Letters
To whom it only concerns,
I did not write you today. I did, but you didn’t write back and, admittedly, I tried with all of me to not write you. I did all I could: I drank, I drove, I played, I talked, I drank, I stopped, I slept. I did it all. Yet, still, I couldn’t stay away from writing you. It was only a few words. Nothing drastic. Nothing life-changing. Nothing important. The green lines under the aforementioned statements on my word document reaffirm what it really meant. “Fragments. Consider revising,” as if to say, “this is not important. It’s a waste. What you’re doing you will regret, so just don’t do it.” Fragments. But I did it anyway. Because I’m weak, and sad, and because I hate the way that I am.
I judge time, days, not by what the number on the calendar of the month we’re in says, but by the days that have past or the days that will come in relation to a certain event: It is not November 19th, it is 5 days until Thanksgiving. It is not March 19th, it is 6 days after my 26th birthday. It is not May 25th, it is the day after I fucked everything up. I am getting older, but I am not growing up. I am learning, but I am not comprehending. I’m striving to escape this constant state of adolescence, but I am not trying. Not really.
When I have a house of my own, whenever that may be, I will not label things. Labels only work to screw everything up. I will have anxiety attacks. I’m afraid of not calling something what it actually is but, when I try, that’s when it all goes to Hell. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, maybe it’s something more. I don’t know. But I’m done with that. I just want things to be the things that they are. Vague, or definitive; it doesn’t really matter. I don’t care. I just want them in my life. I want them to be.
This is the first letter in a series of letters that I’m most likely going to write. They will be typed out and then written, folded and enveloped, postmarked and addressed. Some will be sent away; some will not. Some will be tabled, tucked inside a drawer, or stuffed under a mound of papers and consciously forgotten. One day, years later, I may find them, open them up and we’ll read them together and laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, or maybe I’ll just laugh and you will also, but we won’t be in the same place and it won’t be at the same time. Nobody knows. Until then, consider this letter - number one, the one that didn’t get tucked away.
-C.B.
