The 11:11 Wish

Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

This episode contains discussion of suicide. Listener discretion is advised.

On January eighth, twenty fourteen, my sister walked the Benagamin Franklin Bridge.

My sister disappeared.

How why I never viewed the security photographs myself.

I didn't ask to is it really her? Are we sure?

Perhaps it was easier not to know, not to have the definitive proof of having seen it myself.

The image of my head is thus one of my own creation. A girl walking keiate, walking poof gone.

That's Kylie Letty, a twenty five year old graduate student in social work and public policy and author of the memoir The Other Kylie's is a story about sisterhood, grief, and the way what we don't know, perhaps what we might never know, has the power to shape us. It's also a story of great love, strength, tenacity, and meaning making. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets. The secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.

Me and my sister we were six years apart.

You grew up a little bit in Connecticut, a little bit in Virginia, but mostly talked about our years. And we were living in Marblehead, Massachusetts, which is a small coastal.

Town, very idyllic, and it was a beautiful place by the beach. We had it good. We were so loved.

My parents took such good care of us. We were kind of best friends. We would spend our days at the beach picking out seashells. I mean, it was really it was really wonderful. And then when I was around seven, we moved to Philadelphia, first for a year in the city and then to the suburbs near Villanova University, and that was in Key.

It was kind of entering her teenage years.

What precipitated the move from Marblehead to Philly.

My dad's job caused us to move.

He was working in tech of time, so it was a lot of just you know, constant fluctuations, a lot of moving around companies.

And so this was in this sort of you know tech boom, right.

Yeah, exactly, the dot com bubble.

I was around seven, it was like two thousand and four or five, So.

You were going into the first grade when you moved to Philly, and Kate was going into seventh.

Yes, exactly.

I think that having my sister be five years my senior, I think it was just having like a second mom, Like she really took care of me.

She prayed for me to be born.

She was always asking for little sister, and she had all these dolls she was dressing up. She was obsessed with twins and Mary Kate, Ashley Olsen, and she just really wanted to take care of me like that.

Now I idolized her.

To me, she was just she was so courageous and bold and adventurous, and she really challenged me.

She loved me. I didn't speak for a while when I was little. I was just so quiet.

My grandparents keep talking and joking about how when I was little, I would just stare everybody.

My mom keeps saying, it's because.

I had so much to watch. There's always a show going off. My sister, she was a performer. She was just like ball of energy, so much light, so funny, and I just was always entertained by her.

Growing up. My mom and my sister and.

I were super close, and my dad was really great too. You know, he's working a lot, so that was less of an impression in my mind than my mom in that sense, She's been the perfect mix between being your friend and being your parent. Always, since I was little, I've always felt like I could tell everything. My parents were really conscientious about trying to give us everything that they may not have had. They were just trying their best.

So when you look back now, or you know, for these last years, as I think we just we do as human beings, when something goes awry, we look for the moment when we could have It's a fantasy, I think, but you know, the moment where we could have stopped it, or it could have gone differently, or we could have seen it as it was happening and sort of altered

I would say that until we really moved to Phidelphia, I don't remember anything being that awry. I think that my mom has talked about how my sister was in trouble sometimes at school when she's younger, you know, just getting into arguments other kids, or getting into little petty fights here and there. But she just had a really bold personality, and I think at that time that seemed like not a problem, maybe even a good thing that

But when we moved to Philadelphia.

She was thirteen and I was turning seven, and that's when we started seeing a little more kind of concerning signs. Again, it's just so hard to tell when you know what's normal it's not normal.

So it was it was more like skipping schools.

There was more partying, some mood swings, but a lot of it was still typical teenage stuff. And I think it's just it's so difficult to distinguish between what's going on actually and where's a lie.

I know my mom has said before maybe if I.

Was born first, if I was the first kid, they could have seen that some of this stuff wasn't normal.

At that point, they had nothing to compare it to either, so it all seemed fine, but still just a little more concerning. Starting around them.

