The Spencer Letters

Harry's second.

Hello Spencer,

Can't believe your eyes? Yes, I am writing you another letter. You're just missing so much! I guess Laurel is right about making sure you're able to catch up on everything when you wake up. Probably, I wouldn't be able to tell you then how I actually feel now, so now is the only time to tell you. Perhaps this won't be my last letter either.

Little brother, I'd give the world to have you here with me right now to talk to, to go for comfort to, to ask for advice, to do everything we used to do together. To be what we used to be together. Because we were always Harry and Spencer. No one in Redditch or Bridgewater knows one but not the other. Only your friends from San Diego know who Spencer is without Harry, but absolutely no one knows who Harry is without Spencer, and I'm really scared to find out. I don't want to have to know who I am without you.

I miss you. I need you.

My life wasn't perfect before your accident. Not even close. I was, as you put it, "living a lie". But it was a comfortable, peaceful lie. Now everything is just chaos. My life is currently a complete mess, and without you to help me get through it, everything feels a hundred times worse.

I'm tired. Living with someone you no longer see with eyes of love is exhausting. It drains you. I still love Stephanie, but in a different way now. Before, I loved her like the woman I was getting ready to spend the rest of my life with, even if she wasn't the love of my life. Now I love her as a person I shared many beautiful moments with and will always have a place in my heart for. But I don't want to be with her anymore. Not when I get in bed next to her every night wishing I were somewhere else, with someone else.

But how do I leave her now, when she needs me the most?

Don't answer that! My therapist does a pretty good job at tormenting me about this matter, too. He says I can't keep enabling her codependence, that I am doing more harm than good, that what she needs is an intervention and professional help. But he hasn't been with her for the past two plus years and knows what I know about Stephanie's life. Not him, not mom, not even you. And I wanted LJ to be that person, the only other person who knows, so that she could understand me and my decisions better. But she didn't want to be.

At the beginning, the "why" mattered, but at this point she doesn't care anymore. Learning more about Steph's situation doesn't give her me, so why listen? You know her! Although, this time, I don't think she's opposing out of stubbornness, I believe she doesn't want to feel sorrier for Stephanie than she already does. Can you blame her? I can't.

Now that LJ is over the back and forth, the "why" is irrelevant. With our baby on the way, I'm no longer her priority, as it should be. I'm a stressor, and she can't have that in her life at the moment. Yet she's not the one pushing me away or asking me to stay away from her. I am.

Seeing us together really affected Stephanie the other day. Laurel and I weren't doing anything, but still, she assumed the worst and it caused another major breakdown. I caused it. I caused it by not being able to keep my distance from LJ. I simply couldn't. Her pull is too strong and my determination too frail.

Won't bother telling you the whole story. No doubt in my mind you will read all about it from your BFF!

I ran after Steph when she stormed out of The Ace that day, but I couldn't get to her car fast enough. She drove away and I was afraid she would get in an accident. But I caught up to her a couple of blocks down the street and trailed close behind her until she got home. Had to chase her up the stairs because she got out of the car really quick and climbed two steps at a time in a fit of rage.

I was winded when I reached our apartment door. By the time I got inside she had already kicked chairs out of the way, taken her shoes off and sent them flying to knock several decorations off the book shelves, thrown a vase across the room that shattered when it hit a wall, and cut her foot with the shards of glass on the floor.