Air
Hey.
You.
I, um... I'm not sure what to say.
(Heh, I always say that, don't I?)
I mean, I dunno.
I guess, looking back, my last letter was just over a month ago. "Letter", I mean.
Which is to say, when I'm writing directly TO you.
Even though all of the prose-ish stuff I have been writing is also FOR you.
But, yeah.
I dunno (he said again, tired segue wearing thin at the seams).
I read the letter again. My last one, I mean.
We both know you didn't come. And that's ok. Actually, it's more than ok, because it means that things are going well for you, y'know?
Hah.
It's like I'm trying to forge a win-win situation for myself. If I can make the situation be a positive one for one, or both of us, it's as though I'm blunting the trauma, I guess?
So, yeah. You.
Fuck, you probably didn't even read the letter, heh. Just as you won't be reading this one, either.
But I told you that I had no intentions of dropping the coal. And so, I continue to write you.
So that, maybe some day, years from now, you'll know that I meant every word I said. And felt conviction with every uttered word I then typed to you.
That I still cherish you above many, many things.
It gets harder, these days. I know I know "you", less.... so it's difficult to fill in the gaps, y'know? You aren't the woman I used to love. I guess, more accurately, I should say that.... you aren't the woman I love NOW.
Does that make sense?
I suspect you have buried and entombed most of the woman. And I suspect she eventually stopped fighting you.
Right?
Isn't that what you meant? That you would protect the Other Katie from coming back and reading this stuff? By locking her away?
Late in the evenings, when I pause in my typing, and think of you (which is constantly), I wonder how much collateral damage was suffered from that imprisoning.
I've crafted many theories. Have many ideas, about maybe what you thought, and how you convinced yourself.
And then I summarily throw them all in the garbage. Because all my estimations are just inductive, they are pretty meritless. Compounding this, is the fact that I have no foothold worth a shit in the hierarchy of importance in your life. So at this point, presuming anything about you would be insanely narcissistic and border on utter arrogance.
And so. I can't. Or don't, anyway.
I don't know, Katie. Katy?
I know you changed the spelling of your name. A reinventing of yourself, maybe?
I could see that, since Ruth and I were the only ones to call you that (spelling).
Not that I would ever address you in letter-- by name-- again. But I wonder which you would prefer?
... did you ever listen to "Elizabeth" from the Bioshock Infinite soundtrack? I still listen to it every time I write one of these letters to you.
I remember one of the first times I listened to it, I was sitting alone, in the dark of my bedroom, on the bed. And I was writing about how I wouldn't give up on family? And I was depicting my devotion to you in that ideology.
And I still feel that way, y'know?
But, you've gone so very far away, now. A new life, a new home, a new.... almost everything, right?
And that makes me a little sad. And it makes mentally clutch at the tiny coal I figuratively wear around my neck.
Every time I write an entry in here, I hope that I'm one day closer to hearing from you again. And maybe having you back. "Just one more day", I tell myself. "One more week. I can get through this."
For most people, the goal is to survive until it stops hurting. That was your goal, wasn't it?
But we both know, I think, that it wasn't mine.
My goal-- my aim-- was to see it through until I had a chance to... have you back.
I did not expect it to take so long, if I'm being honest. But then, I never really expected to have you back, either.
And yet, despite the length of your departure (which may stretch on, into infinity), I refuse to abandon the promise I made to myself. And to you.
Just because I underestimated .... this. All of this. It's not a valid excuse to "give up".
I know you don't believe me. You've said so, in very plain words, not so terribly long ago. And I don't begrudge you that belief, because I am the person solely responsible for you feeling that way.
But I keep working to keep my word, because I've done such a shabby job of it, before now.
But, you've heard all this many times before, yeah?
I do tend to repeat myself.
I think it's because I have some sort of publishing amnesia, or something. Or maybe it's "altered consciousness recollection"; I go into a separate place when I write to you, you know. I mean, inside my own head. A place that you and I only go. And I tend to have a hard time remembering what I wrote to you, when I'm not.... in that place.
Where was I going with this?
I had something I wanted to work toward, I thought?
Hrm.
I think I remembered what I was going to say. And then I wrote it all down in one long paragraph.
And then I deleted it.
Because it's fucking asinine.
So.
There's that.
So. Here we are, I guess. And by "we", I mean "the hopeful, eventual WE where you come and actually read this thing". On the Twelfth Day of the Sixth Month of the Two-Thousandth-and-Fourteenth Year.
I keep hoping I'll hear from you, Katie.
Hear from you before... the end of the first week of July.
I don't know what I'll do, then. Because it will have been over a year of writing, by then. Writing something to you, or for you, or relevant to you. Almost every day. For a year.
I don't know.
What I'll do.
Aside from grieve some more. And continue to miss you.
I don't know what the heart of the reason is, that you have ceased all correspondence with me. It might have been something I said that you could not reconcile with the You of Now. Or perhaps it is an external nudging, gently guiding you away from me.
I have my theories, of course. But again, they're irrelevant. The choice is, of course, yours.
It just leaves me sad and confused, y'know? Since the last letter you sent me-- and texts we exchanged-- felt like new groundwork being laid. Carefully and slowly, and maybe a little brittle. But still-- something built anew from the old and marred.
And you rather suddenly.... just gave it up. Y'know?
And I don't understand why.
But I've come to realize that this is a bit of a metaphor, for me. And Us.
My place isn't really to Understand. My place is to accept and learn and grow. To find humility and peace. Some way.
While still exalting you.
I still hope-- STILL hope-- every time I get an email, or a random text. Or when I see something that triggers a memory of you.... I still hope that's it IS you, in some manifestation.
It's a hope fused with reality, because I try very hard to not see things that aren't there. Any more.
Anyway.
I still keep you in thought, Kathryn. I still love you very, very much, and miss you greatly.
I hope, truly and deeply, that you are still happy, and cultivating happiness. Exercising good judgment, and developing good habits and .... all of those things.
I hope you are finding genuine enrichment. Y'know?
I love you terribly.
Be well, Katie.
And I will continue to hope, that I will hear from you again.
Maybe not so long from now.
But, if it is to be so, then it is to be so.
♥
Wherever you are, sleep sweet.
10:54 p.m. - 2014-06-12
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