Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: This episode contains discussion of suicide. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: On January eighth, twenty fourteen, my sister walked the Benagamin
Speaker 3: Franklin Bridge.
Speaker 1: My sister disappeared.
Speaker 3: How why I never viewed the security photographs myself.
Speaker 1: I didn't ask to is it really her? Are we sure?
Speaker 3: Perhaps it was easier not to know, not to have
Speaker 3: the definitive proof of having seen it myself.
Speaker 1: The image of my head is thus one of my
Speaker 1: own creation. A girl walking keiate, walking poof gone.
Speaker 2: That's Kylie Letty, a twenty five year old graduate student
Speaker 2: in social work and public policy and author of the
Speaker 2: memoir The Other Kylie's is a story about sisterhood, grief,
Speaker 2: and the way what we don't know, perhaps what we
Speaker 2: might never know, has the power to shape us. It's
Speaker 2: also a story of great love, strength, tenacity, and meaning making.
Speaker 2: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets. The secrets
Speaker 2: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 2: and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 1: Me and my sister we were six years apart.
Speaker 3: You grew up a little bit in Connecticut, a little
Speaker 3: bit in Virginia, but mostly talked about our years. And
Speaker 3: we were living in Marblehead, Massachusetts, which is a small coastal.
Speaker 1: Town, very idyllic, and it was a beautiful place by
Speaker 1: the beach. We had it good. We were so loved.
Speaker 3: My parents took such good care of us. We were
Speaker 3: kind of best friends. We would spend our days at
Speaker 3: the beach picking out seashells. I mean, it was really
Speaker 3: it was really wonderful. And then when I was around seven,
Speaker 3: we moved to Philadelphia, first for a year in the
Speaker 3: city and then to the suburbs near Villanova University, and
Speaker 3: that was in Key.
Speaker 1: It was kind of entering her teenage years.
Speaker 2: What precipitated the move from Marblehead to Philly.
Speaker 1: My dad's job caused us to move.
Speaker 3: He was working in tech of time, so it was
Speaker 3: a lot of just you know, constant fluctuations, a lot
Speaker 3: of moving around companies.
Speaker 2: And so this was in this sort of you know
Speaker 2: tech boom, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, the dot com bubble.
Speaker 3: I was around seven, it was like two thousand and
Speaker 3: four or five, So.
Speaker 2: You were going into the first grade when you moved
Speaker 2: to Philly, and Kate was going into seventh.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: I think that having my sister be five years my senior,
Speaker 3: I think it was just having like a second mom,
Speaker 3: Like she really took care of me.
Speaker 1: She prayed for me to be born.
Speaker 3: She was always asking for little sister, and she had
Speaker 3: all these dolls she was dressing up. She was obsessed
Speaker 3: with twins and Mary Kate, Ashley Olsen, and she just
Speaker 3: really wanted to take care of me like that.
Speaker 1: Now I idolized her.
Speaker 3: To me, she was just she was so courageous and
Speaker 3: bold and adventurous, and she really challenged me.
Speaker 1: She loved me. I didn't speak for a while when
Speaker 1: I was little. I was just so quiet.
Speaker 3: My grandparents keep talking and joking about how when I
Speaker 3: was little, I would just stare everybody.
Speaker 1: My mom keeps saying, it's because.
Speaker 3: I had so much to watch. There's always a show
Speaker 3: going off. My sister, she was a performer. She was
Speaker 3: just like ball of energy, so much light, so funny,
Speaker 3: and I just was always entertained by her.
Speaker 1: Growing up. My mom and my sister and.
Speaker 3: I were super close, and my dad was really great too.
Speaker 3: You know, he's working a lot, so that was less
Speaker 3: of an impression in my mind than my mom in
Speaker 3: that sense, She's been the perfect mix between being your
Speaker 3: friend and being your parent. Always, since I was little,
Speaker 3: I've always felt like I could tell everything. My parents
Speaker 3: were really conscientious about trying to give us everything that
Speaker 3: they may not have had. They were just trying their best.
Speaker 2: So when you look back now, or you know, for
Speaker 2: these last years, as I think we just we do
Speaker 2: as human beings, when something goes awry, we look for
Speaker 2: the moment when we could have It's a fantasy, I think,
Speaker 2: but you know, the moment where we could have stopped it,
Speaker 2: or it could have gone differently, or we could have
Speaker 2: seen it as it was happening and sort of altered
Speaker 2: its course. And you know, one of the things that
Speaker 2: I think is so powerful about your story is throughout it, you, Kylie,
Speaker 2: the adult, are looking for the sort of cracks and
Speaker 2: fissures and the place where this exuberant, beautiful, dynamic older sister,
Speaker 2: where the signs were, where she was exhibiting the beginnings
Speaker 2: of maybe something being more than that, more complicated than that.
