Letter #1

This isn't a love letter or... any letter, really. I don't know, just read it.

I wanted you to be proud of me. To swell, a little bit. I wanted you to elate to a point where your rounded, piggy stomach furred. I didn't work to deserve your pride - and God knows, you really ought not to give it - but when I am me, in the only place I can, I wanted so much just for you to have been proud of me.

I come across as quite sickly and timid when you stride past me in the pale corridor. You sometimes flippantly ask me if I'm okay, why do I look so lost, et cetera. I wish my voice didn't do that thing where it revolted back into the oesophagus and come out like wet feet on dry sand. I wish I didn't crackle and screech, because I really just want you to think that I am altogether very collected, and I don't want you to know about how I feel. Especially not before there's a word for it.

I do not love you, but nor do I progress forward with a simple platonic liking for you, either. But I am frightfully obsessed with you and look for you everywhere. And I want, of course, for you to be proud of me. Maybe I relate to you? But I don't think I'm enough for that yet, either. And that's a very assumptive thing to carry, to relate to one.

Oh, Hell knows I wanted to talk to you about books and poetry and the things I am bettering my cheap adolescence with and that which you have made a life for yourself in finance; but any attempt at a voluntary intercourse with you would mean that my voice would crack and fray and I would be lost.

If I have one curse, then maybe yours is just a byproduct of the first. Maybe my conversational skills come to you like pulling teeth. I'm no wizard. I really wanted you to be proud of me.