Dear ____________,

A Story by Ennay

I know who is reading this.. I think my letter outdid your letter.

Dear ________________,

Why do you get up in the morning? My father asked me this once before. He added, “And don’t you say that basic crap. Answers like ‘because I have to’ or ‘I have work to do.’ Give me one good reason. I ended up leaving the room before I could mutter a word out. I was in a bad place at the time. Everyone knew it. It was like I was stuck somewhere between living and existing. But that was nowhere near good enough.

I have a friend. I know.. How shocking.. All jokes aside. He knows all of my secrets, or at least all the ones I can mutter out loud. I don’t like to think of secrets as they are. I think of them as parts of a story. They are simply chapters that I have skipped over. But now there are plot holes starting to grow. They run to deep for me to fix.

I’m scared. With all of the things I have told him.. I’m scared I gave all those chapters away for nothing. Normally when you have a lot of chapters, someone would try to turn it into a book. But a story with incomplete chapters will never be published, right?

I didn’t want to tell him. Many of the things I’ve said out loud I now regret. What if this information isn’t for him to know? What if it’s safer with me. All to myself. Is that too selfish? Why would he want to know anyway?

̷W̷h̷y?

I didn’t even know when it happened. When things with him changed. It felt normal. Sure we got along. That’s what friends do. There was nothing attached to that. And it was great. But then someone said something to me. And it changed the way I thought. If that’s what we’ll even call it.

“Thinking.”

After that, I wasn’t able to think. I was confused for months. I kept searching for an answer. Yet no luck each time I guessed. Then I spoke to another friend of mine. She’s younger than me. But I mentioned him to her and she laughed at me. Yes. Laughed. I told her I didn’t understand. That’s when she said, “I think you’re seeing him differently than you think about him.” As if it wasn’t confusing before. She didn’t help. At least.. Not at that moment.

Months later. I went on a trip. I had a presentation that day. I was walking with a different friend. I ended up telling her about my first friend. I knew by then that he was different. But this friend confirmed my thoughts. She said, “I was like that too with a friend of mine. But I somehow stood a chance. And from what I hear, it sounds like you can too.” I stayed silent for a while after that. That was until we were almost spotted and had to start sprinting for a hiding place.. Oh yeah, we were exploring the hotel we were staying in. Definitely weren’t supposed to be in those rooms…

Throughout the past seven months. Multiple people have come up to me about this. To the point I can no longer ignore it. I feel bad for telling you about this. You deserved to be that first friend more than anyone. But you’re long gone now. I think this might be what you’d want for me anyway. Knowing you, you wouldn’t have minded.

And now here I am. Writing this letter. With no recipient.

I wonder if it would hurt him. If our perspectives could switch for merely a few minutes. I wonder if there would be a difference. Or perhaps he could relive it instead of myself. With his judgment, things would likely have turned out differently. He’s smart. Smarter than I am. Smarter than you were. These thoughts aren’t the only ones that plague my mind.

I feel as if I am drowning within my own mind. So many things I can never get right. How could I expect to understand someone else when I can’t even understand myself?

It’s fine.

No..

It’s not fine. Nothing is ‘fine.’ I’m so scared, having to continuously wake up knowing my father is ill. The amount of times he has come close to death is too many times too often. We don’t always see eye to eye but I wouldn’t want him gone. There is always something new that can kill him, and he is in so much pain.

I mean honestly, the things that happened to him are horrible. He fell out of a tank and had half of his face crushed by it. Half of his face was reconstructed. His ear isn’t even his original ear. And then with the incident, with me. I don’t really remember it. Pieces of it appear in my dreams. His divorce. My mother. We never seem to be able to forgive ourselves. For all the things we can no longer control.. Perhaps I really am his daughter.

He’s the only other person who entirely understands me. How I can’t stand being alone. I always have somebody around me. It helps. It keeps me in check with my surroundings and it makes me more aware of things.

There is something else. I do this thing. I’ll start to say something but then I’ll cut myself short. I get too nervous and stay silent. It’s a bad habit. But one I’ve had for as long as I could remember. It was never pointed out until recently. Three people today pointed it out to me. Yet I did this about eight times today. I want to say these things. I physically just can’t. It feels wrong. And people aren’t patient enough to wait for an answer. Then I’m left there, alone. Sitting with my thoughts…

-A.J.W