Speaker 2: What would you say for you is the first memory
Speaker 2: or the first moment as you look back on it
Speaker 2: now of what that might have been, and also what
Speaker 2: did it feel like at the time, So.
Speaker 3: I would say that until we really moved to Phidelphia,
Speaker 3: I don't remember anything being that awry. I think that
Speaker 3: my mom has talked about how my sister was in
Speaker 3: trouble sometimes at school when she's younger, you know, just
Speaker 3: getting into arguments other kids, or getting into little petty
Speaker 3: fights here and there. But she just had a really
Speaker 3: bold personality, and I think at that time that seemed
Speaker 3: like not a problem, maybe even a good thing that
Speaker 3: she could advocate for herself. And she was also really smart,
Speaker 3: so she could get away with things.
Speaker 1: But when we moved to Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: She was thirteen and I was turning seven, and that's
Speaker 3: when we started seeing a little more kind of concerning signs. Again,
Speaker 3: it's just so hard to tell when you know what's
Speaker 3: normal it's not normal.
Speaker 1: So it was it was more like skipping schools.
Speaker 3: There was more partying, some mood swings, but a lot
Speaker 3: of it was still typical teenage stuff. And I think
Speaker 3: it's just it's so difficult to distinguish between what's going
Speaker 3: on actually and where's a lie.
Speaker 1: I know my mom has said before maybe if I.
Speaker 3: Was born first, if I was the first kid, they
Speaker 3: could have seen that some of this stuff wasn't normal.
Speaker 1: At that point, they had nothing to compare it to either,
Speaker 1: so it all seemed fine, but still just a little
Speaker 1: more concerning. Starting around them.
Speaker 3: My sister, she had a lot of superstitions and signs
Speaker 3: she believed in, and different little rituals she would kind
Speaker 3: of include me in, and one of them was wishing
Speaker 3: on eleven eleven and my whole life at eleven eleven
Speaker 3: PM at eleven eleven.
Speaker 1: AM, we would make a wish together. And when I
Speaker 1: was seven, I remember the first time.
Speaker 3: I had a wish that was that I wish my
Speaker 3: sister gets better. And I think it's because I was
Speaker 3: picking up on the fact that she was getting into
Speaker 3: travel at school more and my parents were more concerned and.
Speaker 1: That something was going on here, and I just want
Speaker 1: my sister back and making sure she was okay.
Speaker 3: And because I had this pattern of superstition and ritual established,
Speaker 3: I ever since then kind of kept that wish the same.
Speaker 3: So I'd always every eleven eleven, every birthday, every time
Speaker 3: I had a wishbone or anything else, I would always
Speaker 3: ask for that one thing. So I think on some
Speaker 3: level I was just picking up on what was going
Speaker 3: on without actually being consciously or cognitively aware of it exactly.
Speaker 2: In Kylie's memoir, she writes, my sister was the kind
Speaker 2: of girl people write books about. I was the kind
Speaker 2: of girl who read such books, who listened to such
Speaker 2: songs and wondered how a spark in one person could
Speaker 2: like a flame in so many others. Suffice it to say,
Speaker 2: Kylie idolizes her big sister Kate, even when Kate gets
Speaker 2: in trouble, even when Kate gets angry and violent.
Speaker 3: I think I was in third grade and friends sleeping over,
Speaker 3: and my mom and my sister were going to fight,
Speaker 3: and I have no idea what the fight was instigated about.
Speaker 1: I can't remember. I think maybe something to do with
Speaker 1: her cell phone.
Speaker 3: My mom was taking it away because she got in
Speaker 3: trouble or something along those lines. But it had escalated
Speaker 3: into violence, with my sister hitting my mom and then
Speaker 3: her having to actually go to the hospital because she
Speaker 3: it was like her cheekbll and that got hurt. And
Speaker 3: that was for me, as a little kid, the first
Speaker 3: time I remember having to shield somebody else from what
Speaker 3: was going on and trying to keep my friend away
Speaker 3: from it and have her not see what was going on,
Speaker 3: so she did you to go home and talk to
Speaker 3: her parents and didn't become a bigger thing. And that
Speaker 3: was really the last time I had friends sleep over
Speaker 3: because it was just it was too difficult to know
Speaker 3: when my sister's temperament was going to get out of
Speaker 3: control and when these kind of angry outbursts and mood
Speaker 3: swings would happen. From then on, it was easier to
Speaker 3: keep everything secret and not thought that was going on
Speaker 3: and make sure that no one else got hurt too.
Speaker 1: That was a big thing for my mom as well.
Speaker 1: I was just trying to protect Kate and also protect
Speaker 1: other people from Kate. Unfortunately.
