D
diamond-dancer
Guest
Dear Friend,
Seven years. It feels like it could have been a couple of months ago. It couldn't have been yesterday, because if it was I wouldn't believe it, and I wouldn't be writing this letter. Things like this take a long time to get used to. Acceptance and recovery are two entirely different paths.
When I met you I was such a scared, unsure little thing. I was a bit different, but too afraid to show it.
When we were put into our first class together we sat with a mutual friend in between us. She acted as a mediator as we tried to get used to one another. At first I was unsure about you, and I know you were unsure about me too, if conversation became uncomfortable we could just pretend the other wasn’t there. Then our mediator moved away...
For the first few weeks our conversation consisted entirely of swapping news we’d received from our mutual friend. “I sent her a letter last week”, “She called me the other night”, and on it went. When she stopped writing and calling as much, we were left with little choice than to start getting to know one another.
It soon became apparent to me that every assumption I had made about you had been wrong. I felt embarrassed that I had judged you so quickly and so inaccurately. The person who was revealing herself to me was unlike any person I had ever met, or am yet to meet to this day. Her wisdom, her compassion, her individuality, her strength... how is it that someone so young could be so content with simply being themself?
The truth in your life and in your words evoked a desire in me to be true to myself as well. I opened up. I had been so terrified of being ridiculed for being myself that I had learnt to suppress certain parts of my personality. Now, all of a sudden, I didn’t care.
This was the beginning of our friendship and where I adopted you as my role model. I would campaign for truth and liberate people from the charades they had created for themselves. I would embrace individuality when it was strong, and nurture it when it was weak. This is also the point where our two groups merged to form a family of social misfits. Some of us are still very close. Most of us keep in contact of sorts. Others changed and left to discover themselves somewhere else.
These couple of years were the most influential and happiest years of my life. They represent the start of the formation of the person that I am today. We had fun. We were happy. At least for a while.
I don’t know if a person is ever old enough to deal with the death of someone close to them. When the person is old or has been sick for a long time, then their impending departure from this world can at least be expected to some extent. But what if the person is strong and very much alive? What if the person is still very young?
The death of someone much older than you can be dealt with by telling yourself that all living creatures must die and that it is an inevitable part of life. You still feel pain and loss, but that inevitability still seems to be a long way off. The death of someone your age or younger, when you are both still young, serves as a much more urgent reminder of that same inevitability. Death now stares you right in the face and says, “I will take you any time I want to”.
I wasn’t ready for it... None of us were. We had too many plans and too many years ahead of us. In a world where people try to apply logic to everything, this was simply illogical.
This was the moment that I learnt how to feel. I had no idea that I was capable of having feelings that were so deep and could be so intense. I didn’t feel like me anymore... it felt as though someone else had found their way into my body and was making it their own.... making it into something/someone new. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I could only cry or shout... I couldn’t interact on any middle level.
I didn’t want to talk about it with my family or some qualified stranger. I didn’t want to take time off. It was funeral one day, school the next. I only wanted to be near our friends... around the people who reminded me of you. They were the only ones who could understand. They were the only ones who had been there. If anything positive came out of what happened, it’s that the heartache and trauma bonded us together. It’s the same when you share anything significant with another. We are bound by the pain we shared, and the knowledge of the truth about who you were... And we are bound for life.
The seven years have not been easy. Learning how to feel on a deeper level has been both a blessing and a curse. When I experience love or true happiness it affects me so profoundly that I half expect the Earth to spin out of orbit, or for the sun to explode.
But when I fall into depression and despair, I fall into a place that is so dark, so lonely, so devoid of hope or inspiration, that it doesn’t matter to me whether or not I ever come out again. When I’m in this place I’m so overwhelmed with the guilt of having survived, that not even your memory can pull me out again. How can I not feel this way? It makes me so angry that someone who was so full of life and love and kindness, and who had such a bright future ahead of them could be taken away, when here I am in the darkness, alone and without hope.
I do have an emotional middle ground fortunately, and it’s where my heart spends most of its time. It does what it’s supposed to do, and it gets me through the day. But it aches. It aches for all that it has lost, and all that will never be.
I wish so much that I could tell you this...
*******
As a sort of consolation I want anyone who happens to read this to know one thing:
Every bad thing that has happened in my life, every bit of the pain I have felt for various reasons, every time I have wanted to end it all but not managed to quite get there... has been worth it. And it was worth it because I got to know this incredible person, and through having known her, and experiencing the pain of having lost her, I have been able to learn what love truly is.
*******
You have been the single most amazing and influential person I have ever known. I realise that some people are remembered more favourably in death than in life, but the thing is... I thought the same thing when you were alive. I just never had the chance to tell you.
I hope you knew.
I love you.
JJT
*******
Thank-you to anyone who you took the time to read that through. It means a lot to me.
