That’s the word I’ve been searching for and what I’ve been feeling deep in my bones lately. At sea. Lost. Adrift. Floating. Untethered. A little unhinged. Lots of un’s.

Not unloved and uncared for though. People have really been coming through for me. Yes, they’ve canceled and rescheduled, and sometimes can’t stay on the phone or online as long as I need (want) them to, but they’re here and they’re there, and I’m lucky for it. But (and this is a huge “but”), I still don’t feel like I have a best friend. (My brother was my best friend).

You know, somebody who drops whatever is happening in their life at the time to rush home and stroke my hair and put a blanket over me and give me something to help me sleep and make our parents give me space and then put on Lord of the Rings and keep me company when my world is falling apart. (My brother was my world). When my first non-“boyfriend” in high school told me over the phone that he was going to kill himself and was just saying goodbye and he hung up on me and I didn’t know his address because we met online and he lived an hour away and I didn’t know what to do and was a complete wreck.

(He didn’t succeed in actually killing himself. There’s more to the story but we ended up actually reconnecting a year later and going on a handful of secret dates but then he disappeared again. I googled him a few years ago, and he got married, possibly had a child or two.)

My best friend was somebody who was away at college for my 16th birthday but made sure flowers were waiting for me when I got home from school and knew that was all I needed for that day to be good. Not great because I was depressed, but good and decent at least. Somebody who brought me the most adorable teddy bear with a red trench coat back from London when I was well past the age of getting new stuffed animals as gifts. Somebody who I never really hugged, I don’t think, until the day he left for college at USC, and then I did really tightly…and cried and cried and cried. (We weren’t a hugging or “I love you” saying family growing up, but distance and death made us one).

My best friend was somebody who probably hated it but didn’t get mad when I took over his room and office when he went to college. It was in the basement, it gave me space from our parents, and I always gave it back temporarily when he came home for breaks. Somebody who rearranged his schedule so I could visit him at college in L.A. over Spring Break at the last minute when things weren’t going very well for me.

My best friend was somebody who brought me back a military watch from Switzerland that is so timeless and perfect and exactly my style. (I finally got the band adjusted and started wearing it last summer and plan to treasure it forever). Somebody who was traveling during my high school graduation but called me the morning of it to congratulate me anyway. (It rained, and most of my family went and ducked into their cars to stay dry, so they didn’t even see me walk). Somebody who guided me through college applications and made me apply to ten different schools - many of the best in the country - because he wanted me to have choices for my future.

My best friend was somebody who asked me on the phone what I wanted him to buy me in India while he was studying abroad there before going to visit some of our family, which never ended up happening. He got me a set of pretty purple bangles. We got them back with his luggage. They stayed boxed up on top my dresser for years. I think I wore them once eventually.

One of my biggest regrets in life is not hugging him tightly enough when my mom and I dropped him off at the airport. He was leaving me behind again, and I was depressed again, and I would have, could have, should have hugged him so hard and not let him go if only I had known what would happen to him. If only.

I haven’t been through life changes like I’m dealing with right now without him in years, and I’m admittedly not handling it spectacularly. I should be back in therapy, but my health insurance through school expired a couple weeks after graduation. The unmooring didn’t happen until it was too late. I know, sliding scale, I’m looking into it. And going to acupuncture. And so many things. But none of those things is my best friend. None of those things is my brother.

The only thing - the only person - who could make everything fall away and be fine again in an instant. Our father killed himself when I was two months old and my brother (my best friend) was two years old. Our mother was never the same after that, I don’t think, but I wouldn’t know because I didn’t exist as a person when things were actually OK for her. So we only ever had each other. We took care of our mom (and she of us), we took care of each other, we let our stepdad (who we both call dad) take care of us when our mom got re-married, and we loved each other deeply and pretty much unconditionally. I am lucky to have ever had that kind of enormous love in my life, I know, but it was an even more enormous loss. Things are shit right now. All I want is my brother. All I need, pretty fucking desperately right now, is my brother. My best friend.