Speaker 2: So around that time, you actually come up with an
Speaker 2: ingenious cover story for why you can't have sleepovers.
Speaker 3: Yes, so I started telling people in my house was
Speaker 3: haunted or it was a very childish probably thing to
Speaker 3: start saying, but there was a very old home with
Speaker 3: you know those rickety floorboards and all those spooky things
Speaker 3: that happened with old homes. That was a way for
Speaker 3: me to say that I didn't want to have a
Speaker 3: sleepover at my house, Like why don't we go to
Speaker 3: your house instead? Or after school don't we go to
Speaker 3: your house to watch this movie or watch this show
Speaker 3: and not mine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in some ways it occurred to me, I
Speaker 2: mean in a way your house was haunted. I mean,
Speaker 2: whether in a supernatural way or you know, haunted by
Speaker 2: what was happening inside of it. Yeah, exactly, within this
Speaker 2: haunted house, there are also pockets of joy. When things
Speaker 2: are good, they're very, very good, and when they're bad,
Speaker 2: they're terrible. But the good moments contain real happiness that Kylie,
Speaker 2: Kate and their mom share and also a kind of
Speaker 2: playful magic that together they create.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking it was December. I think I was around twelve,
Speaker 3: and I'm not sure who had the idea first.
Speaker 1: It is probably my sister. It was something she would
Speaker 1: come up with.
Speaker 3: But my mom, my sister and I had this, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of ridiculous idea that we'd go around town and
Speaker 3: put these little red dot stickers on the deer crossing
Speaker 3: signs or neighborhood and make it into Rudolph Red Nose.
Speaker 1: Image. So we would.
Speaker 3: We bought these little red dots at Staples and then
Speaker 3: we ran around town in the middle of the night.
Speaker 3: I think it was probably like not that late realistically,
Speaker 3: because I was.
Speaker 1: Little, I thought it was really late.
Speaker 3: And I remember like my sister had a lift me
Speaker 3: on her shoulders so I could stick the sticker on there,
Speaker 3: and we were just cracking up the entire time, trying
Speaker 3: not to peer pants because we were laughing so hard.
Speaker 3: And I remember that just being this another example of
Speaker 3: even though things were bad at all these times, we
Speaker 3: also were having fun together.
Speaker 1: We were still family.
Speaker 3: My sister kind of brought this like adventurous spirit out
Speaker 3: in all of us that made us all laugh and
Speaker 3: do something different than we normally would have done.
Speaker 2: Underscoring these fun adventures, there is the prevailing sense of
Speaker 2: something being wrong. Kylie internalizes this feeling and begins to
Speaker 2: develop anxiety, particularly anxiety about her health and body. She
Speaker 2: scrolls through web md, looking up all sorts of symptoms
Speaker 2: and treatments anything she can find. Without quite knowing what's wrong.
Speaker 2: She thinks, whatever it is must live inside her.
Speaker 3: I think a victoria that was trying to get control.
Speaker 3: And also because you couldn't find on that was happening
Speaker 3: with my sister, it was like, what can I control
Speaker 3: in this element? What's something that there are these like
Speaker 3: insidious forces that are happening, are changing my sister?
Speaker 1: Am I going to change too? Is meaning bad going
Speaker 1: to happened to me too?
Speaker 3: And you're kind of on this like hyper vigilance of
Speaker 3: always waiting for the next shoot to drop. And I
Speaker 3: also think a big part of it was that I
Speaker 3: was under so much stress, you know, watching these episodes
Speaker 3: of my sister, and that stress.
Speaker 1: Does sometimes cause strange things.
Speaker 3: Up in the body, Like I had school and lip
Speaker 3: nodes and I thought I had maybe cancers. My lymph
Speaker 3: nodes were stolen my under my armpits or in my neck,
Speaker 3: And it was probably because I was just really stressed out,
Speaker 3: and you know that whole mind body connection that was
Speaker 3: we were dealing with a Kate, we were also dealing with,
Speaker 3: you know, with ourselves trying to feel the stress. I
Speaker 3: also remember thinking at one point, like, you know, everyone
Speaker 3: has some kind of family secret they're hiding, like we're not.
Speaker 1: We're all just not talking about something.
Speaker 3: You know, other families are going through something similar and
Speaker 3: they were not saying either, So why shouldn't say anything?
Speaker 2: And did you and your mom ever talked about it
Speaker 2: at that time or was it not until later?
Speaker 3: I think my mom and I did talk about that time.
Speaker 3: I'm being very aware that something was off.
Speaker 1: I was worried about.
Speaker 3: Her, but I don't think I knew how I should
Speaker 3: be worried yet, I think. And we didn't have a
Speaker 3: diagnosis really for years, and there are things tossed around,
Speaker 3: and we tried therapists.
Speaker 1: So I knew that my sister, like you.
