Status: complete for now
The Last Letter
Dear Nick
Dear Nick,
This letter marks the twentieth letter I’ve sent to you since the day you left; one letter, for every moment of weakness, and in my most desperate times of needing you, over the past year.
It also marks the last letter I‘ll ever send to you.
I still remember the first letter I wrote you. The desperation, the anger, and the resentment I felt towards you. But after that it had become so much more. It was therapeutic. After a long, hard day, when all I needed to do was talk to you, I grabbed a piece of parchment of our desk and just wrote. It was the only form of communication I was able to have with you without making myself seem crazy. The bridge between our two very different worlds.
I’m twenty two now, and getting ready to graduate from Julliard. My dream school, baby. You always knew I could do it, even when I never saw it possible. But you never once stopped believing in me.
Now, as life outside of school approaches, I'm learning that its time to start growing up and time for me to start finding my own grasp on reality. I seemed to have lost sense of it without you around, constantly keeping me on my toes, and reassuring me with one of your crooked smiles.
How I miss those smiles.
The ones you had always told me were made just for me. I used to tell you, you were lying whenever you would tell me that, but now I try to hold on to the fact that you weren't. I wish I hadn't always taken moments like that for granted.
Your brothers stopped by yesterday...and your mom, she likes to call on a regular basis to check up on me. They're doing well, I suppose. But they miss you, and I can see it on their faces.
As I mentioned in previous letters, Kevin and Danielle are expecting soon. They just found out the sex of the baby. Its a boy! But no surprise there I'm sure. Now Danielle's all worried about the damage the up and coming Jonas is going to do to the hearts of the next generation's teenage girl population. But if he turns out to be anything like you and you're brothers did, I'd say she got pretty darn lucky. Kevin also told me that he and Dani were planning to name their son after you. I wasn't sure how to feel about that, but I know you would have loved that more anything.
Joe seems to be doing better these days. He still likes to take me out for breakfast every Saturday morning, hoping to make you jealous, like it did when we were younger. But these days, I think its more about each others company. Neither of us enjoys the silence, or the emptiness in being alone. Well, being without you. He's found someone new to be apart of his life, recently, and I think she's a keeper. Her names Hailey, and she makes him happier than he's been in a long time. You should see the way he smiles whenever she's around. He lights up, and for the first time in nearly a year, he's slowly begun to sing again. For that alone, I know you'd approve of her.
And your dear younger brother? I talk to him on the phone a lot. In fact he called me the other day to see if I could drive him and his new girlfriend around on their date. Can you believe it? Apparently, he's afraid of Joe and Kevin embarrassing him, but don't worry I'll humor him a bit for you. It is his first date with a girl he really likes, after all. How could I not? Your brothers did it to you, and the tradition must live on. Even, for cute little Frankie. Except he's not so little anymore, and I'm just amazed at how much he's grown up over the last year.
Your mom and dad just left for Europe. They finally decided it was time to take advantage of the gift we all pitched in to give them on Christmas. And its good that they did, I think they're most deserving of some time alone, after raising four famous boys and all. And don't be rolling your eyes either. You know, you four were a handful.
They're rocks, your parents, and they're still there for me just like they've always been, just like you'd always hoped. I still go over for lasagna night, when I'm in town, and your mom still brings out your baby pictures time and time again, just like the day I first met your family. She was always so proud of showing you off.
Do you remember that day, though? It was the day that began it all for us. You were so embarrassed, but I found your blushing cute, and telling you that only made you blush more. I had thought only girls blushed like a tomato, up until that point, and I never let you forget that.
You always said that that day sealed the deal for you. We didn't even make it out of your house that evening. But in those moments you told me you saw how I was with you're family and how we were together, and you knew. You knew you found the one you wanted to spend forever with. And you knew from the moment you met me.
Never one to believe in love at first sight, I asked you how you knew exactly, but you would never tell me. Your answer was always just, "Because it wasn't until that day that I really understood what love, true love, looked like." I always thought you were cheesy, but it made the butterflies appear nevertheless. The only time they came harder than that was the day you proposed and you told me what you really meant by that.
