Dear Isaac,
This letter has been coming for a while. Part of me thinks I shouldn't even be writing it. Writing it means admitting that I think about you. Writing it means admitting that not everything I think about you is bad. Much of what I think about are the good things. Those hurt more than the bad.
Good Things:
1) Books! I miss talking about books with you. I miss swapping books and ideas back and forth. I miss having long conversations about what we were reading and making suggestions of other things the other might enjoy.
2) The way it was always so fun to talk to you. You managed to challenge me intellectually while making me laugh.
3) Passing notes. I liked passing notes with you. It was fun. I kept them all for a very long time. I only recently threw them away in an attempt to forget about the past. But sometimes I don't think forgetting is a good idea.
4) Being friends. And being more than friends for a while. Before it got creepy, it was nice.
Bad Things:
1) Stalking me
2) Calling me names
3) Guilting me
4) The way we would fight, you would apologize, we would be distant for a while, everything would be better and then we would fight again sometimes about nothing. Sometimes we fought just because you were in a bad mood or because I was making you think about what could have been or because I was thinking about what could have been or because you were angry at how things were and I wanted to help you.
I go back and forth between the list of good things and bad things in my head. You seem to float in when I am not thinking about other things. Sometimes things remind me of you. Sometimes I am just thinking about high school. Sometimes you show up in my writing. But I wonder about you a lot.
I wonder if you are doing ok. I wonder if you are finally clean and back on your feet. I wonder if you know that I know about almost everything that happened to you after we stopped talking. I wonder if you know that what you did to yourself hurt me more than what you did to me and what we did to each other. I wonder if you know I considered you my best friend in high school right up until I realized that best friends don't treat each other as terribly as you treated me. I wonder if you knew I had nightmares about you. I wonder if you know I thought about leaving the state because of you. I wonder if you have wondered about me and if you are keeping an ear out for news of me as I am keeping an ear out for news of you.
Mostly I wonder if the good things are worth giving you another chance. Not a second chance but 1 millionth chance because we both know I gave you thousands before.
You say you have changed. You apologized. I am sorry I made you go through reliving what was going on, on my end before accepting that apology. But I wanted it to mean something. You have apologized so many times before and it has meant nothing. I want it to mean something. I want to know that you have genuinely grown as a person and genuinely want my forgiveness for what you did. I want to know that you want to work at being a better person and at treating me better. I want to know that if I let you back into my life you will never make me so afraid that I refuse to leave my house ever again.
But I can never really know and that scares me.
Before you I was always sure of people. Of their potential to be amazing. Before you I was sure of who to trust and who not to trust. I can no longer trust my instincts about this. I care about you. You were my best friend. I can not trust myself because I know that caring clouds my judgement.
I am still so afraid of your ability to make me hurt. Fear is supposed to be good because it makes us cautious. I was never cautious before you. And in some ways I miss who I was before you. In many ways I wish I could get her back.
That is when I wonder if I miss you or if I miss who I was when we were friends. Then I realize it is both.
I wish you could answer these questions for me. But I fear that only way for us to ever truly move on and be friends again is to relive our past. And if that goes badly I don't know if I can come back again. Do you know of another way? Is that what you want? Do you want to be my friend again? Is that why you apologized to me? Did you think that it would be easy? Or simple? Can you answer any of my questions better than I can? I wish you could.
Only More Confused Now
Dani
No comments:
Post a Comment