dear john

a little purge is a good thing now and again. you can't wrap yourself in sadness everyday so it's best to get it out...

i have wanted to send this letter for as long as i can remember. i don't have the guts.

thank god for the protection of anonymity.

dear john,
i was struck this evening, as i often am, by a wave a ceaseless deja vu.
it was snowing as i stepped outside from the neon warmth of the movie theatre. do you remember that night? the only difference about tonight is that i am not crying.
i was so embarrassed. i cried so much that night. so much that i don't remember you saying anything or hugging me goodbye. i think you didn't comfort me that night because you knew. it changed things between us. my tears changed things between us.
i remember every other touch.
the worst part of this kind of honesty is the loneliness. i love you and you love her. a shitty cliche and i am living it. another cliche? i have loved you since the first moment we spoke.
i imagine you missing her, touching her shoulder, kissing her eyelids. i never imagine myself in her place. instead i wait (uselessly) for the moment when you realise you wish it were my eyelids you were kissing, my shoulder you were touching, me you were missing. a masochistic fantasy at best.
if i am being realistic and honest, which i struggling to be here john, i realise that i probably never cross your mind. amid the joy of creating, longing for her, and living the life you always wanted and deserved to live i must get lost by the wayside. i took your mind off the shittiness of being here over a latte for two hours every fourth thursday. i validate your feeling shitty about everything and kept silent about the ache in my heart and my overwhelming desire to jump off a bridge. i wanted to drown myself in a puddle every time you mentioned how wonderful she is/was. another time when you weren't thinking of me.
i thought of you. i think of you. each breath is a thought of you. every time i exhale i pull the next breath in as quickly as i can to hold onto you a little longer.
i hate that i love you. in doing so i betray my own borders. it's treasonous. it's cheesy and i hate myself for turning into a movie-of-the-week. but i do it. i love you more and more and the more it hurts the more i want to love you. i want to love you. i want to have the scars that wanting you have given me. with scars i can prove that i have loved. ah, the fucking cliche!
i thought i'd be crying by now. there have been few tears. i thought they'd come now and they hint at it, like a dry heave, but they never come. instead they come on snowy nights outside a movie theatre, outside a house with arms inside i longed to be in. in those arms i'd never cry.
i keep coming back to that night last year. Maybe because tonight looked like that night but also because it was that night that i realised i loved you. not only that i loved you but something far sadder, far more distressing, far more horribly cliche. sitting in that theatre listening to that actress say that she's become the witch of her own fairy tale ...HOLY FUCKIN' SHIT!! I died because i knew that i would love you forever. that i would be (at least partly) stuck forever in the fantasy, the fairy tale , that someday we'll meet again and you'll love me the way i loved you since that first night we spoke.
what are you thinking reading this? are you alone and thinking 'how pathetic. she should know better' (and i do); or is she there reading over your shoulder, her hands on your back, sharing a moment, a kiss and a laugh at my expense? falling even deeper in love with each passing word?
i don't know what to do.
i was thinking about the highway the other day. about that night. about you driving my car. about you driving my car in nothing.
do you remember that night? i was so scared. i was seeing things on the road and in the future that weren't there. we went long stretches of prairie highway without speaking and the silence never felt awkward. it felt full. full of...love (?) I saw that same full silence years later. i saw us along the prairie highway and i saw animals in the road and the car heading towards us and i wanted to jump out. i'm not sure i have ever been so afraid.
i know i have never been that sad.
i know i have never been this sad.
i don't know what to do, john. i have so much to say but i don't have the words. i'm too scared.
there are songs, of course there are songs but it's a cop out and i cannot hijack someone else's words to make up for what i lack.
my side aches and i cannot believe i'm not crying; tears would feel good right now. but they aren't coming and i don't feel well. so i'll go. i'll write more. i am plagued by the memory of you walking away from the car before i got on the road to the airport. i had to get away from you. i can't forget and all i can do it write. i hope i'll get to be loved like this sometime.
wishing i could say goodbye,
yours, alice


wow, that was a bit long.
xo alice