"It was a million tiny little things that when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together...and I knew it. I knew from the very first time I held your hand. It was like coming home...the only real home I'd ever known. I was just taking your hand to help you out of a cab, and the moment our eyes met I knew I was a goner. And it was like...it was magic."
You always knew how to make a girl swoon.
Well, I would say now you're probably wondering about me, how I've been, and what's been going on in my life. For starters, I cut my hair today, and its shorter than you would have liked it to be, but I think it fits me. Jess, my stylist, says its the perfect style for my round shaped face. I'm hoping she meant that to be a compliment.
And I may or may not be starting my own dance company with a friend from school. Its something I've always wanted to do, and I'm excited to see how that pans out. I've got so many ideas and a passion for it that sometimes the thought alone consumes my days. Auditions for Broadway had become so scarce that I've decided to have them put to rest for awhile. It just gets hard to keep your hopes up living in the shark tank that is New York. Criticism hits you hard, and there's always someone who's better than you, more passionate than you, or prettier than you, that can get the job done just as well, if not better. And it only gets harder without you there to boost my spirits.
But other than that and a nearing graduation date, nothing has changed about me since you left. Well, almost nothing. Except for visits and phone calls from your family, I'm all alone. But I guess that's what happens when you shut everyone around who gives a damn about you, out of your life.
Everyone except you, that is.
Sometimes, I find it hard believing you're really gone. Especially when a part me holds onto the glimmer of hope that you're still out there, waiting to be found. Waiting for me to come find you. Or the hope that one day you'll come home and find me.
But everyone tells me its crazy talk, and that its the fear of letting go making me feel, act, and talk this way.
The stubborn side of me disagrees.
It's still so hard to believe, that I sometimes forget you're gone altogether, and I'll catch myself talking to you about my day while I'm making dinner or watching TV. The other day I even made your favorite meal; steak and mash potatoes. I mistakenly set the table for two, thinking you would walk in the door after a long day at the studio, and join me. But when you didn't, I realized my mistake.
I guess to some extent, you get used to being alone. You get used to not expecting phone calls, and having nothing to do at night. You don’t expect to turn around to open arms any longer or relish in the comfort of them. The small sounds of your guitar coming from our room, and the sweet sound of your voice as you'd sing me some unknown lullaby to sleep every night, have been replaced by silence. My thoughts echo through my head, with no one to share them with. Without you to share them with. The truth is, being alone isn’t terrible, it just hurts like hell.
I just...I miss you Nick. I miss the life we had together. I miss the life we were planning to have together. I miss the wedding we never got to have, and the children we're never going to watch grow up. I miss the fact that we're not going to grow old together. I miss when you would wrap me in your arms, and whisper in a way to assure me that it would all be okay. I miss the petty arguments we used to have when we got annoyed with one another. I miss the fact that those arguments only made me love you that much more.
I miss your sweet kisses, and the feeling of your hands running through my long hair. I miss you dancing with you to no music, when you would pick me up and place me on top of your feet. I miss waking up to your smiling face, and blushing when realizing that you had once again been watching me sleep. I miss the little things that made you, you. When really, I just miss everything about you. Everything about us.
It just gets hard to hold on to something when everyone else around you is telling you its time to let go. To move on.
But the truth is I don't want to let you go knowing there might be a chance you're still out there, just as lost and confused as I am. The week they stopped looking for your body, and the day of your funeral, I about cried out every ounce of fluid in me. I couldn't handle knowing, that people were going to start moving on from you. Moving on from the idea that you were in fact gone from our lives. I refused to believe it. Especially at a funeral with no body in its casket.
And I told you didn't I? I told you something didn't feel right about you leaving for the airport that day. But you persisted, just like you always did, when I told you I wanted you to stay there with me. When I told you not to go. You said, "Baby, the fans are waiting." Then you sent me that wink that made me weak in the knees, and I melted, giving in per usual. But I wish I hadn't. I wish you would have just listened to me and have stayed home. Then maybe people wouldn't have had to start listening to Justin Bieber, because your brothers were visibly too solemn to play anymore. Maybe I would have never gotten that phone call from a shaken Joe, notifying me to turn on the TV. And maybe I wouldn't have had to drop the phone in my hands, as I collapsed seeing your picture on the screen; the story about your plane crashing into the Mediterranean Sea, making every channel in the world's headlines. Maybe I wouldn't have to wake up in the middle of the night, every night, crying out in pain, dripping in cold sweat as I relive the memories of that day and what followed. Maybe the world wouldn't have lost such an inspiration.