Speaker 3: Was struggling with something, but it was just it was
Speaker 3: so inconcrete at that point, and it was also just
Speaker 3: growing pains, like just being a teenager. You never know
Speaker 3: if someone's going to grow out of something, and this
Speaker 3: is just a phase, or it's hormonal or environmental, or
Speaker 3: induced by drugs or alcohol use or the partying, Like
Speaker 3: you just have no idea what's actually happening.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back around this time, Kate also begins
Speaker 2: to have a series of accidents which result in head injuries.
Speaker 2: She has her first concussion at a high school party
Speaker 2: where she falls and hits her head. One night. Soon after,
Speaker 2: she tries to sneak out of her bedroom window to
Speaker 2: meet up with friends and she falls and hits her
Speaker 2: head again. These falls are worrisome but not dire. Then,
Speaker 2: when she's a freshman in college, it does become dire.
Speaker 2: She hurts her head once more, and this time she
Speaker 2: suffers a serious brain injury. She's put into an induced
Speaker 2: coma for a number of days. Kylie is beside herself
Speaker 2: with worry. Her anxiety spikes. She begins to literally see
Speaker 2: red all around her. We use that expression seeing red,
Speaker 2: but you who, I think, all through your life saw
Speaker 2: different periods of time and color in a certain way.
Speaker 2: You know, Marblehead was blue and Philadelphia was green. Now
Speaker 2: you're seeing red, and Kate is very changed, and your
Speaker 2: mother is like desperately searching for reasons for what this
Speaker 2: behavior could possibly be. Is it because of the traumatic
Speaker 2: brain injury? Is it because of lyme disease? Is it
Speaker 2: because of the series of head injuries? Is it because
Speaker 2: of a condition that she had of polycystic ovarian syndrome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, after the head injury, my sister's behavior just worsened dramatically.
Speaker 3: And I think I was around like thirteen or fourteen,
Speaker 3: and I remember my sister had like an episode I
Speaker 3: don't remember what again.
Speaker 1: You know actually inspired it because these fits were just
Speaker 1: kind of senseless. They would would get triggered.
Speaker 3: By something we couldn't see or hear, something that was
Speaker 3: going on inside her own head, so it's hardly low Kay,
Speaker 3: exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: So I remember being in my family is like entrance
Speaker 1: way of our house, and just being so overwhelmed, so.
Speaker 3: Upset and honestly so angry that I saw red actually
Speaker 3: and I had to sit down because I was going
Speaker 3: to faint, and it really scared me because I didn't
Speaker 3: know that was out something actually happened. That was just
Speaker 3: like a literary phrase people used, but you know, I
Speaker 3: really did physically see read that moment. And I think
Speaker 3: also like part of it too, was that I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
Speaker 3: when all this is really escalating, and those are the
Speaker 3: years when you're starting to develop your own sense of self,
Speaker 3: and my sister's sense of self was deteriorating. So there
Speaker 3: was this element where I was kind of starting to,
Speaker 3: you know, voice my opinion more.
Speaker 1: Or challenge her more, and that wasn't helping anything either.
Speaker 2: When Kate is at her worst, she's aggressive, hurling insults
Speaker 2: at Kylie, and when Kate is her best, she's writing
Speaker 2: notes to Kylie love letters to her little sister. Both
Speaker 2: versions of Kate exist simultaneouslys are particularly insidious, though because
Speaker 2: these happened during the years when Kylie's coming into her
Speaker 2: own forming her identity. When Kate tells Kylie that she's
Speaker 2: ugly or stupid, she's saying things that can't help but
Speaker 2: embed themselves into Kylie's sense of self.
Speaker 3: It was so hard when she could be really cruel,
Speaker 3: and she also was really intuitive, kind of about what
Speaker 3: you were most insecure about, so she could sense what
Speaker 3: you were struggling with and she could use that against you.
Speaker 3: She was still very spar in that sense, and it
Speaker 3: was really hurtful, and I think those are the moments
Speaker 3: where I just feel so grateful that I had my
Speaker 3: mom and I had parents that were supportive, because you know,
Speaker 3: if I didn't have somebody who was reinforcing my self
Speaker 3: esteem and trying to make sure I was okay, those
Speaker 3: kind of insults when you were so young constantly that
Speaker 3: verbal abuse can just deteriorate somebody. And it's still something
Speaker 3: that I'm like trying to unlearn. There's still insecurities I
Speaker 3: have that definitely derive from those times. I think also
Speaker 3: with my illness, and somebody can shift so easily and
Speaker 3: one second she can be telling me I'm the best
Speaker 3: sister in the world and writing these notes saying that
Speaker 3: I'm so beautiful and she loves me more than anybody
Speaker 3: else in the world and all these things. In the
Speaker 3: next second, she's yelling at me, saying that I'm hideous
Speaker 3: and that I'm stupid and no one likes me. And
Speaker 3: you know, it's so hard to try in your brain
Speaker 3: to combine.
