A Letter

To AK.

Hi, I’m sorry I’ve been absent for a so long. I’m writing this to check on you. I hope you’re doing fine. Lately I’ve been feeling like we should have never been separated, I mean after all, we used to see each other almost every day from the moment we were born. But then every time I try to text you to hang out, I feel like I’m burdening you.

Life has changed since I left, I’ve been taking care of Patrick and Lulu, they’re my plants by the way. Patrick is a cactus, Lulu is still a baby tomato, but she’ll grow. Just like you did. Remember when we used to run to the park and play by the swing? People always looked at us in a funny way. We were different, I admit. I mean, you were the Blondie and I was the Brownie and every one else was simply, neither? I miss those days so much. I miss feeling like all we had to worry about was slipping on ice or losing the keys to your house. Nowadays I worry a lot, about lots of different things. I worry about my friends who want to die and I have no strings to attach them all to a pole and scream in their ears: “NO! NO! NO!” Not because life is that precious, in fact it’s quite meaningless and fucked up, it’s just that I am selfish like that and I cannot bear to be alone without them.

I keep trying to figure out all the reasons why my mother never loved me, I write them down on a piece of paper, put them in order by the least likely to the most likely:
1/ She was too young to have a baby.
But then I know that she was 27 with a PhD, so I wouldn’t think that’s accurate.
2/ She didn’t love my dad.
That can’t be true, to this day she shields him from my screams as he beats the shit out of me.
3/ She never recovered from finding me unconscious when I was 10.
I wouldn’t blame her, I cannot live with the memory of that day either, so how can she? Imagine nurturing your baby for 9 months, raising her for 10 years, giving her your favorite name, feeding her your own breast’s milk and then one day she decides to die. Just like that.

I’ve been also thinking a lot about whales. How they swim so deep in the ocean, where it’s grave-cold and space-soundless. I’m afraid that it’s too lonely, and the road is long and sometimes baby whales loose track of their mothers and they have to swim for miles in the endlessly dark ocean until they hear her sound. You and I know a thing or two about getting lost in places that are empty, dark, and cold.

I no longer write on the margins of my science textbook, I used to love to do that, but now I love that I can write on fully empty pieces of paper. I no longer have the eyes of the teacher or the weight of the system on my shoulders. You always said that I should never stop writing, even if I got yelled at a lot, even if I should’ve been focusing on the lesson to get better grades for a better score for a better university for a better job for a better career for a better house and a better wife for a better car for a better garden for a better wheelchair for a better retirement home and for a better casket for my grave. So I quit school, and I build a career made out of the leftover pages of all the notebooks where I scribbled my poems, and I decided that I will not become a slave to a wooden desk for I was born free.

Some days it’s really hard to wake up, most days, it’s the hardest to go to sleep. I got into this habit of listening to this philosopher’s lectures on repeat until I drift. He talks a lot about love, and life, and all the good things. He also talks a lot about the bad things, and how they can be good if we want them to be. I wish I could meet him so I can ask him if he’s ever turned something bad into a good thing. Just to make sure. Because the last time I checked there’s no silver lining to your best friend’s suicide, there’s only a silver blade.

Anyways, I hope that life has been treating you gently, I hope that you’re working on that research idea you told me about years ago. I think someone needs to start looking up why this generation suffers from this much back pain. My back still hurts. It really, really hurts. I have this running joke that I need to have a back replacement surgery! It’s that bad, yes! Sometimes I bend down to pick up something from the floor and I find myself blocked in that position, unable to move. And it reminds me of the farmers we met on the last summer we were together, the old women picking up the olives from the ground as the sun peaked up the sky and the disgusting smell of cow’s poop overwhelmed us. I laughed a lot that day. I loved you a lot that day. I just wish that you’d love me half as hard, but I know, I believe, that you didn’t. And maybe that is why we’re not friends anymore.

Or maybe it’s more than just that, maybe it’s my excessive drinking and how I turned out drunk out of my mind on your doorstep on the day we were supposed to go to the beach together. I saw the disappointment in your eyes, the worst glare anyone ever gave me. I ruined our day, I ruined my liver. I was an alcoholic at 19, but you need to know, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me, it was a 9 year-old child trying to drown her rapists face in the tequila and failing miserably. I wish that you’d held me and forgiven me that day, instead of asking me to go figure my shit out on my own. I’ve been figuring my shit out on my own for more than a decade and we both know that I’ve walked a long road and ended up falling down a cliff. Face first. Knees broken. Bones cracked. And I am no iron, I am glass.

Maybe it’s also the sounds I make when I’m angry, you called it animalistic once. I hate myself when I’m that outraged, it feels like there’s a beast in my chest clawing its way out of my throat snatching my chords and roaring upwards to the sky. It never met God, the beast in me I mean, it never met God. I think that’s why it’s so violent, it’s the reincarnation of a devastated Lucifer in me. Hopeless, desperate for validation, needing to escape its hell of terrifying memories.

I apologize if this letter came in a bad time, if my words are too heavy or if you don’t want to hear from me anymore. I understand if you don’t. I just needed to let you know that after all these years, I still cannot articulate “I miss you”, so I let my thoughts spill out of me, maybe they’d wet your toes and you’d reach out to me. Again, I understand if you don’t. Anyways, I hope you’re happy, like really happy, just like you were when we played with the sand when we were 4 and foolish. Happy in the way that, every time you walk past your reflection on a store’s window, you smile.