Maybe if you hadn't gotten onto that plane you would be here, right now, sitting next to me, as we curl up together in our bed, watching another episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. Maybe if you had listened I wouldn't be sitting here, a year later, writing this last letter to you. My final letter. The letter now marking the close to the most important chapter in my life. The chapter that holds every memory with you.
And it gives me chills just thinking that this is the last form of communication I'll ever have with you. Another piece of written words that you'll never get to hear, in another letter you'll never receive.
I'm going to redecorate the house we once decorated together. I'm going to start taking your clothes out of its closet and put them away in boxes. I'm going to say goodbye to all your pictures, and take off my engagement ring. I'm going to start dating again, and find someone who will make me nearly as happy as you always made me. But I know that I won't help but compare him to you, and who you helped me to become, and how you made me feel.
I'm gonna get out of bed every morning...breathe in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won't have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breath in and out. Then, after that while, I won't have to think about how great and perfect I had it once.
Because you were my one and only. My light in all its darkness. My everything.
And even though I'm forcing myself to move on with my life, and all the parts of you that I loved, I can never really move on fully from you. No matter how hard I try to appease everyone, I'll never be able to let you go completely. I can feel you all around me, Nick. Its like you're still a part of me and the world I live. You're the air I breathe, the beauty I see, the songs that I sing, the tears that I cry, and the warm breeze that brings me home. There is no letting go of that or you. And until the day I stop feeling you all around me, I'm going to hold on to that small glimmer of hope, for its the only real part of you I have left now. And with that hope, I'll keep you in my heart, and go on, waiting for the day in which you come back to me. The day in which we meet again. Because it so happens that, wherever you are, my whole heart will forever stay.
Thank you for loving me.
Always Yours,
Schuyler
P.S. I love you.
This letter marks the twentieth letter I’ve sent to you since the day you left; one letter, for every moment of weakness, and in my most desperate times of needing you, over the past year.
It also marks the last letter I‘ll ever send to you.
I still remember the first letter I wrote you. The desperation, the anger, and the resentment I felt towards you. But after that it had become so much more. It was therapeutic. After a long, hard day, when all I needed to do was talk to you, I grabbed a piece of parchment of our desk and just wrote. It was the only form of communication I was able to have with you without making myself seem crazy. The bridge between our two very different worlds.
I’m twenty two now, and getting ready to graduate from Julliard. My dream school, baby. You always knew I could do it, even when I never saw it possible. But you never once stopped believing in me.
Now, as life outside of school approaches, I'm learning that its time to start growing up and time for me to start finding my own grasp on reality. I seemed to have lost sense of it without you around, constantly keeping me on my toes, and reassuring me with one of your crooked smiles.
How I miss those smiles.
The ones you had always told me were made just for me. I used to tell you, you were lying whenever you would tell me that, but now I try to hold on to the fact that you weren't. I wish I hadn't always taken moments like that for granted.
Your brothers stopped by yesterday...and your mom, she likes to call on a regular basis to check up on me. They're doing well, I suppose. But they miss you, and I can see it on their faces.
As I mentioned in previous letters, Kevin and Danielle are expecting soon. They just found out the sex of the baby. Its a boy! But no surprise there I'm sure. Now Danielle's all worried about the damage the up and coming Jonas is going to do to the hearts of the next generation's teenage girl population. But if he turns out to be anything like you and you're brothers did, I'd say she got pretty darn lucky. Kevin also told me that he and Dani were planning to name their son after you. I wasn't sure how to feel about that, but I know you would have loved that more anything.