My sister, she had a lot of superstitions and signs she believed in, and different little rituals she would kind of include me in, and one of them was wishing on eleven eleven and my whole life at eleven eleven PM at eleven eleven.

AM, we would make a wish together. And when I was seven, I remember the first time.

I had a wish that was that I wish my sister gets better. And I think it's because I was picking up on the fact that she was getting into travel at school more and my parents were more concerned and.

That something was going on here, and I just want my sister back and making sure she was okay.

And because I had this pattern of superstition and ritual established, I ever since then kind of kept that wish the same. So I'd always every eleven eleven, every birthday, every time I had a wishbone or anything else, I would always ask for that one thing. So I think on some level I was just picking up on what was going on without actually being consciously or cognitively aware of it exactly.

In Kylie's memoir, she writes, my sister was the kind of girl people write books about. I was the kind of girl who read such books, who listened to such songs and wondered how a spark in one person could like a flame in so many others. Suffice it to say, Kylie idolizes her big sister Kate, even when Kate gets in trouble, even when Kate gets angry and violent.

I think I was in third grade and friends sleeping over, and my mom and my sister were going to fight, and I have no idea what the fight was instigated about.

I can't remember. I think maybe something to do with her cell phone.

My mom was taking it away because she got in trouble or something along those lines. But it had escalated into violence, with my sister hitting my mom and then her having to actually go to the hospital because she it was like her cheekbll and that got hurt. And that was for me, as a little kid, the first time I remember having to shield somebody else from what was going on and trying to keep my friend away from it and have her not see what was going on, so she did you to go home and talk to

That was a big thing for my mom as well. I was just trying to protect Kate and also protect other people from Kate. Unfortunately.

So around that time, you actually come up with an ingenious cover story for why you can't have sleepovers.

Yes, so I started telling people in my house was haunted or it was a very childish probably thing to start saying, but there was a very old home with you know those rickety floorboards and all those spooky things that happened with old homes. That was a way for me to say that I didn't want to have a sleepover at my house, Like why don't we go to your house instead? Or after school don't we go to your house to watch this movie or watch this show and not mine.

Yeah, and in some ways it occurred to me, I mean in a way your house was haunted. I mean, whether in a supernatural way or you know, haunted by what was happening inside of it. Yeah, exactly, within this haunted house, there are also pockets of joy. When things are good, they're very, very good, and when they're bad, they're terrible. But the good moments contain real happiness that Kylie, Kate and their mom share and also a kind of playful magic that together they create.

I'm thinking it was December. I think I was around twelve, and I'm not sure who had the idea first.

It is probably my sister. It was something she would come up with.

But my mom, my sister and I had this, you know, kind of ridiculous idea that we'd go around town and put these little red dot stickers on the deer crossing signs or neighborhood and make it into Rudolph Red Nose.

Image. So we would.

We bought these little red dots at Staples and then we ran around town in the middle of the night. I think it was probably like not that late realistically, because I was.

Little, I thought it was really late.

And I remember like my sister had a lift me on her shoulders so I could stick the sticker on there, and we were just cracking up the entire time, trying not to peer pants because we were laughing so hard. And I remember that just being this another example of even though things were bad at all these times, we also were having fun together.

We were still family.

My sister kind of brought this like adventurous spirit out in all of us that made us all laugh and do something different than we normally would have done.

Underscoring these fun adventures, there is the prevailing sense of something being wrong. Kylie internalizes this feeling and begins to develop anxiety, particularly anxiety about her health and body. She scrolls through web md, looking up all sorts of symptoms and treatments anything she can find. Without quite knowing what's wrong. She thinks, whatever it is must live inside her.

I think a victoria that was trying to get control. And also because you couldn't find on that was happening with my sister, it was like, what can I control in this element? What's something that there are these like insidious forces that are happening, are changing my sister?

Am I going to change too? Is meaning bad going to happened to me too?

And you're kind of on this like hyper vigilance of always waiting for the next shoot to drop. And I also think a big part of it was that I was under so much stress, you know, watching these episodes of my sister, and that stress.

