I’d be stupid to say I wasn’t shaken by the fact you actually wrote me back. By now I’m used to people not getting back to me, and I’m not sure how it makes me feel. Easy for them, hard for me but I still have difficulties realising I’m in someone’s picture at all these days. Each time someone actually turns out to care, I’m stuck in silence of not knowing what to say. Last time that happened was on Valentine’s Day. Me and my friends were going to hang out that night just not giving a crap about all the happy couples and stuff ourselves full of fast food and similar. Cursing at this unfair world feeling sorry for ourselves. Valentine’s Day seems made for that, and I guess that’s one of few days I can really afford myself that. For the rest of the year I try telling myself I’m lucky; with various results. Feeling sorry for myself though is something I’m not really capable of; because there is no way I can really do that. There’s always someone much worse off and by not allowing myself to feel crappier than them even when it hurts, gives me some kind of strange comfort. Anyhow I got back from work that evening and I just couldn’t stop crying so I told my friends on msn I was heading over as soon as I could put an end to this endless flood of tears from nowhere and I got myself ready, slowly but I pulled myself together enough to get going. Msn did blink every once in a while but I was in a hurry so I didn’t pay much attention. Once on the bus staring out of the window trying to hide these silly tears away from the people around me, I get a phonecall from my friends asking me where I am. Turns out they went all the way over to my house in the freezing cold to make sure I was okay. What can I say? I should really put more trust in people, because no matter how hard I fight it to keep my back free; they care.
I know you’ve been very angry with me about this whole R thing, but in all that anger and confusion you never saw what it did to me. Where no one else, not even me myself, were able to do it; he saved my life in many ways. I found a reason to stay alive, to get out of bed in the mornings and to keep on breathing. Suddenly, for the first time in years, I could open my eyes and see myself in a context; I found out my life wasn’t totally pointless. All the dreams I had seen dying in the shadow of the break up from K suddenly wasn’t lacking a purpose anymore. I got artificial breathing from my long gone identity and slowly I could awaken that girl again. The carefree, happy me who just couldn’t stop thinking I was lucky. There was one huge difference though. For the first time in my life I was beautiful, and I could face the world with a smile and feel it deep down from inside of me. I could finally smile like I meant it. I could allow myself to shine. I captured that feeling, and I’m still preserving it inside of me even though it’s not much left of it these days. One day though, I hope I can find a reason to let it out again. For the first time in years I realised that maybe I wasn’t destined to be left over, alone, forgotten about; maybe faith had something in its hands for me and that feeling J, was what I needed to finally allow myself to look ahead and to believe I wasn’t living my life for no reason.
Dreams aren’t real though; they’re a prospect of how life could possibly be, but they seldom come true. I’d like to think if I only manage to almost get there, maybe I’ve gained something. As my friends move on with their lives having kids and happy (or not so happy) days with their boyfriends/girlfriends, fiancees and maybe soon to be husbands/wives, my life is still lacking that purpose. I do not know for sure, but facts are I may have left that shimmering pink fantasy empty handed. Maybe not completely, hopefully I can save that feeling I captured for another time. Only time will be able to tell since I’m clueless as usual. I can’t stop wondering though why other people’s lives are moving ahead and not mine. Maybe I’m just not allowing it, and maybe it’s time to give my therapist right on that one. It didn’t take her much to time to see through my fears, the ones I never admit to myself because by doing it they’d be real. It’s always much easier to push them ahead of you, pretending they’re not yours and that you never felt them. But I do, I feel them so deep down it’s just mind-wrecking. You may have thought at times that I was selfish. When that happened I think you spotted a rare side of me, a side that seldom is there because most of the time I tend to back down and I swallow things just because I don’t think I deserve better. Last summer though I suddenly felt no reason in doing it anymore, no one was going to live my life for me and it was about time I looked out for myself, no matter the cost. I haven’t told my therapist about this yet and I think she’d be surprised if she knew because according to my psychologic profile and the me I’m most familiar with; I’m self-neglecting and self-denying. I’ve been caught in that trap since I was a kid and it’s one of the most unbeneficial favours my mum ever did me. I was never allowed to feel, to cry, to be lost; so I shut myself out and pretended I was someone else. These are the things blowing up in my face now; years and years later when I try to open up.
I’ve met what I thought was the love of my life five times. I’ve held it in my arms, I’ve cherished it and I’ve seen it fall apart to pick up the pieces five times as well. I’m still finding shattered pieces of it every now and then, some days more than others and I can’t stop wondering why I’m unable to keep it. I’ve loved and I’ve hated so many times I’ve lost count by now but there are days where I’d be sat alone pondering about all those people and the impact they had on me. My first love, where is he now? He’s living happily ever after with the girl he met once he got sick and tired of chasing after me for 5 years and there’s nothing I can do to have it undone. Where’s my second love? When I had gotten fed up with his act/no act at all I moved on. He’s now a father of a boy of perhaps 4 or 5 years but that’s all I really know. My third love is living with the one he left me for, and my fourth love is the owner of a house outside my hometown where he’s living with his fiancee and their two kids. My fifth love is three continents away trying to forget me but he’s only managing every now and then before I receive desperate txts, e-mails, phone calls or letters telling me he can’t get me out of his mind. What difference does it make really? It only makes me realise I’m old and despite all these love affairs, relationships and heartache I’m still left with nothing. I’m the loser of the lottery where they handed out love and future, I’m the one left behind. By choice? Perhaps. I’m turning 27 and I still haven’t managed to get hold of what I long for the most; someone to crack my shell open to see who I really am and someone who’s able to love every tiny part of me, no matter the consequences. Sometimes I wonder if there is one able to at all, when I can’t even do it myself. My longing for kids and a family is threatening to tear me apart to the last standing piece of me and some days, like today, it’s enough to make me unable to leave my home to go to school. Emotional cripple, you called yourself in your letter, and I think that’s the best fitting description of my mental state as well. If my mind was a person, it’d be sat in a wheelchair or hospitalised.