Speaker 1: Those two people. And I wish fact that.
Speaker 3: I had been able to differentiate more just between this
Speaker 3: is the illness talking, you know, my sister is unwell,
Speaker 3: and then also loving who she is otherwise, and because
Speaker 3: I think it's just it's really hard to love somebody
Speaker 3: when they're suffering or also inflicting suffering onto you. I
Speaker 3: was around fourteen when we started kind of getting a
Speaker 3: clearer diagnosis about schizophrenia, and I remember being, you know,
Speaker 3: an early preteen and googling the term because I had
Speaker 3: no idea how to spell it.
Speaker 1: Even to me, it sounded like some mysterious illness. You know,
Speaker 1: I had to educate surrounded.
Speaker 3: I don't think i'd really learned about it in school
Speaker 3: at that point, so there was a big learning process
Speaker 3: around understanding what mental illness is and what's going on
Speaker 3: here and back then too. I mean it wasn't that
Speaker 3: long ago, but still we have way more resources now
Speaker 3: than I think we did back then.
Speaker 2: And was it a really a diagnosis that was arrived
Speaker 2: at by ruling out every other avenue.
Speaker 3: It's a diagnosis I remember we got after the head injury,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't it still shifted, you know, I think
Speaker 3: different we didn't to so many doctors. He tried, My
Speaker 3: mom just tried like every single thing possible, and different
Speaker 3: doctors would say different things. Some would say, this is bipolar,
Speaker 3: this is schizophrenia, this is actually.
Speaker 1: Bipolar disorder too.
Speaker 3: I mean there were so many I think borderline was
Speaker 3: thrown around there at one point. Like there's just so
Speaker 3: many terms that it was always shifting that we still
Speaker 3: never had a clear picture in retrospect. To me, because
Speaker 3: I just recently I studied psychology and I just got
Speaker 3: my graduate degree as a clinical therapist. So with all
Speaker 3: that extra education, I think I can say that it
Speaker 3: was probably schizophrenia. But there is a lot of overlap here,
Speaker 3: and I just know she was having like active hallucinations
Speaker 3: and that to me is like probably the most primary
Speaker 3: symptom that was the most concerning.
Speaker 2: One of the things that you write about is it
Speaker 2: wasn't my story to tell, and I was thinking about
Speaker 2: the burden or I'm wondering, I guess whether it felt
Speaker 2: like a burden to beholding that secret at that age,
Speaker 2: you know, and your friends had no idea what was
Speaker 2: going on, you know, within the walls of your home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think holding that secret it would
Speaker 3: think it was important at the time because I did
Speaker 3: feel a need to protect my sister's privacy and we
Speaker 3: were in the same school district and we.
Speaker 1: Had, you know, similar friends.
Speaker 3: My friend's older sister was friends with her with somebody,
Speaker 3: and it was just really important to me that, you know,
Speaker 3: we can't handle Kate dealing with more stress, so we
Speaker 3: have to keep this insulart and protect her. And for
Speaker 3: me growing up, I think not having a lot of
Speaker 3: confidence and not being able.
Speaker 1: To talk to about people about what was actually going
Speaker 1: on just made me feel more isolated.
Speaker 3: And I remember when I first looked up what the
Speaker 3: word schizophrenia and ment the etymology of it actually is.
Speaker 3: You know, schizo is is split and then frendia, which
Speaker 3: is mind. It's like a split self. And I remember thinking, like,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm kind of a split self right now,
Speaker 3: I'm going to school and I'm trying my best and
Speaker 3: you know, taking all the ap classes i can. I'm
Speaker 3: a pretty type a person, and I'm trying to be
Speaker 3: fun and happy and be a normal kid. And then
Speaker 3: I'm going home and I'm dealing with this really intense
Speaker 3: stuff that I'm not able to talk about. And I
Speaker 3: think a lot of people experience that, And that's the
Speaker 3: whole part about a secret that can just kind of
Speaker 3: kill you as we're all keeping these secrets in different ways,
Speaker 3: and then no one's talking about it, and that isolation
Speaker 3: just breathes more loneliness. It was pretty soon af the
Speaker 3: head injury that things escalated. I think it was like
Speaker 3: a month after the head injury that she went to
Speaker 3: the dean's office of her university at Drexel and accused
Speaker 3: the dean of like thinking bad thoughts or something really
Speaker 3: wild like that, and she got get out of school
Speaker 3: and then she her roommates were fighting with her, and
Speaker 3: like it just happened really fast, and I don't think
Speaker 3: we've realized it when it was happening, just how quickly
Speaker 3: things are a spiraling after the head injury, until you
Speaker 3: can look at it and you really write down and
Speaker 3: you see that it's like, Okay, no, that was a
Speaker 3: breaking point.
