Tag: letters

For the Ones Who Are Drowning

My illness,

I’m writing this to you as a friend because after a decade of living with you I guess you could say we are more than acquaintances. At first I wasn’t sure who you were, you were like an imaginary “friend” who was always there; visible to me but to anyone else, you weren’t really there.

You saw my first day of high school and you watched me blush in front of my first crush. You were silent but you were there. It wasn’t until you met my first boyfriend that I heard you speak.
“Why would he stay with you when any of your friends would be so much better for him?” You watched me answer your question when his parents had gone to sleep that night because if I didn’t give him what he wanted, one of the pretty girls at school would, right? But you knew it didn’t really matter, we would never make it.

“You just weren’t good enough for him,” quickly turned into “you’re just not good enough for anyone.”

You followed me when I moved high schools, you even let me make new friends and I started to think maybe we could be happy here. You would appear in the faces of the girls who made nasty comments but more often than not I learned to ignore you. I stopped seeing you so I thought that maybe you had quietly retreated to somewhere better, until one day you rode over me on a wave on grief.

Death stole one of my best friends that year.  The only one that was really there for me was you but I couldn’t push you away because you were the only one who had seen the real me. The only one who could come close to comfort.  That day that death took him away you watched me drown on the lounge floor. I think, even now, part of me is still lying there with you.

I found ways to run away from you and I found ways to hide from you. When I moved to University I thought maybe we were ready to go our different ways and for a while we did. I fell in love and it was like ecstasy; wildly consuming but draining. Without fail you were there to cradle me when I had completely drained myself.

In the pills on the table I saw silence. I didn’t see darkness because that was you and you were already here. I saw sweet nothing, a blissful silence because after sailing in a storm for so long, that was enough to seem like heaven to me.

You disappeared for days and when I woke up I could see  you laying the floor beside my bed. I stopped existing for weeks and lay there with you until I decided it was time to get up. For years you crippled me, you broke me, but most of all, you lied to me. After years of feeling like I wasn’t good enough, like I was crazy, I said no. I wasn’t crazy and I was enough. For me, I was enough and one day I could even be more than enough.

You’re the friend that’s always there, I always feel you and maybe you’ll never really leave. But for now I cherish the days that I don’t see you and maybe next time I do I’ll have a few things to say to you.

So I’ll see you,

Sweet Someone.

 

For the Ones Who Almost Made It

My darling,

I know.

It wasn’t easy and I put you through a lot. My job, my ex, not being overly fond of your social crowd. I found myself talking a lot about the things you didn’t do more than the things you did do. I wasn’t the usual and I definitely wasn’t what your family had in mind. I wasn’t financially stable and I smoked sometimes. I wasn’t easy and I may not have even been worth it in your eyes.  But you chose to stay.

You didn’t have a job you already had everything. You threw tantrums over things that I thought were otherwise reasonable. You yelled at me and cornered me in the kitchen while you did it. You told another girl you wanted her while I was with you. But I chose to stay.

We chose to stay even though it was hard. You might say it was because we loved each other but maybe we were just stupid.

I ran you into the ground and you broke me so yes, we went our separate ways, and that happens when people grind each other down to nothing. It doesn’t mean it was anybody’s fault, it just happened. I still think of you and everyday. I miss the best friend I had in you because everyday something happens that I want to tell you. But then I remember, we don’t know each other anymore.

When you walked away from our relationship you walked away from me as a person. You then also chose to walk away from the friends we called family. You left us in a way that made us wonder if we were the ones who weren’t good enough.

So I hope you find someone who breaks you and I hope they walk away from you. So maybe you will know what it feels like to not be enough. But more than that, I hope you pick yourself up and learn from it because one day you will make someone the happiest girl in the world. But you need to learn how to love people as they are, not how you think they should be.

With hope,
Sweet Someone.