Joe seems to be doing better these days. He still likes to take me out for breakfast every Saturday morning, hoping to make you jealous, like it did when we were younger. But these days, I think its more about each others company. Neither of us enjoys the silence, or the emptiness in being alone. Well, being without you. He's found someone new to be apart of his life, recently, and I think she's a keeper. Her names Hailey, and she makes him happier than he's been in a long time. You should see the way he smiles whenever she's around. He lights up, and for the first time in nearly a year, he's slowly begun to sing again. For that alone, I know you'd approve of her.
And your dear younger brother? I talk to him on the phone a lot. In fact he called me the other day to see if I could drive him and his new girlfriend around on their date. Can you believe it? Apparently, he's afraid of Joe and Kevin embarrassing him, but don't worry I'll humor him a bit for you. It is his first date with a girl he really likes, after all. How could I not? Your brothers did it to you, and the tradition must live on. Even, for cute little Frankie. Except he's not so little anymore, and I'm just amazed at how much he's grown up over the last year.
Your mom and dad just left for Europe. They finally decided it was time to take advantage of the gift we all pitched in to give them on Christmas. And its good that they did, I think they're most deserving of some time alone, after raising four famous boys and all. And don't be rolling your eyes either. You know, you four were a handful.
They're rocks, your parents, and they're still there for me just like they've always been, just like you'd always hoped. I still go over for lasagna night, when I'm in town, and your mom still brings out your baby pictures time and time again, just like the day I first met your family. She was always so proud of showing you off.
Do you remember that day, though? It was the day that began it all for us. You were so embarrassed, but I found your blushing cute, and telling you that only made you blush more. I had thought only girls blushed like a tomato, up until that point, and I never let you forget that.
You always said that that day sealed the deal for you. We didn't even make it out of your house that evening. But in those moments you told me you saw how I was with you're family and how we were together, and you knew. You knew you found the one you wanted to spend forever with. And you knew from the moment you met me.
Never one to believe in love at first sight, I asked you how you knew exactly, but you would never tell me. Your answer was always just, "Because it wasn't until that day that I really understood what love, true love, looked like." I always thought you were cheesy, but it made the butterflies appear nevertheless. The only time they came harder than that was the day you proposed and you told me what you really meant by that.
"It was a million tiny little things that when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together...and I knew it. I knew from the very first time I held your hand. It was like coming home...the only real home I'd ever known. I was just taking your hand to help you out of a cab, and the moment our eyes met I knew I was a goner. And it was like...it was magic."
You always knew how to make a girl swoon.
Well, I would say now you're probably wondering about me, how I've been, and what's been going on in my life. For starters, I cut my hair today, and its shorter than you would have liked it to be, but I think it fits me. Jess, my stylist, says its the perfect style for my round shaped face. I'm hoping she meant that to be a compliment.
And I may or may not be starting my own dance company with a friend from school. Its something I've always wanted to do, and I'm excited to see how that pans out. I've got so many ideas and a passion for it that sometimes the thought alone consumes my days. Auditions for Broadway had become so scarce that I've decided to have them put to rest for awhile. It just gets hard to keep your hopes up living in the shark tank that is New York. Criticism hits you hard, and there's always someone who's better than you, more passionate than you, or prettier than you, that can get the job done just as well, if not better. And it only gets harder without you there to boost my spirits.
But other than that and a nearing graduation date, nothing has changed about me since you left. Well, almost nothing. Except for visits and phone calls from your family, I'm all alone. But I guess that's what happens when you shut everyone around who gives a damn about you, out of your life.
Everyone except you, that is.
Sometimes, I find it hard believing you're really gone. Especially when a part me holds onto the glimmer of hope that you're still out there, waiting to be found. Waiting for me to come find you. Or the hope that one day you'll come home and find me.
But everyone tells me its crazy talk, and that its the fear of letting go making me feel, act, and talk this way.
The stubborn side of me disagrees.
It's still so hard to believe, that I sometimes forget you're gone altogether, and I'll catch myself talking to you about my day while I'm making dinner or watching TV. The other day I even made your favorite meal; steak and mash potatoes. I mistakenly set the table for two, thinking you would walk in the door after a long day at the studio, and join me. But when you didn't, I realized my mistake.