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 2: After this breaking point, Cake comes home for some time,
Speaker 2: and then she ends up living in her own apartment.
Speaker 2: She's pingponging between a couple of different ways of living
Speaker 2: on the level of her stability. She's also growing increasingly paranoid.
Speaker 2: She's sure that people are staring at her or following her.
Speaker 2: She hears voices to complicate matters. Often people are looking
Speaker 2: at her or approaching her, but not with malintent. Kate
Speaker 2: is a beautiful young woman who sometimes stands out in
Speaker 2: a crowd, but through the lens of her mental illness,
Speaker 2: these admirers are spies who were out to get her.
Speaker 2: As her paranoia increases, her stability plummets.
Speaker 3: It was January eighth, twenty fourteen, and I was turning
Speaker 3: seventeen three days on the eleventh, so I remember that
Speaker 3: time period.
Speaker 1: Like Kate had been in out of group homes at
Speaker 1: that point.
Speaker 3: She had tried rehab centeries for her drinking problem as well.
Speaker 3: I mean, we've been trying different treatments, and she was
Speaker 3: living in an apartment by herself pretty close to her house.
Speaker 1: And she'd recently been at home.
Speaker 3: She'd still say night sometimes because we were like a
Speaker 3: five minute drive away. But that night in particular, I
Speaker 3: remember that I was really stressed out because I had
Speaker 3: an exam the next day, and I think retroactively again
Speaker 3: looking at you know.
Speaker 1: How much we try to control these things when things
Speaker 1: aren't in our control.
Speaker 3: For me, that was grades, and I was pretty type
Speaker 3: A about getting all a's, and.
Speaker 1: You know, having exam the next day was a really
Speaker 1: big deal to me.
Speaker 3: And my sister called my mom and she was upset
Speaker 3: and she wanted to go to CBS. She wanted to
Speaker 3: pick up some stuff, and my mom didn't want her
Speaker 3: walking because it was pretty cold out, so she drove
Speaker 3: by and she picked her up, and I went to
Speaker 3: CVS together and they got some advil something like that.
Speaker 3: It wasn't a lot of stuff, and then my mom
Speaker 3: drove her home and she talks about us realizing that
Speaker 3: moment that something was wrong. She could sense that Kate
Speaker 3: wasn't normal, which again at this point, like we were
Speaker 3: dealing with somebody who's aren't a lot of moodswings, but
Speaker 3: that's something that was really wrong. That night, she just
Speaker 3: seemed really depressed, despondent, and really quiet, which wasn't typical
Speaker 3: of her. And she was in the car with her
Speaker 3: and I call my mom and I was like, can.
Speaker 1: You come home?
Speaker 3: Like, I'm home alone, I'm scared, the dogs are barking,
Speaker 3: you know, really stressed out. So my mom dropped Kate
Speaker 3: off and everything was fine, and then she came home
Speaker 3: to be with me.
Speaker 2: After Kate and Kylie's mom comes home, everything changes. Kate
Speaker 2: goes missing, she disappears. The family is sick with worry
Speaker 2: and uncertainty, and Kylie is wrought with guilt.
Speaker 1: Because my birthday was in three days from that date.
Speaker 3: I was planning a birthday party and it's the dinner
Speaker 3: with some friends and I didn't invite my sister and
Speaker 3: I was lying to her about it because I didn't
Speaker 3: want upset her. And I remember I carried like that
Speaker 3: guilt around with me as well, which is like a
Speaker 3: much smaller guilt. But then that night, because I was
Speaker 3: the one who called my mom and because I pulled
Speaker 3: her away, maybe she, you know, would have talked to
Speaker 3: my sister more. Maybe she would have realized, who knows,
Speaker 3: it would happened.
Speaker 2: As time passes, the family still does not hear from Kate.
Speaker 2: Kylie and her mom go to Kate's apartment to try
Speaker 2: to unravel the mystery of where she's gone. When they
Speaker 2: log into her computer, they find a chilling, heartbreaking series
Speaker 2: of Google searches what happens when we die? Kate had
Speaker 2: searched how to kill yourself. She searched the word death
Speaker 2: she searched. This is when Kylie and her mom begin
Speaker 2: to understand what's happened. Soon they learned that Kate took
Speaker 2: a taxi to the foot of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge
Speaker 2: that night. Soon they find security footage showing that she
Speaker 2: walked up to the high point and then she's gone.
Speaker 2: They assume she's jumped.
Speaker 1: I did feel all this guilt, and I think it
Speaker 1: took me a lot to come to inclusion that. You know,
Speaker 1: with suicide, everyone.
