may free fall.

dear monkeybutt,

this is the first letter i've written to you in over 9 years. but i think about you almost every day. at first, i fought memories of you back into the submisson of my subconscious; only recently have i been able to think of you and a new feeling has emerged-- i miss you. i still can't smell cake batter or listen to tom petty without thinking of you. i wish (sometimes so badly it stings my eyes and the hard bubble in my throat throbs) you were here to experience life too.

i know you hate(d) me. i know things ended badly between us. but there are so many things i want to share with you. i would tell you how much i love french fries; i would take you to my new best friend's chinese food restaurant where we'd pig out on pot stickers and laugh because they are called "pot" stickers and regret putting our minds and bodies through such misery to weigh 75 pounds. i would tell you that x was not as good as it gets; i wish you would have felt a real man's love. i would tell you that meeting people you talk to online is actually encouraged now. i would tell you about the music you've missed; i think you would have liked emo music and taylor swift (she's so cute!). maybe if i could share this life that i've come to tolerate i could somehow make up for the guilt i've felt (always have and always will) that you're dead.

i know why you did it. but i wish you would have just given people and life a chance-- maybe they wouldn't have disappointed you as badly as you thought. we are not 15 anymore. we can wear whatever clothes we want, we can live in our own spaces, we can date any boy (bad or good) and we can text them without our parents knowing, and we can buy our own horses and make-up. life is so different now than it was then-- for me, anyway. i mean, it's not ALL grand and happy bubbles. yes, i still have dark fantasies about spilling all that's hateful and worthless inside me into a tub of warm bathwater, soaking in a pool of blood red, and slowly slipping into a new life that is not this one-- in hopes that whatever finds me is better than now.

but what if life on the other side is just like this one-- only a little bit worse? i don't know. but you know. and tell me, was it worth it? do you have gummy worms where you are? do you have summer picnics? do you have netflix? do you have boys who will stay up all night with you and play adult mad libs and drink pineapple rum and tell you they love you in the morning? do you have life where you are?

in 9 years, i still haven't changed my mind.

i choose life.

i just wish you had too.

late,
duckfluff