{"id":175,"date":"2014-11-28T14:55:25","date_gmt":"2014-11-28T14:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/dear-nicki\/"},"modified":"2014-11-28T14:55:25","modified_gmt":"2014-11-28T14:55:25","slug":"dear-nicki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/dear-nicki\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Nicki"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have stopped counting the days after you were gone. For months now, I have avoided talking to anyone about you. Every time an old friend would come up to me and offer condolences, I just smile, tell them I&#8217;m fine and turn away. I did this to try to mask away the pain I&#8217;m feeling. But only now do I realize that the more I try to convince myself that I have accepted what happened by not revealing my true feelings, the more I can&#8217;t bring myself to face the truth, accept it and move on.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s hard to move on, Nicki. I don&#8217;t even know if I could. How could I, when all I could remember is your gentle smile and your sweet voice? Everywhere I look, I remember the softness of your dark hair, the way your deep brown eyes would tenderly look at me, the way you would say my name.<\/p>\n<p>Nicki, I think you&#8217;re unfair and though I love you with such passion, I also hate you as much. I hate you because I think you&#8217;re selfish. I have too many things to say to you, too many things to ask, and I don&#8217;t even have a way of reaching you anymore.<\/p>\n<p>When you decided to end your life, did you even think about the people you&#8217;re leaving behind? Did you even think that we would grieve? Did you remember that I promised I would be with you through your ordeal? Did you even consider that I would spend the subsequent days and nights crying over your loss?<\/p>\n<p>Or did you think that you didn&#8217;t matter? Did you think that your death won&#8217;t mean anything to us?<\/p>\n<p>I loved you, Nicki. And it meant a lot to me that you&#8217;re gone now. You&#8217;re gone and nothing can bring you back. And in my chest is a hollow space where my heart used to be. Not a day passes by when I don&#8217;t think of you, and not a night goes by that I don&#8217;t wish you&#8217;re here with me.<\/p>\n<p>That fateful day, I received a phone call from your roommate. I rushed to the hospital, hoping against all hope that what Armand said wasn&#8217;t true. But then, I saw your lifeless body and I knew the suicide was real. For a time after that, I blamed Armand. He lived with you. He was always with you. He could&#8217;ve stopped you, convinced you not to do it, but he did not. But then again, how could Armand tell what was going on in your mind?<\/p>\n<p>You never told us anything, did you, Nicki? When you succumbed to your depression, we couldn&#8217;t do anything to bring you out of the hole you dug for yourself. And I blamed myself for not trying hard enough. I always called out to you but the walls you built around yourself were way taller. I never managed to get through your barriers but, Nicki, I really did try. I&#8217;m sorry if I wasn&#8217;t always around. I&#8217;m sorry if I made promises I wasn&#8217;t able to keep. I&#8217;m sorry if I failed to find you.<\/p>\n<p>Remember how we used to take walks in the park and just admire the view, just enjoy the feeling of being embraced by nature? Nicki, even after you&#8217;re gone, the stars still dot the vast expanse of the night sky, the wind still blows, the sun still shines up against the clouds. But without you, I find them almost meaningless.<\/p>\n<p>However, I still find myself gazing at the sky each night. Maybe somewhere out there, in one of those stars, you are looking back at me.<\/p>\n<p>I miss you so much, Nicki.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have stopped counting the days after you were gone. For months now, I have avoided talking to anyone about you. Every time an old friend would come up to me and offer condolences, I just smile, tell them I&#8217;m fine and turn away. I did this to try to mask away the pain I&#8217;m [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-love-letters"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loveletters.avadellaira.com\/love-letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}