Speaker 3: Feels guilt, and you can torture yourself looking for all
Speaker 3: the things you did wrong, and not just that night,
Speaker 3: but all the things before that night, and all the
Speaker 3: things you should have said that you didn't say, and
Speaker 3: there's just so much regret there. I think it really
Speaker 3: tortured me for most of my life.
Speaker 2: But Kylie yearns to find a way through this torture.
Speaker 2: She will never stop grieving the mysterious loss of her sister,
Speaker 2: but she will start healing, and she will do this
Speaker 2: the way we all do, by attempting to make meaning
Speaker 2: out of what has happened. There are many ways of
Speaker 2: making meaning, of course, but in Kylie's case, she begins
Speaker 2: to write.
Speaker 3: I was going to be a writer, and before as
Speaker 3: long as I wish my sister gets better, I would wish,
Speaker 3: I hope my dreams come true. And for me that
Speaker 3: I has always been writing since I was like six seven.
Speaker 3: I've always wanted to write a book. It's kind of
Speaker 3: my biggest dream in my life.
Speaker 1: And I remember a certain point when Kate gets really sick,
Speaker 1: that I just dropped that from my wishes.
Speaker 3: I wrote the wishes and all my prayers, and I
Speaker 3: would just say, like just can't get better, Like I
Speaker 3: can't focus anything else besides.
Speaker 1: Cap getting better. And I went to college.
Speaker 3: I studied psychology and English, a double major, but I
Speaker 3: was really focusing on psychology, and I really I was
Speaker 3: taking jobs mental health field. I was volunteering and group
Speaker 3: homes with women who had schizophrenia and homeless shelters and
Speaker 3: doing all this research in the field because I think
Speaker 3: I had this guilt and I still do that. You know,
Speaker 3: my sister, we didn't save her, and like, how can
Speaker 3: I help somebody else, or how can I make this count?
Speaker 3: And for me, the writing just kind of fell to
Speaker 3: the side. I did it myself. I never really submitted anything.
Speaker 3: I wasn't pursuing it.
Speaker 1: I was really going to.
Speaker 3: Go and get my PhD in psychology and become a clinician,
Speaker 3: and then maybe someday I would write a book about
Speaker 3: psychology or something.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't really writing at that point that much.
Speaker 3: But I had taken a class creative nonfiction and my
Speaker 3: teacher mentioned that there was a New York Times Modern
Speaker 3: Love College essay contest.
Speaker 1: And I had an earlier paper for that.
Speaker 3: Class that she liked, and she thought maybe I should
Speaker 3: tune a little bit and then send it in. Also,
Speaker 3: at that point, every time I tried to write, you know,
Speaker 3: these things were just coming up.
Speaker 1: I couldn't not write about it.
Speaker 3: I was just like, in some form or other, I
Speaker 3: would always want to talk about grief or mental illness,
Speaker 3: or being a sister or being a sibling, and so
Speaker 3: I'd written about my sister, and the essay was about
Speaker 3: kind of how grieving has changed digital age, in the
Speaker 3: sense that we now have Facebook active and Instagram active,
Speaker 3: and all these pages we didn't have before to look at,
Speaker 3: and you can still text somebody, you can still call
Speaker 3: them and maybe even hear a voice message. It becomes
Speaker 3: harder to accept that this person's gone when you're getting
Speaker 3: a Facebook and notification saying that the birthday is coming up.
Speaker 3: And for me, with somebody who disappeared without having that
Speaker 3: we had evidence obviously, but not having you know, final proof,
Speaker 3: not having a body, not having an autopsy, it was
Speaker 3: just this big mystery my mind that I still had
Speaker 3: this hope that, you know, maybe something else happened, maybe
Speaker 3: my sister did get picked up by a car the
Speaker 3: bridge instead of jumping, and she actually is living a
Speaker 3: whole other life and she's okay.
Speaker 1: And I was still this feeling.
Speaker 3: So as part of my coping mechanism, I would text
Speaker 3: her phone sometimes and I would or message her on Facebook,
Speaker 3: and I would tell her about things that were going on,
Speaker 3: because to me, I think it made it feel less
Speaker 3: real if I could keep her updated, like if she
Speaker 3: knew what was happening in the world and in my life.
Speaker 3: It wasn't like she was really gone, and there was
Speaker 3: this like you know, magical thinking, this cognage distortion in
Speaker 3: my head that was saying, you know, it's gonna be
Speaker 3: harder for her to come back if she has all
Speaker 3: these memorials or like if she doesn't know what's happening.
Speaker 1: So I would like try to keep her going. Even
Speaker 1: though I knew, I think logically, like you know, we
Speaker 1: knew what happened, there was still that kind of shred
Speaker 1: of hope for me.
