Unresolved Issues

Dear L,

I sent you a letter last year, after August. When we had decided to keep being friends.

I asked about what you knew about your diagnosis, about yourself.  If you were violent, what I should expect.  All sorts of things.

You never answered me.

When I try to press you about hanging out in person (vs endless emails) you seem to get angry.  Yet you ask for my continued patience.  (Believe me, I am patient)

You seem to hang out with other people, at least that's what you tell me.  I get mad that you don't hang out with me (because that's what I think of as a friendship).  There have been LOTS of emails and frankly, the make me crazy.  I'm a girl and think talking is of primary importance.  Plus, it makes me check my emails every few minutes, because if I get you in a communicative mood, then you'll send a bunch of emails back.

I keep wanting to write to you, but it seems like I'd be begging for something I don't even like.

You texted me when I was in Boston.  In December.  You were thinking about your own death.  Again, you wouldn't let me talk to you.  You were NOT alone, and I'm pretty sure you had some alcohol.

I think I'm someone you talk to when you are Manic.

I think you are waiting for a time in your life when you can talk to people in a mania, or a subdued mania. I think you are waiting to get back on track somehow.  My persistence has been based on an idea that brief interactions can help you get back on track somehow.  But now I see that it's impossible.  And I'll wait through the summer.  (We didn't talk last summer, after a fight)  I'll wait forever.  But I don't know what I'm waiting for.  I don't know who you are.  I've been waiting to get to know you.  Maybe this is you.  Maybe if I didn't need anything from you ever, it would be easier (but what is the point of a polite friendship like that? We were honest with each other)

Everytime I think about you, I end up in this spiral.  How I should be nice to you, how I get a tremendous sense of PEACE when I think about you.  How this all seems unfinished.  And then I think about how you don't let me in, how you were open once and now you are closed and cold.  And how you said how you don't like being cold.

I need to stay away from you. There's nothing we can give each other from this friendship.  (Other than neighborly friendship and treasures of being humans on this earth.  Laughter, conversation, exchange of smiles, etc.)

Little Green Cars and "Devil in the White City"  (You are charming, but you said you have a "Dark Soul".  There's a reason girls get attracted to danger)

Love Took Me Down to The River To Silence Me

Sometimes I wonder.

(Songs come on the radio which make me think of you and all your permutations)

Springsteen has been ruined for me. I Don't Believe You made me think of all the times you want me to be patient, because you want to be my friend.  But I never see any evidence.  (I try to talk to you, send you emails, leave rocks at your door, etc.  I try.  You don't.  You just don't want to be the bad guy)

And then,  Love Took Me Down to the River To Silence Me

Because when you get mad, it seems you get VERY mad. ("Stop this shit. It pisses me off")  Not like your polite self.

Of course, I don't know who is your polite self.  And the who/you who is your real self.  And all of the variations in between.

When you hadn't introduced me to R, I was convinced that she was lying dead in your freezer.  None of your stories contained her, either.  Maybe she was a made up character, entirely.

And what does it say about my personality that I still keep the faith in your smile?  That despite all of this evidence and likelihood, that I would still gladly be your (in-person) friend.

Am I the person in those horror movies that becomes the victim?  I think I can take the gun away.  I think I can get to the smile behind the frown, that I am different enough somehow to you?  (But I don't know WHICH you is there at any time)  In a confrontation, would it be like Bjork in "Dancer in the Dark"?  Mercy.

(Shhh.  I wonder about the stuff you can't tell me.  Involving you being alone with a girl in the past.  Whatever you think is too terrible to tell me, I'm sure it's not as bad as what I imagine.)

You've told me so much so far, I don't understand why you shift back into your solitude mode.  As if you forget.

Yesterday, I heard David Sedaris talk about how every generation believe they have invented sex.  Now I think that every person reinvents Mental Illness.  It isn't enough to read secondhand accounts.  You have to experience it for yourself.