Dear Ray Michael...

I hate you. Yep. I said it. I fucking hate you. Wait!?! What, Sandy? You can’t say that. That’s a horrible thing to say. You shouldn’t say such horrible things. He was sick. He had an addiction. You can’t take your anger out on the person. Take it out on the addiction. Don’t hate the person. Hate the disease.

Yep. I’ve sat here for almost a week now with all of these thoughts rattling around in my head. And with a week’s worth of time behind me, my conclusion is that I hate you. And you know what else? Part of me doesn’t even care that that’s a horribly mean thing to say. Because you know what? You’re not here to hear it. But I’m putting it out there anyway. Have I mentioned that I hate you? Because I hate you. Don’t like what I’m saying, Ray? Well, why don’t you come and defend yourself? Yell at me. Tell me you hate me back. Oh, that’s right. You can’t. Because you’re fucking dead. You stuck a fucking needle in your arm and you fucking died.

I hate you for dying on me. I hate you for leaving me. I hate you for not really giving a shit what you were doing to me or our family. I hate you I hate you I hate you.

Normally when I write I try to be more logical and methodical in how I compose myself but since there was no logic or order to what happened here, I’m going to just rant it out. Because if I don’t get this hatred out of me, I feel like a part of me is going to rot and die and I don’t want that. So here it is…

I hate that you walked out on us, not just when you walked out recently, but you bailed on our family so long ago and never really looked back to see what it did to the rest of us. I hate that I used to get calls at work from dad that I had to rush home in the middle of the work day because you were strung out and attacking him for money. I hate that so many things went missing in our house because you sold them for money. I hate that Dad eventually ended up sleeping with a bar lock across his bedroom door so that you couldn’t get into his room while he slept and steal things from his room or his wallet.

I hate that people think that you got sick after mom died. I hate that people don’t realize that the problems with you started years before mom even got sick. I know that her getting sick and dying didn’t help you at all, but I hate that her death gave you an excuse to lie and get high. I hate that for years I’ve been asked how it’s possible that you and I even came from the same house. I hate that as our mom laid dying, you fed your own drug addiction by stealing her oxycontin and that when she realized that pills were missing and was crying because she was so upset that she didn’t remember taking extra pills, you still wouldn’t comfort her and tell her that she didn’t do it and that you’d stolen them. I hate that when she died, we didn’t even know where you were and it took us hours to hunt your ass down.

I hate that no matter how many times we tried to get you help, you never wanted the help and would just check yourself out of rehab and disappear to get high again. I hate that you went to jail and we lost all that time. I hate that during the times you were out of jail, I would try time after time to have a relationship with you and without fail, you took advantage of my love and support and turned your back on me. I hate that when I came to visit you that Saturday at the halfway-back house, you weren’t there anymore because you had OD’d on heroin the night before and had been immediately transported to the hospital for treatment and then back to jail. I hate that these are realities of life that I have to explain to my boys. I hate that at such a young age I had to explain to Jack that you died of a heroin overdose and that I had to explain to Liam that you put bad stuff in your body and that he keeps asking me if the doctors got the bad stuff out of your body yet so you can be alive again.

I hate that you actually made me believe that last time you were out that you were going to be OK. I hate that I let my guard down with you and let you back into my life wholeheartedly and let you around the boys. I hate that you had friends and family that loved you that you ultimately turned your back on. I hate that when things went wrong, no matter how much I had tried to convince you to talk to any of us, you went back to your old ways. I hate that you hurt your friends. I hate that they had to finally take the hard line with you. I hate that you wouldn’t take the help that was right in front of you. I hate that instead of calling me and asking for help, you chose to go live in the bathroom of a park. I hate that I don’t even know if I believe that that story is true. I hate that you showed up at my house that day high as a kite and wanted to play with my not-even-a-year-old son and I had to refuse to let you in. I hate that we fought that day even though I knew I was doing the right thing to protect my son. I hate that that was the last time I ever saw you.

I hate that you refused the help again that was offered to you and that you left rehab. I hate that you ended up on the streets. I hate that you turned to complete strangers for help when help had been right in front of you all along. I hate that your pride or your conceit or your whatever wouldn’t allow that. I hate that, even against my better judgment, when I found out that you were jail again, I still wrote you a letter telling you that we were here whenever you were ready. I hate that you called me after I sent you that letter and that our phone conversations were so awkward because I felt like everything you said was a lie. I hate that I have no clue what was real and what wasn’t. I hate that I question whether you loved me or us or anyone. I hate that I spoke to you on the Monday before you died and you told me that you would call me later that week with information about your release and two days later you were dead. I hate that you didn’t call. I hate that the call I got was from the medical examiner’s office about your dead body. I hate that you decided to not call and instead went and jammed more needles into your arm and this time no one was there to save you. I hate that you died. I hate that I had to notify dad of you being dead and break his heart. I hate that you made that vile video saying that your family all died while you were in jail among all the other lies. I hate that on top of grieving your death, dad and I now need to deal with the things that you said in that video. I hate that even in death you’re still hurting us.

So there you have it, Ray Michael. I fucking hate you, you selfish miserable manipulative asshole. And now that I have finally gotten this hatred and anger and pain out of me, maybe I can finally start finding a way through all of it to find the comfort and peace that everyone keeps wishing for me. Maybe I can start remembering the brother that you were and the good times that we had, because I do know that there were good times, but right now I am so fucking angry with you that I can’t feel them. I have the pictures to prove that things didn’t used to be like this. The picture I used here is of one of you from the “before” part of our lives. I know it existed. I can see it. I just can’t feel it right now. So maybe this is a first step for me. Getting this out. Expressing the hatred. This is part of how I cope. I write. I get it out. I don’t shove a fucking needle in my arm. A lot of this is stuff that I wish I could have said to you directly. But you know. Life as the sister of an addict - don’t say anything that might upset him too much - he could fall off the wagon. We don’t want to stress Ray out too much, he might get upset. Well, now I don’t have to worry about that anymore. Because you’re fucking dead. And here I stand, still trying to pick up the fucking pieces.