonah,

As staged as it may sound, I have to start this letter by telling you that I am not sure I will ever find adequate words to furnish a true, honest impact statement. I am sure that the moment this is sent, a million more thoughts, phrases, and descriptions will come to mind that suddenly seem to have perfect clarity, more depth, that are more adequate reflections of this “impact,” and I will wish I could send them.

I have been given the opportunity to write this letter describing the impact losing Jonah has had on me – not my thoughts or feelings on what took place in his last few moments or days – and I will try to do just that. But first, it might help to explain who I am. Jonah was my (slightly) older cousin – the son of my maternal uncle and his wife. And, on the face of it, I understand that such a description may not seem like very much. Plenty of people have close relationships with their cousins, I am sure, but I am asking you to buy-in to the fact that my relationship with Jonah was completely different. I have yet to really find a word to adequately describe us – some people I know have offered twin flame or soul mate – but really the closest I’ve ever gotten is saying that Jonah was my true other half, my twin. I used to joke that Jonah and I were the same person trapped in two different bodies, raised in completely different circumstances, and having made completely different choices in life. And what I mean by that is not that we were so similar – in some ways we were, and in some we weren’t. I am not one to believe in a lot of spirituality or mysticism in the world, but what I mean is that from the second we landed on this earth, Jonah and I were inextricably linked.

Growing up several hundred miles apart, Jonah and I didn’t see each other very often. Before the age of 18 I can only distinctly recall being with him in person about 15 times; it never mattered. Every single family gathering, Jonah and I would perform our other social “obligations” and then quite literally find somewhere to run away together. We hid on staircases, in the basement, down the street, in the woods, anywhere to just hang out and talk alone -  sometimes about literally nothing, sometimes about something of substance. While I am not sure that we could ever relate firsthand to each other’s experiences, Jonah and I just always understood each other and never saw each other’s circumstances as silly or unfounded or even unintelligible. We are both empaths for sure, but it went beyond that in a way I cannot capture.

In our mid-to-late teens, Jonah and I went several years without speaking in any substantial way. During that time, he had become addicted to heroin and lived through some of the most physically and mentally trying moments of his life. I am beyond sure that there were days he didn’t know who or where he was and honestly, my family didn’t really know where he was either. Not exactly. It still did not matter. Somehow, I always got Jonah’s latest cell phone number and we kept up with each other. There were years that the only thing we sent for messages were the words “I love you so much” over and over and over. During one of the times Jonah was in jail, we wrote each other incessantly. No matter how much my “trials and tribulations” paled in comparison to Jonah’s reality, he was there for every single second. In one of the letters I still have, he writes to tell me that I am the only person he has wanted to talk to, and could I please never stop writing, even if I don’t hear back for a while. The bits and stories I did get from him were frightening, hilarious, painful, horrifying, but without fail they were filled with love.

When I was 21, somehow the stars aligned and Jonah left prison and was placed in a halfway house in the town where I was living and where I had just graduated college. The first moment I could, I called Jonah to make plans to see him. As I drove from my apartment to the other side of town, I was literally shaking. I had not seen Jonah in years and yet I felt so attached to him and loved him so much that I was nervous – what if I was the lunatic cousin who felt this weird attachment that was not shared? But boy, was I wrong. For a while, Jonah and I were as inseparable as we could be for two people balancing things like required parole check-ins, counseling sessions, jobs, and friends. He even started dating my former roommate. We shared everything with each other – good, bad, and ugly. He came over and spilled Thai food and tall boys all over my apartment floor. We laughed until we cried, we cried until couldn’t breathe, we hugged each other all the time, and we said “I love you” even more. When Jonah got pneumonia and needed a nebulizer, I took him to the hospital. When my college boyfriend broke up with me, Jonah came to my apartment and slept on my floor (no air mattress, just a pillow and blanket) for three days so that I would not have to wake up sad and alone. About ten years have passed since then with many more ups and downs for both of us – mostly for Jonah.

I told someone once that being with Jonah was a little like looking at something through the fog: you know it’s there and you can see it, but it always seems just a little more out of reach than you thought and you’re always afraid you won’t catch a proper glimpse again. The past few years, even though Jonah was in Alaska, were different. The same exact connection was there, but there was no such thing as stretches of time without each other, as days where Jonah seemed “somewhere else.” We talked constantly – he was the first person to know literally anything going on in my life and often one of the only ones to really get it. He never once has responded to me in a way that wasn’t exactly what I needed at the time. He was so happy and had so much of his own going on, but he never failed to make time for me, for us I guess, and to let me know I was still the most important person in his life.  

