It’s been three months today.

In the last few days, I’ve been thinking about it, and although sometimes it seems as though a lot of time has passed since then, other times it feels like it was just yesterday when I was crying and screaming about it, and calling my close friends and family to let them know one by one.

When my brother was about to turn 18 and I was 11, he made his first suicide attempt by taking a large amount of pills; he thought he would go to sleep and never wake up. He survived, and the next morning, he confessed to our parents what he had done, and they immediately took him to see a psychologist and psychiatrist. He was diagnosed with clinical depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and a form of anxiety disorder. During those years, he stabilized, and he admitted to me that he was actually scared that night when he attempted it, and said he didn’t want to die.

I don’t think he felt that way that afternoon at the Golden Gate Bridge. I think this time around, he really wanted his life to end. He had come to terms with it and decided that this was it; this is my end. Goodbye, World.

As awful as going through all this is, and though I wish he were still here with me today, I am grateful that I have been lucky enough to have had 16 more years with my sweet, loving, selfless brother than I could’ve had if life had worked out differently, if he had succeeded in ending his life that summer of 1997. In those 16 years, my relationship with my brother matured and deepened to the point where we were no longer fighting about petty, childish things, and instead treating each other with the love and respect that mature adult siblings should. I’m blessed to have had him for over a decade and a half the way I did. Some siblings never experience that type of love with one another their entire lives. And that’s their loss.