Dear You, Nee: Myself

A letter to my younger self. Also uploaded to www.pullingcandy.deviantart.com

Dear You  (Nee: Myself);

  Sometimes when I am hazy (See: Unconscious) and out of my mind I think back to those tumultuous days when barefoot was mandatory and dress pants were for old people - I'd laugh, but I wear shoes now to cover my feet, cracked from years of wandering down the same path, and dress pants to present a respectable front for society, that very same one which together we would shun from an alley while sipping cheap beer directly from the bottle, pretending it was wine in a silver goblet, keeping a lazy eye out for the police.

  I don't know where we went wrong, where we separated and flew in opposite directions like birds scattered    . My fingers lay unmoving on this keyboard as I try to come up with words to express my greatest sympathies for killing you, nothing seems to be acceptable. Nothing seems quite right. What do you say to somebody who's life you took - I am sorry, I am remorseful, I would do it again?

  I heard from a mutual acquaintance recently that you were doing fine, just fine. I found myself an unbeliever, shook my head and clearly stated that without me, you'd be nothing, and certainly not where you are now. I wanted to take credit for your 'being just fine', I wouldn't let it drop, and so I looked you up. I took out old journals, I ground along the same stomping grounds we used to frequent together, I researched you until my eyes were dry, and I found that I didn't miss you at all (or did I?).

  A hundred tear soaked entries depicting terrible instances where there was no food, no money, and most especially no alcohol or drugs to bring you through to another day where you'd wake up, with me beside you, to help you move along towards another night of exactly the same. "He doesn't really love me," you wrote with a shaky hand, "But he needs me, so I'll stay."

  As it turned out, if you recall, he didn't really need you, though all the gentle urging in the world was necessary to turn your head towards the light and see that you could be happy somewhere else, happy on your own. Happy without the bruises, ecstatic (See: Rapture; ex: 'Subject to or in a state of ecstasy; rapturous. -noun) that you did not have to live for another person…except for me.

  And then I failed you too, I took from you the one thing you needed to survive, your veritable life line - I took myself , stationed myself so far away that I wouldn't have to make excuses for what you did, so I wouldn't have to bail you out of your messes and come to your rescue. I bettered myself and I turned up my nose while you slunk off in to the shadows and found solace wherever you could,  as long as it wasn't anywhere near me.

  I did not take in to account the years of loneliness you must have suffered, how you were utterly dependent on a simple glance or touch from somebody YOU loved who did not appear to love you back. I forgot, conveniently, that you had an addictive personality and surely you must have wrenched yourself into a niche in your own personal hell while you drank underneath stairs in ravines and shot pure light into your arms while searching for your own God. Instead I pushed your remains underneath a pile of leaves and waited for snow to cover you, waited for you to decay.

  For all of this I am sorry. I am sorry for subjecting you to the beatings, I am sorry for not letting you cry at funerals because I wanted you to appear strong. I am sorry that I made you feel like you needed to be in abusive relationships to feel loved, to feel like you belonged, to give you the touching you so hungered for (punching, slapping, biting, pinching, pulling hair). I am so, so terribly sorry I did not let you go your own way and find out for yourself what you needed to be happy.

  But I am not sorry - no, I will never be sorry - for leaving you behind.

    All my love,
    Me, Myself and I