*******
Seven years. It feels like it could have been a couple of months ago. It couldn't have been yesterday, because if it was I wouldn't believe it, and I wouldn't be writing this letter. Things like this take a long time to get used to. Acceptance and recovery are two entirely different paths.
When I met you I was such a scared, unsure little thing. I was a bit different, but too afraid to show it.
When we were put into our first class together we sat with a mutual friend in between us. She acted as a mediator as we tried to get used to one another. At first I was unsure about you, and I know you were unsure about me too, if conversation became uncomfortable we could just pretend the other wasn’t there. Then our mediator moved away...
For the first few weeks our conversation consisted entirely of swapping news we’d received from our mutual friend. “I sent her a letter last week”, “She called me the other night”, and on it went. When she stopped writing and calling as much, we were left with little choice than to start getting to know one another.
It soon became apparent to me that every assumption I had made about you had been wrong. I felt embarrassed that I had judged you so quickly and so inaccurately. The person who was revealing herself to me was unlike any person I had ever met, or am yet to meet to this day. Her wisdom, her compassion, her individuality, her strength... how is it that someone so young could be so content with simply being themself?
The truth in your life and in your words evoked a desire in me to be true to myself as well. I opened up. I had been so terrified of being ridiculed for being myself that I had learnt to suppress certain parts of my personality. Now, all of a sudden, I didn’t care.
This was the beginning of our friendship and where I adopted you as my role model. I would campaign for truth and liberate people from the charades they had created for themselves. I would embrace individuality when it was strong, and nurture it when it was weak. This is also the point where our two groups merged to form a family of social misfits. Some of us are still very close. Most of us keep in contact of sorts. Others changed and left to discover themselves somewhere else.
These couple of years were the most influential and happiest years of my life. They represent the start of the formation of the person that I am today. We had fun. We were happy. At least for a while.
I don’t know if a person is ever old enough to deal with the death of someone close to them. When the person is old or has been sick for a long time, then their impending departure from this world can at least be expected to some extent. But what if the person is strong and very much alive? What if the person is still very young?
The death of someone much older than you can be dealt with by telling yourself that all living creatures must die and that it is an inevitable part of life. You still feel pain and loss, but that inevitability still seems to be a long way off. The death of someone your age or younger, when you are both still young, serves as a much more urgent reminder of that same inevitability. Death now stares you right in the face and says, “I will take you any time I want to”.
I wasn’t ready for it... None of us were. We had too many plans and too many years ahead of us. In a world where people try to apply logic to everything, this was simply illogical.
This was the moment that I learnt how to feel. I had no idea that I was capable of having feelings that were so deep and could be so intense. I didn’t feel like me anymore... it felt as though someone else had found their way into my body and was making it their own.... making it into something/someone new. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I could only cry or shout... I couldn’t interact on any middle level.
I didn’t want to talk about it with my family or some qualified stranger. I didn’t want to take time off. It was funeral one day, school the next. I only wanted to be near our friends... around the people who reminded me of you. They were the only ones who could understand. They were the only ones who had been there. If anything positive came out of what happened, it’s that the heartache and trauma bonded us together. It’s the same when you share anything significant with another. We are bound by the pain we shared, and the knowledge of the truth about who you were... And we are bound for life.
The seven years have not been easy. Learning how to feel on a deeper level has been both a blessing and a curse. When I experience love or true happiness it affects me so profoundly that I half expect the Earth to spin out of orbit, or for the sun to explode.
But when I fall into depression and despair, I fall into a place that is so dark, so lonely, so devoid of hope or inspiration, that it doesn’t matter to me whether or not I ever come out again. When I’m in this place I’m so overwhelmed with the guilt of having survived, that not even your memory can pull me out again. How can I not feel this way? It makes me so angry that someone who was so full of life and love and kindness, and who had such a bright future ahead of them could be taken away, when here I am in the darkness, alone and without hope.
I do have an emotional middle ground fortunately, and it’s where my heart spends most of its time. It does what it’s supposed to do, and it gets me through the day. But it aches. It aches for all that it has lost, and all that will never be.
I wish so much that I could tell you this...
*******
As a sort of consolation I want anyone who happens to read this to know one thing:
Every bad thing that has happened in my life, every bit of the pain I have felt for various reasons, every time I have wanted to end it all but not managed to quite get there... has been worth it. And it was worth it because I got to know this incredible person, and through having known her, and experiencing the pain of having lost her, I have been able to learn what love truly is.
*******
You have been the single most amazing and influential person I have ever known. I realise that some people are remembered more favourably in death than in life, but the thing is... I thought the same thing when you were alive. I just never had the chance to tell you.
I hope you knew.
I love you.
JJT
*******
Thank-you to anyone who you took the time to read that through. It means a lot to me.
*******
)
