a cheesy black stallion in a meadow looked up at me, and my stomach sunk like someone pounded me through the floor and i plunked into the garage. but i opened the card anyway, recognized the handwriting immediately, and her salutation, "hey dork," caused me to hit the pause button.
i spent the last month wallowing over x's. i mean, it wasnt all that bad-- but really, wheres the "letter" to yourself, self?
and then there it was.
"youve been through a hell of a lot but there wasnt a time when you wouldnt help me." yes, the time an x needed a ride to the emergency room for an ear infection, or needed a place to stay between apartments, or needed my library card to rent a movie: i tried to be someone x could count on.
summer is so often the new start of the year for me. winter truly causes me to withdraw; summer begs to be experienced. "take some time out of your day and appreciate the little things that make you happy. there are lots, you just have to look for them." so what, x decided to knock up another girl; why must all the world fade to gray and splintered paths?
let me break here: sarah was my best friend for many years until she killed herself in 2001. she died on bad terms with me. like others and like x, she left me when i really needed her. but, she apparently really needed me and i was too proud and too stupid to provide her the forgiveness and compassion that she wanted. "i can only hope the rest of these precious years are good to you"-- this was the last birthday card she would ever give me before she took her life eight months and nineteen days later. she still loved me when she wrote this though; maybe thats what caused the last part to send me spiraling into oblivion:
"you are a strong person and i believe in you."
there. thats what i was hoping to achieve by writing to you, x. i wanted the affirmation that even though you careened through my life, i can still recover. but x severed my empathy and my desire for human connection rope.
and it took a dead girl's words for me to see the importance of working on that splice.
sarah, i have not said these words to you since you died: thank you. at the end of an emotionally taxing month with my blog challenge and working through mending a friendship with my best friend after you and during a rather painful separation from my actual, living sibling, "i love you like a sister" is just really, really what i needed to hear.
i wish i could make this shit up.
love,
a.
