Oxygen Tank for Christmas

It must be getting old to read this, if you can read this.
I only write here when I am desperately sad anymore.
But Christmas is in a few days and I know it's cliche to say, but I really can't believe how fast it has gone....and how long it has been. See, I'm still stuck back in February, walking out into the bright parking lot, wondering how the world was moving.
Still sitting in a room, gasping for oxygen, telling Mom I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I can't breathe. I haven't been able to really breathe since then.
The loss of you has sunk down in my lungs, seeped into my alveoli, breaking the walls apart... like emphysema, I can't get a good air exchange now, and my blood seeps through and returns to my heart dirty and filled with days where you were here to make me smile.
Last Christmas, you didn't come over. I called you when I got home, we talked for hours. I thought that I had finally somehow saved you when you called me the next night to tell me you were checking back into detox. You weren't excited, but I was. When I hung up, I cried and called Mom to tell her. It's unfathomable to me to think that I won't even get to call you this year, and I can't stop thinking about all the times I had and didn't take advantage of.
It hurts but the more time that passes, the more I can find the rage that I knew would be coming.
Much to my surprise, I am not angry at you. I really thought I would be, if I can be honest here, just between us. I thought I would be so angry that I would hate you.
That happened with Mia for awhile, you know.
But I'm not mad at you, not with any kind of burning rage, not really.
I am so angry with myself. With our society's system, with how we treat people with addiction, with our healthcare, with our world.
I went out a few weeks ago, and I didn't really feel like drinking that night, but everyone else was having a beer, and I felt weird to say no, so I said okay, and as I was driving home, it sunk into my stomach that it must be so impossible for people who struggle like you did. It must be so hard, all the time. I cried on the way home and felt stupid for thinking I had any kind of grasp on anything. I thought about how fucked up it was that I could go home and be fine, but you would have taken weeks to recover from a slip up like that. I thought about how it was hard for me to say no, and how it wasn't a big deal for me.
You used to be so embarrassed to admit to having any kind of issues.
If it wasn't a big deal to say no, if it wasn't a big deal to say that you needed help, I wonder if you would have been able to fight back more.
If I could have convinced you that nobody would think poorly of you for it, if I would have understood better earlier.... if only, if only, if only.
I want to scream at strangers saying reprehensible things about people in the same place you were.
I wish I could ask you what you would want someone to say.
What would have helped you.
And then I would do that instead of crying and trying to get the air around the knife in my throat and through my broken lungs.

Merry Christmas, Justin.
I miss you every day.