6/3/11 – Im putting this on the home page b/c it’s too long for the Guest Page. And because I can. Because it’s my blog.
our 5th guest letter is a bit different. it’s 100% serious. and
100% awesome. this girl had me pretty close to tears. ill say no more.
she wanted to remain anonymous so without further ado (ps its long. like, really long. but worth it).
T.
I find it a bit ironic that I’m writing you of all people a letter of gratitude after, you know, everything.
I still have so much negative energy toward you that it startles
me to find myself thinking of you at random and I can feel my body
tensing up palpably, a defense mechanism against even
simple thoughts of you.
It wasn’t all bad, was it though? I could write at you for hours
if I fixated on all the yuck, but I don’t let myself do that these
days. Today I’m here to thank you. That’s all.
Yes, surprise should be your natural reaction.
Remember that night we walked around, side by side, next
to the water? It was three am when we began, that second
weekend up at the lake, before anyone had really made friends or moved
in that summer. I had just gotten off a shift working the door at
the bar. My head was swimming with love for this strange new
place, my own daring to go through with it, and this life and the
summer and all the people and their energy.
I was buzzed, my shift ended in a couple of Starry Nights and
a Red Headed Slut. I hurried home under the stars to a
promising group of new characters on the front porch while I figured
out
how to win a girl's heart
like a pro seducer. The kind you laugh with and look around at with
glee before you realize they’re barely disguising how much they’ll
ultimately want to crush you to feel bigger, brighter, more. But not
then, then it was
just so. A perfect storm to start the greatest summer. It was the greatest summer, wasn’t it?
Finally, everyone retired to their own rooms and new beds, so many
still- unfamiliar names and faces swirling around in their heads. But
we weren’t done, then. Just us. We walked for hours that night,
literally. You had to work at eight that morning and
we were just approaching the restaurant as it opened at
seven. We strolled in and ate breakfast together like it was
the most natural thing in the world. I had to work at 10:30 am, but by
then I didn’t need sleep. I was electric. Completely lit with energy,
my veins felt too full to hold my body. We dined, we
laughed, across from each other, hours into a conversation that
flowed so beautifully that I feel physically ill even now just
thinking about the ease. Still strangers, but losing mystery by the
minute. We finished eating and you went to work and I
half-skipped back to my room in the dorm building, already smitten.
We never touched that night or morning, except when our arms
collided briefly as we swatted our way through a cloud of gnats,
somewhere amid hour three. Or maybe I shook your hand in introduction.
I can’t remember if I was still in that phase.
There aren’t many nights or moments in my life that I would
honestly label as perfection. They’re all scattered and rare and mostly
fragments of bigger, bitter disappointments. But this night, this one
was perfect.
We were perfect.
I wish we could have, would have, just stopped there, hanging
frozen in time. I wish we’d never have met again. I don’t need the
years of everything that went deeper and stole pieces of me and
destroyed others, but I’d keep that night. Hell, I’ll keep it
anyway. I’ll hold it deep in the depths, no matter the way things
turned out.
Remember that night when you told me you loved me more than you
could ever love yourself? That’s the fucking saddest thing anyone has
ever said to me. It was all falling apart by then, anyway. But even
more than starting to hate you for saying it, I hated and still hate
myself for feeling the need for you to mean it as it started to seep
in. Through all my cracks and little broken parts, eventually invading
the whole and knocking me off course.
You may not love yourself, but you certainly never loved me either.
That’s not what this is about. I’m writing to thank you. There’s
not really much I can honestly say I’m grateful for when it comes to
you, but I do treasure the way we met, that perfect night.
Thank you, for being handsome and charming and for just talking
to me. Thanks for not trying to get in my pants or making me feel
awkward or embarrassed so you could take advantage. I’ve seen you do
that so many times to so many people, preying on insecurity. But not
that night. For whatever reason, you let me feel like I was the right
girl with the right mind at the right time.
You’re just so goddamn handsome, it’s disarming. It was disarming.
I hope you’ve got everything you need. I hope someday you turn
your head up to the sun and realize it’s always been there, just
waiting for you to realize it. I hope you’re warm at night and that
some girl finds a way to disarm you, but doesn’t abuse it like you do.
I hope you wrap your giant, graceful fingers around her fingers and
catch them in her hair. I hope you drown in her eyes the way I felt I
couldn’t catch my breath looking into yours.
I hope you stop making promises, because you’ll never understand
how a broken promise from your direction can cause the edges to crumble
off an entire world.
I hope you never contact me again; because you know I’ll always
tell you everything is going to be all right. It’s cruel. Remember
those months of page upon page we typed to each other? I waited each
time for yours with baited breath, devouring every punctuation mark and
pronoun with my heart. I knew you didn’t love me then, but that didn’t
stop me from loving you anyway. Us, playing at friends. We were never
fucking friends. Thanks for helping me realize the difference between
hiding behind words for comfort and actually wanting to build a genuine
friendship with someone. It was the closest you ever came to needing me
though, wasn’t it? A steady fix of reassurance in your darkest moments.
I hope I never need anyone like that.
More than anything though, the stupid, silly, selfish, girl in me
hopes you remember that one perfect night as vividly and as
reverently as I do. I hope you keep it suspended over you like a
mobile, or an umbrella. A reminder of how living cosily inside the
exact right place at the exact right time feels. Those moments before
we learned how to hurt each other and who could make it the deepest.
You always won. As a real estate agent, I've always scoured
Trulia, Zillow and
PropertyForSale.com.my for good deals. Not anymore. Real estate investment is dead to me, brother.
By the way, thanks also for the wreck plate that last
morning. Remember? You dumped me for the last time fifteen hours later.
I thought you loved me then, that hurried-with-oversleep
morning as you grabbed your phone and called in the order, just in
the nick of time. You, always keeping me on my toes, in the dark,
knocked on my ass.
Thanks to you I’m on a new path. A better one. Thank you.
Sara