Crap I lost that red thread I was thinking I’d follow when I started writing this. Seems I’ve got lost (again) so if you’re unlucky this letter will just end up a rant as usual. Anyhow. The reason I think I wanted us to go on like nothing happened, even if I knew there was no reason in it at all, was because I think I was so stuffed with feelings I just didn’t have any more place to put it. Like us, it seemed better to start on a clean note even when I knew it was impossible. Too many things happened, and too many harsh words had been said down the road for us to be able to start on a clean note. Apart from that I was devastated and I envy your fierce capability of just shutting me out when you realised you couldn’t handle it at the time. I was never strong enough to do that, and even though I understood you there were parts of me being really angry and crushed. Looking back now I realise it was for the best; I wasn’t able to be a support for you as little as you were able to be that for me as well. I might be on my way out of the fog now though, I can only hope. But my way of self curing isn’t really the best; I work until I can’t keep my eyes open anymore, I go to uni only semi prepared and I feel bad about it, I smoke way too much, I drink even more and I’ve gone back to something I haven’t done in years too. I feel like an idiot and a demoralised person (I am) when I’ve got this 17-year-old dealer supplying me with pot or whatever he can get his hands on. Just to get by, just to keep on going. I need the alcohol and the drugs to keep myself alive after I spent all my salary in 2 weeks on massive amounts of food I just watch flush down the drain and by typing this, it’s the first time I realise how fucked up I am. I guess some things never change.
I’m having a small get away in August, finally. Me and my best friend from uni are packing our bags heading off to Asia. Not for 3 months, but for 3 weeks and it’s what’s keeping me alive at the moment. I talked briefly to R about it and I asked him if he’d fancy us coming down to Sydney too. I’ve got relatives there, so whether I’m seeing him or not, there’s still a reason to go there. He sounded happy on the phone, but you know me, there’s only too many parts of me believing he’s pretending so I’m not sure we’ll even go there. I don’t even believe him when he says he misses me, I just think it’s his way of keeping me calm. I never believed anyone saying they cared for me or missed me, I just assumed it’s their way of getting themselves off the hook and by saying it I’d let them be for a while. Since I’m insufferable in the long run. I know that. Anyways. Asia. Full moon parties, flooding alcohol and a sun tan. That’s what I need to go with my now blond hair. Blond hair? Yeah, that’s all your fault. And it’s pretty shiny.
And I still don’t know what I meant to say with this letter. I’m only blathering on, I’m sorry. Well, yeah now I remember something. When you say it’s hard to be friends and so on only through msn I have to object a bit. We met in the real world too, that made us real, even if we’re temporarily maintaining that friendship only through msn right now (or right then). You know, I’ve got many friends in Sweden spread out all over the country and some of them I haven’t seen in real life for years. Msn is all we got. It doesn’t change a thing; I still love them and if I could afford it I’d go visiting them all the time, just like when it comes to you. But until I can do that, msn will have to do. I’ve got 7 friends in Stockholm right now, and maybe it’s not that expensive going there, but the lives of all of us has to fit for a moment to be able to meet up again. It rarely does. I don’t know, maybe it’s an age thing; we all know that and it doesn’t make a difference. We know we still got eachother through good and for bad even if there’ll be perhaps a couple of more years before we meet again. We don’t find anything strange in it. Christopher I haven’t seen in 1 or 2 years, Jonas I haven’t seen in 1.5 years, Elin I haven’t seen since Midsummer, Selma I haven’t seen since graduation when I was 19, Lars-Henric I haven’t seen in a year and half almost, and the last one is Tiina, I haven’t seen her in 4 years. We love eachother all the same. Maybe the distance is part of being a grown up, we’re all aware people got different careers and lives so we don’t think much about it. For us msn is a gift from above even if it kills us we can’t be together in real life more often.
It doesn’t change the fact I wish I had them and you closer though. But sometimes all you can do is adapt and do the best of the situation. We’re human after all and things hardly ever fit, that’s something you’ll discover sooner or later too. You adapt, even when it sucks and when it hurts, because you know living without it would be worse. I don’t want you out of my life because of a stupid distance. 3 months is nothing when you’ve lived for 318 and what difference does a year make? 318 months or 306? Time passes whether we want to or not, it’s who we are and what we make of it that matters. If you think well screw it, we can’t meet every third months so good bye then, then I think you’re looking past something crucial. How much is friendship worth? 3 months or a lifetime? The bet is on, I’d say a lifetime and hopefully that’s what you’ll discover in time too. If you want to give up and lose us over a thousand miles, you simply aren’t who I thought (hoped) you were.
Right, this isn’t making sense anymore, I figure as much. I’m going to light myself a cigarette and blend myself a diet drink. It’s one of those shit days where I think I don’t deserve food and where I rather feel like starving to punish myself for being the fool for letting people walk over me. If I starve myself beyond recognition, maybe they’ll let me be. Or if I fall very, very ill on the verge of dying, maybe he’ll come home again.
