For many years, you would tell me that you didn’t
appreciate being treated like a pawn in people’s life stories, and I never
really understood what you meant.
I assume you felt that too much was demanded of you, and that you were
then unfairly punished for not fulfilling those demands. And I felt really bad for that, because
you seemed like a nice enough person, people were constantly angry with.
I’m going to apologize now, and I don’t want that to make
you feel bad. I don’t apologize to you, as someone who feels they
have wronged you – I don’t think I ever have. I have cared for you, and I feel no regret in that. But the look in your eyes yesterday,
was sunken, and disparate, and I am so very sorry.
We are not your responsibility, sweet John, and I’m glad
that you will never really understand that (even though you do really
understand that) – and this parenthesis-necessary phrase, will lay here as
eternal proof of your giant pumping heart. And this letter is not just to you, so you can relax.
I had feelings for a boy once, who for months had been
acting selfishly – he would disappear for weeks without notice, and come back
and shrug. It took months, until I
finally found myself sitting with him, in front of his locker, demanding that
he account himself – that he was hurting the people he cared about. John, you know – I am horrifically
talented at yelling at people. I
inherited my mother’s skill with Indian Guilt. And this boy kept shrugging and saying he couldn’t, he just
couldn’t, and I kept saying, why, just why, and then his eyes got really red,
and started to water, and he said, “Don’t you know, I wish I could? Do you
think I want to be this
way?” He hadn’t meant to hurt
anybody, and he didn’t know how to fix things. The boy was sick, and unbeknownst to me, his illness was
fucking with his life.
I don’t think this boy remembers this moments as well as I
do, because it was justifiably insignificant to him, and unjustifiably
significant to me. I have never
felt so scared and at loss, as I have during the moments in which I found
myself completely helpless, in a situation that seemed to demand help. It’s like watching someone you love
drowning from ashore, knowing you can’t swim. It is horrifying, and so I apologize, for drowning – not
because that is controllable, I know you know, I can’t help drowning – but
because you had to feel that type of helplessness, because you were in fact,
helpless.
Here it is. A
gray situation, in my world of “heroes and villains” as you say. I don’t feel bad for what happened,
because I didn’t make it that way, but that does not mean you deserved that
feeling. You did not fail me, you
have never failed me, and you cannot fail me, and you are very, very, flawed. I do know that.
Earlier that night, I sat in an alleyway, uncontrollably
crying, and a dear boy showed up, and sat with me. And after an hour of listening to my uncontrollable
situation, and saying sorry, he did what we, the helpless, do. Offered solutions, or help, in any
small format we could – because we want to stop you from drowning, we do, but
all we can do is offer you a glass of water, instead. And as the lost one, you know you don’t need a glass of
water – that a glass of water is the last thing that will save you from
drowning, but as the helpless, you yearn for it, you yearn to offer help in any
format you can. So I asked for
water. Because I get it, I get
that, John. And the dear boy ran
off, and grabbed that water in an instant – and I am sorry, that you didn’t
feel you could and or did the same, John.
Among all the psychological, cultural, complexities, it is
as simple as this: In a world
where I struggle to like myself, and in a night when I am made to feel that
nobody else in the world likes me either, all I need, is to be reminded, that
one of the people I like the most, likes me back, regardless. Just like me. And I don’t ask that of you like a favor or a pleading
anything. I believe that you like
me, out of pure likableness. And
if you can do that, than it reassures me, that I can do the same. You can (but also have no
responsibility to) offer solutions – we both know, no one but you can take
care of you. I don’t expect you to
take care of me, I don’t even expect you to like me – but you do, and it
helps. You are not helpless. I am not your responsibility, and you
are not helpless, and I will be
fine.