Does sometimes cause strange things.

Up in the body, Like I had school and lip nodes and I thought I had maybe cancers. My lymph nodes were stolen my under my armpits or in my neck, And it was probably because I was just really stressed out, and you know that whole mind body connection that was we were dealing with a Kate, we were also dealing with, you know, with ourselves trying to feel the stress. I also remember thinking at one point, like, you know, everyone has some kind of family secret they're hiding, like we're not.

We're all just not talking about something.

You know, other families are going through something similar and they were not saying either, So why shouldn't say anything?

And did you and your mom ever talked about it at that time or was it not until later?

I think my mom and I did talk about that time. I'm being very aware that something was off.

I was worried about.

Her, but I don't think I knew how I should be worried yet, I think. And we didn't have a diagnosis really for years, and there are things tossed around, and we tried therapists.

So I knew that my sister, like you.

Was struggling with something, but it was just it was so inconcrete at that point, and it was also just growing pains, like just being a teenager. You never know if someone's going to grow out of something, and this is just a phase, or it's hormonal or environmental, or induced by drugs or alcohol use or the partying, Like you just have no idea what's actually happening.

We'll be right back around this time, Kate also begins to have a series of accidents which result in head injuries. She has her first concussion at a high school party where she falls and hits her head. One night. Soon after, she tries to sneak out of her bedroom window to meet up with friends and she falls and hits her head again. These falls are worrisome but not dire. Then, when she's a freshman in college, it does become dire. She hurts her head once more, and this time she

Yeah, after the head injury, my sister's behavior just worsened dramatically. And I think I was around like thirteen or fourteen, and I remember my sister had like an episode I don't remember what again.

You know actually inspired it because these fits were just kind of senseless. They would would get triggered.

By something we couldn't see or hear, something that was going on inside her own head, so it's hardly low Kay, exactly what happened.

So I remember being in my family is like entrance way of our house, and just being so overwhelmed, so.

Upset and honestly so angry that I saw red actually and I had to sit down because I was going to faint, and it really scared me because I didn't know that was out something actually happened. That was just like a literary phrase people used, but you know, I really did physically see read that moment. And I think also like part of it too, was that I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, when all this is really escalating, and those are the years when you're starting to develop your own sense of self,

Or challenge her more, and that wasn't helping anything either.

When Kate is at her worst, she's aggressive, hurling insults at Kylie, and when Kate is her best, she's writing notes to Kylie love letters to her little sister. Both versions of Kate exist simultaneouslys are particularly insidious, though because these happened during the years when Kylie's coming into her own forming her identity. When Kate tells Kylie that she's ugly or stupid, she's saying things that can't help but embed themselves into Kylie's sense of self.

It was so hard when she could be really cruel, and she also was really intuitive, kind of about what you were most insecure about, so she could sense what you were struggling with and she could use that against you.

Those two people. And I wish fact that.

I had been able to differentiate more just between this is the illness talking, you know, my sister is unwell, and then also loving who she is otherwise, and because I think it's just it's really hard to love somebody when they're suffering or also inflicting suffering onto you. I was around fourteen when we started kind of getting a clearer diagnosis about schizophrenia, and I remember being, you know, an early preteen and googling the term because I had no idea how to spell it.

Even to me, it sounded like some mysterious illness. You know, I had to educate surrounded.

I don't think i'd really learned about it in school at that point, so there was a big learning process around understanding what mental illness is and what's going on here and back then too. I mean it wasn't that long ago, but still we have way more resources now than I think we did back then.

And was it a really a diagnosis that was arrived at by ruling out every other avenue.

It's a diagnosis I remember we got after the head injury, but it wasn't it still shifted, you know, I think different we didn't to so many doctors. He tried, My mom just tried like every single thing possible, and different doctors would say different things. Some would say, this is bipolar, this is schizophrenia, this is actually.

Bipolar disorder too.

