Originally published in Humans @ Vocal Media
I've written this letter before.
Those versions, often dotted with anger and painted with questions no one will ever answer, were sent out into the universe on dancing waves of white-hot flames.
They were love letters, messages in a bottle, my way of having the last word.
I started this new journal, which promises to craft me into a warrior if I just follow the writing prompts affixed to its pages. I'm not sure why I ordered it, but there was likely a bottle of wine involved. The eye-roll would've amused you had you seen it- when I thumbed through the introduction, the first thing this book's version of a Warrior is tasked to do is write a letter of gratitude to a person who is no longer in their life.
I set the book on a coffee table and didn't touch it for months.
Until yesterday, when I thought- hey. Pluto is leaving Capricorn and all of a sudden I have some things I want to say, words that I want to exist in perpetuity instead of as transmuted ash in the backyard firepit.
I started writing, and noted an intense urge to censor myself. What if I die and my daughter finds this book? What if, on some rainy day, my husband decides to go through the piles of paper and mail I like to collect, and he doesn't realize it's a journal? What if I inadvertently remind him of things he'd like to forget, a version of me that no longer exists? What if no one ever sets eyes upon it, and I forget about it, and it gets squirreled away with other books and sent to live in a box until one day, that box is just another thing that has to be discarded? What if it ends up in some second-hand store, someone's final estate, a heartfelt but long-forgotten mistle of some stranger's past?
So I wrote the letter the way one might write a sincere plea for mercy from the Internal Revenue Service. It was an honest mistake, I swear.
It occurs to me that online fodder has a certain commitment to it. Once it's out there, it can never really be brought back in. It can be downloaded and screenshotted and can live long after deletion. But it can't be burned into nothingness. It can't wind up in the trash or in a box next to broken Hummels and half-melted candles.
Without further preamble, I want to thank you.
Thank you for happening.
Thank you first for the friendship that I once thought was sincere. Had you been a different person, a better person, I think we could've been good friends. But you, instead, were an epochal event.
Forest fires give new life to the trees that endure them. Beaches are reshaped by the storm surges that roll in from impossibly strong hurricanes. Violent tornados rip paths through neighborhoods with complete disregard, but are still so rare that people will rebuild a house in the exact same spot all over again.
I am neither a grand forest, a majestic beach, or quiet unsuspecting neighborhood- but you happened. And I changed. Everything around me changed. I can see the new vibrant greens of life growing through the cracks of everything dead and burned; the water is clear and the coastline is new; the bones of the house turned out to be something even you were powerless to destroy... and thanks to you I had the chance to build it back- better. Stronger.
One last thing to thank you for... you said to me once that you needed time. That's what you wanted, and you wanted me to wait. For what, I wasn't sure, because we were both standing amid the unrecognizable rubble of our respective hand-held grenades. But it's that moment I go back to, when I need to remember who you really are. You can act like a saint the rest of your life and I hope that does you some good somewhere on the other side, but at your core you're the forest fire, the storm surge, the tornado. Nothing of substance, just something that happened, something that passed by, something that has a way of destroying the people it comes in contact with.
I am most grateful that I survived you.
Sincerely,
Me
Commentaires