I still can’t believe he’s gone. Sometimes I can’t even say he’s died and that it was suicide. It was last year, just before he turned 19. We’re a year apart in age and we’ve always been close, more like friends. We were closer than our other brother and sister who are a bit older. We’re not twins but people used to call us the terrible twins because we’d get up to things together and hang out together at family things but we thought that was stupid. We used to look out for each other, things just aren’t the same.
I miss him every day; his birthday is coming up soon and I don’t want to think about it, we used to have such a good time. We did have fights but we always made up and knew it would be OK. We could laugh at the same things and whenever Mum or Dad would say stuff we’d look at each other and know what we were thinking. We knew stuff about each other no-one else knew – family stuff.
Mum cries a lot and Dad is quiet, sometimes they fight now and they didn’t ever do that much. I hate it. I’m worried about them and I don’t know what to do. I want to make it better for them but I don’t know how.
Mum and Dad either don’t seem to notice how I’m going or they’re at me. Sometimes I don’t want to talk about him because it upsets mum but other times I want to. Then other times they’re asking me how I am all the time, worried and I don’t want to talk about it; I want them to leave me alone.
I wonder if I should have said something. He mentioned a while before he died that he was having a hard time and I didn’t tell anyone, maybe I should have. Maybe he would still be alive if I’d said something. People say it wasn’t my fault but I can’t help thinking I should have been able to help him.
I feel lonely now like I’ve never felt before. Some of my friends are OK to be with and others say stupid things – the ones who didn’t know Matt. I’ve got one friend whose Dad died a couple of years ago, he died in the same way. We talk sometimes and it helps, it helps a lot. I don’t feel so weird or lonely and I can see that he’s doing OK so I think that one day I’ll be OK again too.