I mean there were so many I think borderline was thrown around there at one point. Like there's just so many terms that it was always shifting that we still never had a clear picture in retrospect. To me, because I just recently I studied psychology and I just got my graduate degree as a clinical therapist. So with all that extra education, I think I can say that it

One of the things that you write about is it wasn't my story to tell, and I was thinking about the burden or I'm wondering, I guess whether it felt like a burden to beholding that secret at that age, you know, and your friends had no idea what was going on, you know, within the walls of your home.

Yeah, you know, I think holding that secret it would think it was important at the time because I did feel a need to protect my sister's privacy and we were in the same school district and we.

Had, you know, similar friends.

My friend's older sister was friends with her with somebody, and it was just really important to me that, you know, we can't handle Kate dealing with more stress, so we have to keep this insulart and protect her. And for me growing up, I think not having a lot of confidence and not being able.

To talk to about people about what was actually going on just made me feel more isolated.

And I remember when I first looked up what the word schizophrenia and ment the etymology of it actually is. You know, schizo is is split and then frendia, which is mind. It's like a split self. And I remember thinking, like, you know, I'm kind of a split self right now, I'm going to school and I'm trying my best and you know, taking all the ap classes i can. I'm a pretty type a person, and I'm trying to be

We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. After this breaking point, Cake comes home for some time, and then she ends up living in her own apartment. She's pingponging between a couple of different ways of living on the level of her stability. She's also growing increasingly paranoid. She's sure that people are staring at her or following her. She hears voices to complicate matters. Often people are looking

It was January eighth, twenty fourteen, and I was turning seventeen three days on the eleventh, so I remember that time period.

Like Kate had been in out of group homes at that point.

She had tried rehab centeries for her drinking problem as well. I mean, we've been trying different treatments, and she was living in an apartment by herself pretty close to her house.

And she'd recently been at home.

She'd still say night sometimes because we were like a five minute drive away. But that night in particular, I remember that I was really stressed out because I had an exam the next day, and I think retroactively again looking at you know.

How much we try to control these things when things aren't in our control.

For me, that was grades, and I was pretty type A about getting all a's, and.

You know, having exam the next day was a really big deal to me.

And my sister called my mom and she was upset and she wanted to go to CBS. She wanted to pick up some stuff, and my mom didn't want her walking because it was pretty cold out, so she drove by and she picked her up, and I went to CVS together and they got some advil something like that. It wasn't a lot of stuff, and then my mom drove her home and she talks about us realizing that

You come home?

Like, I'm home alone, I'm scared, the dogs are barking, you know, really stressed out. So my mom dropped Kate off and everything was fine, and then she came home to be with me.

After Kate and Kylie's mom comes home, everything changes. Kate goes missing, she disappears. The family is sick with worry and uncertainty, and Kylie is wrought with guilt.

Because my birthday was in three days from that date.

I was planning a birthday party and it's the dinner with some friends and I didn't invite my sister and I was lying to her about it because I didn't want upset her. And I remember I carried like that guilt around with me as well, which is like a much smaller guilt. But then that night, because I was the one who called my mom and because I pulled her away, maybe she, you know, would have talked to my sister more. Maybe she would have realized, who knows, it would happened.

As time passes, the family still does not hear from Kate. Kylie and her mom go to Kate's apartment to try to unravel the mystery of where she's gone. When they log into her computer, they find a chilling, heartbreaking series of Google searches what happens when we die? Kate had searched how to kill yourself. She searched the word death she searched. This is when Kylie and her mom begin

I did feel all this guilt, and I think it took me a lot to come to inclusion that. You know, with suicide, everyone.

Feels guilt, and you can torture yourself looking for all the things you did wrong, and not just that night, but all the things before that night, and all the things you should have said that you didn't say, and there's just so much regret there. I think it really tortured me for most of my life.

But Kylie yearns to find a way through this torture. She will never stop grieving the mysterious loss of her sister, but she will start healing, and she will do this the way we all do, by attempting to make meaning out of what has happened. There are many ways of making meaning, of course, but in Kylie's case, she begins to write.