I guess to some extent, you get used to being alone. You get used to not expecting phone calls, and having nothing to do at night. You don’t expect to turn around to open arms any longer or relish in the comfort of them. The small sounds of your guitar coming from our room, and the sweet sound of your voice as you'd sing me some unknown lullaby to sleep every night, have been replaced by silence. My thoughts echo through my head, with no one to share them with. Without you to share them with. The truth is, being alone isn’t terrible, it just hurts like hell.
I just...I miss you Nick. I miss the life we had together. I miss the life we were planning to have together. I miss the wedding we never got to have, and the children we're never going to watch grow up. I miss the fact that we're not going to grow old together. I miss when you would wrap me in your arms, and whisper in a way to assure me that it would all be okay. I miss the petty arguments we used to have when we got annoyed with one another. I miss the fact that those arguments only made me love you that much more.
I miss your sweet kisses, and the feeling of your hands running through my long hair. I miss you dancing with you to no music, when you would pick me up and place me on top of your feet. I miss waking up to your smiling face, and blushing when realizing that you had once again been watching me sleep. I miss the little things that made you, you. When really, I just miss everything about you. Everything about us.
It just gets hard to hold on to something when everyone else around you is telling you its time to let go. To move on.
But the truth is I don't want to let you go knowing there might be a chance you're still out there, just as lost and confused as I am. The week they stopped looking for your body, and the day of your funeral, I about cried out every ounce of fluid in me. I couldn't handle knowing, that people were going to start moving on from you. Moving on from the idea that you were in fact gone from our lives. I refused to believe it. Especially at a funeral with no body in its casket.
And I told you didn't I? I told you something didn't feel right about you leaving for the airport that day. But you persisted, just like you always did, when I told you I wanted you to stay there with me. When I told you not to go. You said, "Baby, the fans are waiting." Then you sent me that wink that made me weak in the knees, and I melted, giving in per usual. But I wish I hadn't. I wish you would have just listened to me and have stayed home. Then maybe people wouldn't have had to start listening to Justin Bieber, because your brothers were visibly too solemn to play anymore. Maybe I would have never gotten that phone call from a shaken Joe, notifying me to turn on the TV. And maybe I wouldn't have had to drop the phone in my hands, as I collapsed seeing your picture on the screen; the story about your plane crashing into the Mediterranean Sea, making every channel in the world's headlines. Maybe I wouldn't have to wake up in the middle of the night, every night, crying out in pain, dripping in cold sweat as I relive the memories of that day and what followed. Maybe the world wouldn't have lost such an inspiration.
Maybe if you hadn't gotten onto that plane you would be here, right now, sitting next to me, as we curl up together in our bed, watching another episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. Maybe if you had listened I wouldn't be sitting here, a year later, writing this last letter to you. My final letter. The letter now marking the close to the most important chapter in my life. The chapter that holds every memory with you.
And it gives me chills just thinking that this is the last form of communication I'll ever have with you. Another piece of written words that you'll never get to hear, in another letter you'll never receive.
I'm going to redecorate the house we once decorated together. I'm going to start taking your clothes out of its closet and put them away in boxes. I'm going to say goodbye to all your pictures, and take off my engagement ring. I'm going to start dating again, and find someone who will make me nearly as happy as you always made me. But I know that I won't help but compare him to you, and who you helped me to become, and how you made me feel.
I'm gonna get out of bed every morning...breathe in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won't have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breath in and out. Then, after that while, I won't have to think about how great and perfect I had it once.
Because you were my one and only. My light in all its darkness. My everything.
And even though I'm forcing myself to move on with my life, and all the parts of you that I loved, I can never really move on fully from you. No matter how hard I try to appease everyone, I'll never be able to let you go completely. I can feel you all around me, Nick. Its like you're still a part of me and the world I live. You're the air I breathe, the beauty I see, the songs that I sing, the tears that I cry, and the warm breeze that brings me home. There is no letting go of that or you. And until the day I stop feeling you all around me, I'm going to hold on to that small glimmer of hope, for its the only real part of you I have left now. And with that hope, I'll keep you in my heart, and go on, waiting for the day in which you come back to me. The day in which we meet again. Because it so happens that, wherever you are, my whole heart will forever stay.
Thank you for loving me.
Always Yours,
Schuyler
P.S. I love you.