Letters to CJ

This is a letter that was meant to be sent a long time ago. I only realized it was missing when it returned to me one day. I remade it, only to find out that it had been replaced with something that is meant to be waved in somebody's face, as if it were trying to say, "This is the way I have won. You have lost the battle and will lose the war." The new letter reads, "I'm the victim," when it was really meant to say thank you. The person who intercepted it was very careful in making sure you never received it as it was supposed to be.

"I'm writing this now to say that I want you to know that I'm doing better now in so many ways."
 And I'm running out of words now because I don't know what way to express to you how grateful I am, because when I needed it you saved me from the darkness that resides at the end of a fist. For talking, for hiding, for existing. Before you were here, it made me realize that a families light is a finite resource, and that everyone must take some of it or inevitably, one member will take it all and use it to hold power over everyone else. They snatch it away and hold it over your head until your shadow consumes you.

I don't know how to say that you're the reason I no longer live in fear. And I don't know how to tell you that I know you're not perfect. I've seen your worst, and somehow it reminded me that maybe it wouldn't have stopped. That maybe the only reason you did anything was because you couldn't stand seeing someone else enduring the same pain that you did, even though you would never say it, because that's never been who you are.

I know that things happen for a reason, but I can't conceive a reason for the darkness other than simply being a way to help us battle each other out of it. Because in so many ways you saved my life. And I can't conceive of a reason for the darkness to exist for any other purpose than to make us become the light.

But I still don't know how to say it. So I write the words. "Thank you." And I send the letter again with the hope that you'll see it. And someday, when you know all I can't tell you, you'll say "thank you," too.

You're no longer here, but you will never be forgotten. In my mind, you will always be my older sister.
Signed, Patrick Baker.