I was going to be a writer, and before as long as I wish my sister gets better, I would wish, I hope my dreams come true. And for me that I has always been writing since I was like six seven. I've always wanted to write a book. It's kind of my biggest dream in my life.

And I remember a certain point when Kate gets really sick, that I just dropped that from my wishes.

I wrote the wishes and all my prayers, and I would just say, like just can't get better, Like I can't focus anything else besides.

Cap getting better. And I went to college.

I studied psychology and English, a double major, but I was really focusing on psychology, and I really I was taking jobs mental health field. I was volunteering and group homes with women who had schizophrenia and homeless shelters and doing all this research in the field because I think I had this guilt and I still do that. You know, my sister, we didn't save her, and like, how can I help somebody else, or how can I make this count? And for me, the writing just kind of fell to

I was really going to.

Go and get my PhD in psychology and become a clinician, and then maybe someday I would write a book about psychology or something.

But I wasn't really writing at that point that much.

But I had taken a class creative nonfiction and my teacher mentioned that there was a New York Times Modern Love College essay contest.

And I had an earlier paper for that.

Class that she liked, and she thought maybe I should tune a little bit and then send it in. Also, at that point, every time I tried to write, you know, these things were just coming up.

I couldn't not write about it.

I was just like, in some form or other, I would always want to talk about grief or mental illness, or being a sister or being a sibling, and so I'd written about my sister, and the essay was about kind of how grieving has changed digital age, in the sense that we now have Facebook active and Instagram active, and all these pages we didn't have before to look at, and you can still text somebody, you can still call

And I was still this feeling.

So as part of my coping mechanism, I would text her phone sometimes and I would or message her on Facebook, and I would tell her about things that were going on, because to me, I think it made it feel less real if I could keep her updated, like if she knew what was happening in the world and in my life.

So I would like try to keep her going. Even though I knew, I think logically, like you know, we knew what happened, there was still that kind of shred of hope for me.

So the essay I wrote was about that experience, and I submitted it. It was like, really the second piece of writing I'd ever really submitted in my life or anything. And I remember being in my dorm room and I was a senior in college and I just said a prayer to my sister and I just said, if you don't want this out.

There, you know, if you're up there, if you can hear me, then.

Just don't have this get published. Their odds are getting published were so low. There were like two thousand submissions and one winner, and I was like, it's not going to happen anyway, but like, just in case, cage, just like, tell me now and I'll never write about you again. I'll drop this and I'll let you be in peace.

So I said this prayer and then I ended up winning the contest.

I found out when I was visiting my grandparents for Easter in Naples, and.

It was the week of my sister's birthday.

So to me, that was like this big sign that was like kind of go for it. And I think that for me opened up only the world of writing again, but also this feeling of connection with my sister that I do still feel like we're doing things together, if that makes sense. Maybe that's a logical, but I still feel this really short connection and a lot of that guilt was not alleviated but lessened by feeling like she

Everyone's talking about it, and I think now being able to talk about.

It was big for me because I don't have to protect my sister anymore, you know, like she's gone. My mom and I came to that conclusion together that all we have on each other and we don't have to

Ley's book begins with the following epigraph, All I can hope is that it helps even just a single person, even just for a moment. By the life path Kylie has chosen for herself, both as a clinician someone who studies mental illness, and having written this book, she is creating hope and beauty out of the sorrow and chaos of her sister's life. It doesn't erase the sorrow or the chaos, but it does help. Here's Kylie reading one last passage from the Perfect Other.

My sister is in the way I dress, the colors I choose, how I am challenged to be a more original, true reversion of myself. She is the moments when I say yes to an adventure instead of no. I feel her, when that song is playing in the car and everyone is singing along and I'm reminded of what it is to be alive, Or when the fog girls in turning this tree into skinny silhouettes, and the sun hangs low in a red summer sky. I see her in what is beautiful or interesting or sad, which is to say

Details lest we ever forget.

We try to make amends, reason with ghosts, explain ourselves to the wind, and then there comes a time we must let go.

Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly z Acre is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance.

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