Letter for the Dying

A letter written for an unrequited love...

Dear Fredrick,

Have you ever written a letter you never intended for anyone to see? That you know you will store away in a place no one... perhaps even yourself will never be able to see it...?


If you leap off of a cliff you will eventually hit the bottom. Once you hit this low point you will either be in so much pain that you wish it had killed you, or you will be dead. Problem is I feel like I have leapt off a cliff only I don't know which of these two I will end up being. Though dead is very likely. Have you ever desired something so much you ache for it? Attach that to a human relationship, a desire to love and care for another and the ache becomes a slow, agonizing death. What can I know about it?

I've loved you from the moment I first seen you're smiling face pass by me. But year after year I haven't known anything more. You know I exist. We have the same friends, the same aquaintences... We visit the same places. We pass each other every day practically. But that is always the extent of it. I watch you flirt and tease with others. I listen when you talk to our friends. I hear you humming to yourself quietly at times when you're in your own world dreaming of some lovely poem to write. I've watched you and cried at night when I heard you broke up with someone I know you loved with all your heart. Seen you holding the tears back and trying to keep your voice from breaking as you explained it to your friends. I seen the same when your loved one died.

All I ever do is watch and listen. I tried talking to you once. I know I had to come off like a little fool. A silly schoolgirl blushing and stammering as you peered out at me from your dark lashes and brushing your ebony hair out of your eyes. Smiling patiently until I gave up and just walked away hating myself for being resigned to this damn-able fate. I had imagined before then how I wanted to say it. What I wanted to say to you. But when faced with the reality of it, I just couldn't and everything went back to normal. I'll bet you don't even remember that, do you? It was so indescribible - that one time. And I failed. But you didn't. As you always seemed to do with everyone in your life, you made them feel at that moment that they were everything your attention could ever ask for. That for that one moment alone, only you and that person existed or mattered in all creation.

I had to keep restraining myself from just pouring my heart out to you on cards our friends were all signing for one reason or another to give to you. Keeping it all maintained into few words so as to remember my place in your life. None. People have been convinced that I am actually gay because I show no interest in others. They don't even notice me. I'm the quiet one in the group after all. The one that sits there and is ignored by everyone - but people are convinced I must be there for them to have a good time. The few people I am close to know I like you. That I have since high school. But they think nothing of it. I make sure of it. Brushing it off and keeping it locked up with in to the confines of my room at night. Where only the moon and the stars are the witnesses to my tears and pain.

I'm not writing this to make you feel guilty or to even give a hope and a prayer to my plight. I just needed to say it all out loud for once. So, my dying heart - my dying soul may somehow come to amends with it. I <i>have</i> tried to move on. I <i>have</i> dated others. I'm sure you heard about it. The big deal between Matthew and me. Of course you did. He's your best friend. Then there were other guys in the picture. But why is it that none of them compare to you? I don't try to think about you. I don't want to care about you. And God knows I <i>want</i> to let go of you. But I can't. I just can't. Everytime I think I can, something reminds me that it's impossible.

Remember when you were in the hospital after that accident a little while ago? I couldn't sleep the entire time. You were so bad off. I went the hospital everyday. I stayed by your bedside until the nurses told me to go home and rest before I ended up there with you. But how could I? You were hovering between life and death yourself. What is my life without you in it? I should have been according to the doctors and nurses beliefs the first face... and the voice you recognized talking to you from your silent dreams when you woke up. But I wasn't. I was there. But as always was stood aside to let others welcome you back. I went home and cried for another countless time. Not out of jealousy or envy that I didn't have that privledge, but out of sheer relief for your life. I don't know how to feel or react when I consider a world without you in it.

Sounds obsessive right? I suppose. It scares me at times. I wonder if I am. I tried to find out once if maybe I am nuts. It led to no where. So, either I'm not, or I am and it just fools even the professionals.

All I know is, I don't expect you to ever love me. I don't expect you to ever notice me. But is it asking too much to just ask you to let me keep loving you? Or is that wrong too? Your with someone else that you really are happy with. Which I am happy for. But I can't help this. And I'm slowly forcing myself into a relationship. A person I care about... but again they can't compare to you. And not even one moment with them is yet to be like the first time I came to be under your spell. Can't I just keep loving you? I'm miserable without you... but even more miserable with the idea of emptying my heart to not care for you at all.

I've imagined at times what it would be like if we were together. I know I would be happy and I would do everything in my power and being to make you so too. But that would be totally up to you. You want and need so many things. Your writing, your art... your social circle... The things that fuel your shining light into everyone's lives. If I was with you I worry that I would dim it. I don't like going to parties or large crowds. That is your biggest draw. Your fuel for your work many times. I don't want to stand in your way. So, I can't help thinking... perhaps even knowing I'm not what you need.

The only thing I know is that I need you. Even your phantom helps me go on. But the problem with that is, you can't embrace a phantom. A thought. A memory. A dream. Do you know what it's like to want to hold someone in your arms just once, but know it will never happen? To just once be the person that that someone turns to when they need just some comfort? To just once receive one look, one real smile to cherish? Yet for all the wanting and wishing for all these things you know they will never happen. Not to you. Not to... me.

When my brother died when I was 15 the last thing he asked of me, even as he was gasping for air, was for me to find one moment of happiness for myself. He said I did everything for the sake of others. For their happiness and for the sake of harmony without thought to myself. But what he wanted was me to just promise him that I would take just one moment if that was all I could allow - one selfish moment all for myself to know my own joy. I had it. It was the first time I seen you. And everyday since then, though I have been torn in to shadows of myself, lead on thin ribbons and continued doing these things for the sake of others happiness and caring for them, I still find happiness with you. Even if it is tinged with a lonliness that I will never know the end of. But that was my moment. And I thank you for it. Which is why I have to beg that if I can't be with you... at least let me love you... I won't get in your way. I never have been, have I? So, please... please...

I've let myself jump off the cliff. I'm close to the bottom now. And before I die, I just wanted you to know, the only thing I ever wanted and truly loved was you.

~Shanna

Reviews

[Luna Estella al-Hariri]

What a sad story! But then, stories of unrequitted love often are, especially when they're as well-written as this one. You have a flair for tragic romance in your writing, that's for sure.

[S. (johnny) Thonn]

This is a very sad letter. It's banishment to love someone that does not return that love or oblivious to it. Torture. Timing is always off in that instance, circumstances always get in the way somehow. But the desire and yearning is always there. A sad, melancholic story.