An Open Letter to My One True Friend: I Know You’ll Read This At Some Point
I don’t know where to start this little public letter. I know that you read this blog from time to time, and you were outraged that I didn’t mention it to you sooner. But I do know that you check in on it every once in a while.
I want you to know that every thing that you’re feeling is exactly right. You don’t deserve to be treated like a piece of property and you don’t deserve to be torn down for something which was not only not your fault, but was not even a fault at all. I wish I knew what to say to you when I ask you the same solitary question–”how are you?”–and you consistently reply with the even more solitary “bad.”
I wish I had a quick and easy solution to your heartache and I wish I could trade out the horrible people in your life for better ones. I’ve asked you to treat them like furniture and ignore their tireless lies and awful intentions. But I know that’s not possible and I know that you, just like everyone else, have a limit. I hate to think that, at some point, you might find yourself in a compromising position and be forced to choose. And after all you’ve been through, compromise is not what you deserve.
For all your struggle and all your patience and all your dignity through this nightmare, you deserve the most fairy-tale like, Hollywood movie, unbelievably happy ending that anyone could possibly ever afford you. But people have other plans and other ideas and other priorities, and I hate seeing their selfishness step on your happiness.
I have tried talking to people, and I have racked my brain coming up with a solution. From every angle possible and every possible strategy. For some reason, everything seems to come up a little too short or just doesn’t pan out. Every time I think about it, I find myself more and more surprised at the capacity people have at being cruel and selfish and just hateful. I don’t know how I would survive under that condition of mental torture and uncertainty about my own future. I probably wouldn’t. You are stronger than I am and you know it.
But in all that uncertainty and strain that I know has gotten so overwhelming and painful that, by this point, your stomach has probably hollowed itself out from the endless trauma of it all, I want you to know and remember a couple of things.
People lie. They make promises and big plans and give us hope, then they turn their backs on us like we hardly exist. There are things and people in this world who leave us powerless, make us look like liars and feel like garbage, and who can take away the most important things in our lives without losing a second of sleep over it. Sometimes it honestly feels like there is no way to go but down. Sometimes we cannot simply wait for things to get better, because we know they won’t. And even when we know we have people in this world, no matter the number, that love us and care about us, sometimes nothing they can say will ever make us feel better. That’s because we don’t really believe that there’s anything to truly feel better about.
People may tell you that life gets easier. That as you get older and wiser, you know more and you learn more and you have more power. That with time, your age will reward you with more benefits than it does risks. That all the struggles and the tests and endless nights of worrying and trying so hard are the dues you have to pay before you cash-in on the peace and quiet of your hard-won life.
I don’t necessarily believe that, so I will not tell you something that I don’t necessarily believe.
What I believe is that, in life, the struggles and the tests and the trying are simply what they are and nothing more. Sometimes life is happy and sometimes its not. The two are not related. Sometimes you’re lucky and sometimes not so much. Again, not related.
Nothing is for certain. Sometimes your efforts and your patience pay off, and sometimes you’re left even more worn out and unsettled than you were before. There is never a complete guarantee, just a strong hope of one.
All that I know for certain and what I want to remind you of is that you have me and you always will. And I, for whatever my words are worth to you, will not leave you until we get through this. I don’t know what kind of guarantee that promises, but again, like everything else, it is what it is. Make whatever you will of it, but my hope is that it makes you smile if even just a little.
You honestly have all my love.