Speaker 3: So the essay I wrote was about that experience, and
Speaker 3: I submitted it. It was like, really the second piece of
Speaker 3: writing I'd ever really submitted in my life or anything.
Speaker 3: And I remember being in my dorm room and I
Speaker 3: was a senior in college and I just said a
Speaker 3: prayer to my sister and I just said, if you
Speaker 3: don't want this out.
Speaker 1: There, you know, if you're up there, if you can
Speaker 1: hear me, then.
Speaker 3: Just don't have this get published. Their odds are getting
Speaker 3: published were so low. There were like two thousand submissions
Speaker 3: and one winner, and I was like, it's not going
Speaker 3: to happen anyway, but like, just in case, cage, just like,
Speaker 3: tell me now and I'll never write about you again.
Speaker 3: I'll drop this and I'll let you be in peace.
Speaker 3: I'll protect your privacy. Still in my head, I still
Speaker 3: had this like privacy to protect, and I still had
Speaker 3: this secret I was keeping, which is this image of
Speaker 3: my sister who was this big personality, and I was
Speaker 3: still trying to, you know, keep the hurt in people's
Speaker 3: minds that way, not exposed what was actually happening.
Speaker 1: So I said this prayer and then I ended up
Speaker 1: winning the contest.
Speaker 3: I found out when I was visiting my grandparents for
Speaker 3: Easter in Naples, and.
Speaker 1: It was the week of my sister's birthday.
Speaker 3: So to me, that was like this big sign that
Speaker 3: was like kind of go for it. And I think
Speaker 3: that for me opened up only the world of writing again,
Speaker 3: but also this feeling of connection with my sister that
Speaker 3: I do still feel like we're doing things together, if
Speaker 3: that makes sense. Maybe that's a logical, but I still
Speaker 3: feel this really short connection and a lot of that
Speaker 3: guilt was not alleviated but lessened by feeling like she
Speaker 3: wanted me to honor her in some way. At the time,
Speaker 3: it felt like such a singular chaotic story, and we
Speaker 3: were so alone in it, and then you look outside
Speaker 3: and you're like, wow, people are actually struggling with this.
Speaker 1: Everyone's talking about it, and I think now being able
Speaker 1: to talk about.
Speaker 3: It was big for me because I don't have to
Speaker 3: protect my sister anymore, you know, like she's gone. My
Speaker 3: mom and I came to that conclusion together that all
Speaker 3: we have on each other and we don't have to
Speaker 3: be protect each other anymore. So really it's about trying
Speaker 3: to help people who can't talk now, who are so
Speaker 3: actively having somebody struggle, who can't handle that burden, who
Speaker 3: need somebody who can go out there and say like,
Speaker 3: this is what was happening, and this is what it's
Speaker 3: like to struggle with somebody who's dealing with these things
Speaker 3: and how hard it is.
Speaker 2: Ley's book begins with the following epigraph, All I can
Speaker 2: hope is that it helps even just a single person,
Speaker 2: even just for a moment. By the life path Kylie
Speaker 2: has chosen for herself, both as a clinician someone who
Speaker 2: studies mental illness, and having written this book, she is
Speaker 2: creating hope and beauty out of the sorrow and chaos
Speaker 2: of her sister's life. It doesn't erase the sorrow or
Speaker 2: the chaos, but it does help. Here's Kylie reading one
Speaker 2: last passage from the Perfect Other.
Speaker 3: My sister is in the way I dress, the colors
Speaker 3: I choose, how I am challenged to be a more original,
Speaker 3: true reversion of myself. She is the moments when I
Speaker 3: say yes to an adventure instead of no. I feel her,
Speaker 3: when that song is playing in the car and everyone
Speaker 3: is singing along and I'm reminded of what it is
Speaker 3: to be alive, Or when the fog girls in turning
Speaker 3: this tree into skinny silhouettes, and the sun hangs low
Speaker 3: in a red summer sky. I see her in what
Speaker 3: is beautiful or interesting or sad, which is to say
Speaker 3: that I see her in everything. She is nowhere tangible,
Speaker 3: which is to say that she is everywhere. We keep
Speaker 3: and keep and keep. We remember and remember and remember.
Speaker 3: We collect heart shaped shells and signs, and old notebooks
Speaker 3: and recollections. We hold on memorize the lines of her tan,
Speaker 3: slender hands, and the sound of her laugh, engraving ourselves
Speaker 3: to the smallest.
Speaker 1: Details lest we ever forget.
Speaker 3: We try to make amends, reason with ghosts, explain ourselves
Speaker 3: to the wind, and then there comes a time we
Speaker 3: must let go.
Speaker 2: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly z Acre
Speaker 2: is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 2: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 2: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 2: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 2: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 2: find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd
Speaker 2: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 2: check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.