Dear friend,
I really hate envying you. Especially on your birthday; but this is at the same time the day I discover how little space there still is in your life for me. Perhaps there's a reason for it; perhaps I'm the problem. Not really the easiest person to be friends with, as I tend to be rather asocial. Yet it seems like yesterday we were talking every day, and now, I can't even get you to help me out for two minutes. I do understand having other (better?) things to do. I also understand having more than one close friend.
But I only really have you.
And when this closeness disappears from one day to the next, all I've got left is a hole in my heart that naturally fills up with jealousy. Jealousy is a many-teethed monstrousity that makes me frantically try and hold on, never realizing I'm constricting the other to death. And, paradoxically, pushing them away. And completely ignoring my role in the fact you're even at the great place of having more friends to rely on.
This is sort of the story of my life. I'm here for people, I help them out - I be their pillar, because that's simply what I know I must do. And, eventually, they take flight... and I remain, alone. There's a reason I avoid making close friends anymore. I can't stand the hurt.
I also can't stand being this way. Even if I'm not important at this time: I was; I may be again. But more to the point: I can't keep pushing people to evolve and then cry over the fact they do, even if so be the result that I'm abandoned. I've always been an agent of chaos; what is to break, breaks. Whether through another, or through me. And rationale tells me I really shouldn't worry, nor let the past dictate my present. And you know why? Because you're a very different person from the one my fears compare you to. You care about me. And I am more than one to know that not talking to one another doesn't mean the care is gone. Rather, life hands us other priorities.
I suppose I should just try and accept that, at this point in my life, I need so much support, I crave so much attention, that losing but one pair of eyes sends me down a dark spiral. It makes me forget that I'm not really alone. But well, how are people to know what's going on inside you, when you never tell them?
And I never tell them because I understand people have lives, and I don't want to be a bother. I also just fear putting myself out there and receiving no help in return. The latter's certainly the worse. I'm full of insecurity, of fear, yet I keep 'knowing' that things will be explosively good this year. It doesn't make sense. Not when I feel like breaking down crying and kicking.
And as ever I digress, but then not entirely, for everything is twined together. You're not the problem; I am. Or, rather, that part of myself that is triggered by this fear of loss is the problem. Or maybe yet the problem isn't a problem in itself, but rather just an obstacle to surmount - because that's always what I do. I don't really know how to; maybe just stop meeting people, but then people sometimes just meet me. And I'm reminded that everything happens for a reason.
And that I forget, oh how I forget, that I need scaley fire to keep going.
So thus I write this little letter I will never mail, and that you may never read. I write it to myself as well, because voicing the self is the key to understanding the self and turning the pages of my life.
I suppose I'll always be afraid. And I may always get jealous, because I'll always have that 15-year-old kid in my heart who was ostracized and desperately needs people to see her. To accept her for who she is. And there are few people indeed who can, who will, who see the darkness and not fear it or give it names that aren't real. In the tarot, Death is change - and change is as necessary as it is terrifying. But Death is always alone. He brings change, yet never witnesses it.
Layers upon layers; beneath jealousy, hurt - beneath hurt, loneliness - beneath loneliness, and fear, and everything else, there's that depressed little kid who just wants friends, and to be heard. And acknowledged. And the adult gets pissed off when this is ripped away from her. In a way, perhaps I'm just protecting my self, my core. And I do know better than to blindly charge at people anymore, as proves this post; nowadays, I just write, vent, let the frustration out so I can dissect it and gather the tools of liberation.
Which, I more and more come to realize, is a certain novel that I've been pouring far more of myself in than I'd thought. It may even be triggering all this angst. Because there is jealousy and twisted needs for attention and acceptance, and change.
In the meantime, I find only solace in solitude, in stepping away from the outside world and letting it be, so I can simply be. For what will envy bring me, or fear, or wallowing? However, before I do, I must admit: I clearly need you far more than I realized or even said. It's not easy setting yourself up to be vulnerable. I've learned to avoid it, because loss is then right around the corner.
But, clearly, loss exists behind these walls as well.