At some point in my early twenties, I became saliently and painfully aware and terrified that someday I might lose Jonah to an over dose. I told him this constantly, and he would brush me off. “No” I would say, “you can’t promise me you won’t relapse, that it won’t happen.” Every time he assured me that even if he did relapse, he would get himself back out, but for me it was like those dreams where you’re telling someone not to get in the car because you know they’re going to crash, but they do it anyway. That feeling never left me, but for literally the first time ever, the last few years had finally let me be comfortable, confident even, that this wouldn’t be anytime soon. Sure, things change quickly, but we’d be old and grey. Oh – and it would most definitely be an accident.

In September of last year, Jonah and I lost our grandfather. As a man who lived to 101 years old and still had all his marbles, we marveled at him and he had a special place in our hearts. I also happen to think we were his two favorites. When our grandfather passed away, it affected us both more than we expected, but we were there to support each other. Exactly 3 months to the day before I lost Jonah, I had texted him in a tearful moment about our grandfather. “Please don’t ever leave me” I said “even by accident. I can’t lose you.” He wrote me back with: “You won’t ever lose me, I promise. I love you. I could never leave you here alone.” And yet, here I am, without him.

How has losing Jonah impacted me? If you could imagine someone physically reaching over and tearing half of your body apart from the other, no anesthesia, that’s how it feels. There is a boulder in my chest at all times. This doesn’t mean I don’t laugh and don’t enjoy moments or have feelings of purpose, but they are all just moments I am threading together trying to stay alive. I have a family and a long-term boyfriend and a dog and cat, but I have never ever felt so alone. Don’t get me wrong – I am in counseling and doing all the things one is “supposed” to do, I have goals and aspirations and friends – but there is never a single breath where I do not feel completely lost – even in the happiest moments. I don’t sleep really and, when I do, I always have night terrors – Jonah’s body floating on a river, his body in a morgue bloodied with no eyes, us fighting and shouting (we have never, ever fought). I have (extremely mild and manageable) OCD – obsessive thinking and anxiety. While this is usually about the stresses of life, sometimes it means I get an image or a phrase “stuck in my head” in a way such that it sort of just pops up and I think it in the background constantly – while I am working, dancing, laughing, anything. Every day that Jonah has been gone I imagine putting a gun in my mouth, just passively, a fleeting thought, and experienced in a way that feels so detached from me that I know there is zero risk of self-harm. I know this is a little manifestation of the fact that I cannot imagine living without Jonah, that I don’t know how, that in a lot of ways I have no interest, and that I wish passively that, somehow, I could just go be with him. Honestly, I just want him back here. He promised me he wouldn’t leave.

This undercurrent has impacted my job, my relationship with my boyfriend of 7 years, and every other relationship in my life. For the first time in my 30 years on this earth, there are things I cannot or will not share with my mom. They are just too deep, they hurt so much that I cannot even form thoughts and get them out of my mouth, which is remarkable since, as you’ve probably noticed by now, I am a words person. I had to quit my job last month and am unemployed for the first time ever so that I can take a little bit to actually wrestle with this thing, whatever the hell that means (I don’t have any particular structure or plan or program in place, I just knew I had hit my limit). My boyfriend and I have survived years together that included battling his own addiction to alcohol and a resulting emotionally abusive relationship and now that I have lost Jonah, for the first time ever I don’t know that our relationship will survive. There is a chasm between my boyfriend and myself that no one could ever reasonably fill and I don’t know that we will come out the other side of this.

Mostly, I have lost my very best friend, my compass, my north star. Some days I can’t even hear his laugh anymore in my head. I am shattered in an irreparable way; I feel like I am literally walking around missing limbs, senses, the ability to communicate or ever really feel happy. The day that Jonah went for his last walk (unbeknownst to me), I was driving. We hadn’t talked in a few days, but he had made it to Seattle and was excited. The last few months had been rough – we had even talked seriously about him coming to live with me in New Jersey when he wasn’t sure where to go from Alaska – but honestly in the grand scheme of life I wasn’t particularly concerned about him. He was a little lost, but there was a plan, and we were in touch, and everyone was pulling together to help with his next step in life. In a lot of ways, he seemed content and confident starting this next chapter, as he knew the Alaska chapter had come to a close a few months later than it should have. During my drive, I started thinking about how I would ever possibly be able to make anyone understand how I felt, how our relationship was, if I lost him. It was such an odd passing thought. I told my boyfriend about it when I got home and he agreed with how out of place it seemed. Three days later I found out Jonah was gone. How can I describe the impact that losing Jonah has had and will continue to have on me? How can I describe who he was and who we were? I can’t. I don’t know how I could possibly comment on appropriate discipline for the provider. All I can do is hope that writing this has been enough to convey how catastrophic this has been.