Dear Mark,
So it's time, again. For good, I suppose. I can't remember how long it's been since the last time I heard of you – and I've just come to know I'm not the only one in this situation. I do hope you're well and wish you all the best. But it's enough.
I graduated this week. Who would've thought?! Of course I'm also unemployed and broke. Not to mention I'm clueless about the rest of my life. But this was the deadline, wasn't it?
Today I had lunch with friends and when someone mentioned a girl our age who's getting married to her boyfriend of 9 years I did a quick Math to realize I have nobody left in my life from the days when I was 13. So maybe all of my relationships will just have an expiration date.
I had the kind of day that sounds like the greatest fun when I describe it, but in the end it was just too long. I have actually cried alone in the bus station bathroom.
It was a long day.
I'm unemployed. And broke. And clueless.
And I've just lost a friend.
Dear friend,
In about a couple of weeks I'll be hopefully graduated and that's my new deadline. Remember when I named a deadline for my last message? And then I failed to set the date to the day I'll call it a day and started this messed-up blog. Yeah, that's me. I have issues.
But in a couple of weeks I'll let go of this blog. I'm not sending you the perfect e-mail, I'm not writing public posts for the not-you and I'll just stop checking at your website to see if you're alive. I'm gonna stop the rest of the google and forum stalking as well. We'll just be done, for good.
Will you miss me this time?
Dear friend,
Blogger is being a bitch and I'm writing for the third time that I didn't miss you for the past two weeks. I'm working and writing to get things done in time, and the journey I started five years ago, when you were still with me, will be over soon. And you won't know it.
I'm sure we could have great conversations about it, and I also know we won't have any. But it's your loss, this time.
Dear friend,
Today I picked up that
perfect e-mail to send to you and sent it to me instead. Why? Because I've been stalking you again (just a little bit), re-read some old stuff and now I'm not sure if I'm gonna find you great or if I just think you're an idiot.
And I don't want to remember you as an idiot, so I might not want to push you into acting like one.
But I wanted to tell you that I still hate voting. That I probably hate it not just because I couldn't care less but also because I don't consider myself grown up to have a saying in national matters.
And I'd probably add that while I still am not able to drive, I'm the only person with a clue in this house. Like yesterday, when my sister was asking my brother if he'd want the car today – he was taking forever to answer until I explained to him that she wasn't interested in his Sunday, she just wanted the car.
And he was ok with that because he can always use the other car instead. Of course we're talking about my father's car and my mother's car, but our parents' stuff are bound to be ours, right?
So my sister and I are about to go voting (because we have to, and if I went with her I had a ride, since I can't drive myself) and my father asks if she's going to whatever-town to meet the guy who's not even her boyfriend. She says she is and he says he thinks this is wrong, because what kind of boy(friend) gets the girl to drive all the way to whatever-town he lives?
My sister was all pissed and just left, but she has to see it with my father's eyes: when he and mom were dating back in the day, he'd walk her home after school late at night and then walk back all the way to his own living (which was on the other way and much closer to their school) when there were no buses around anymore! Of course, guy who's not even her boyfriend wouldn't act like my dad did back in the day.
My brother is a lot more gentlemanlike, driving his fiancé to work early on Saturdays and picking her up by dinner time. When she lived in another town, he'd often find time to drive all the way there and stay with her, grocery shopping and cooking as well. Ain't that just cute?
Of course it wasn't so cute when he borrowed my father's car so they could catch a movie. Mom, dad and I had no car in the garage and no food for dinner, so we called him by the time the movie would be over to ask him to buy some stuff where he was. He was like "oh, but we wanted to go out now" and please! It would take him 15 minutes of his time with my father's car, but he said "why can't you order it?".
So mom called to order and she finally understood why I always said this very line about the foodshop: "They charge to deliver". They charged to deliver, she thought it was expensive (it was) and gave up and so we had to eat whatever was in the fridge.
Now here's a recap to "why I had to eat whatever was left in the fridge on a Sunday night":
- My sister had to borrow mom's car to meet her not-boyfriend in whatever-town the guy lives.
- My brother had to borrow dad's car to take his girlfriend to the movies and couldn't spare 15 minutes after the movie was over to buy us some food (and then he probably took her out to dinner, I bet!).
So yes, dear friend, I'm about to accept that people not only let us down too often – they also couldn't care less. But it is a good e-mail, though. I might send it someday.
Dear friend,
Well, it's written. Properly edited too. Should I send it over? I miss you, I really do. I wouldn't have gotten it ready to send otherwise. But I just hate you so much for... walking away. Mostly I hate you for making me chase after you.
But I kind of... need you, I guess. Specific needs, specific people. I thought I had shown you my darker side, when I was but a teenager angry at everything that wasn't her. Now I'm desperate at everything that I am. I just... need you.
So what now? What if I send you that, and then you don't come back anyway? What if I have to admit that I need you like that and I'm still left alone?
I wish I could tell you of my plans for when I'm dead. I wish I could tell you of my lack of plans for while I'm living. I wish I could assure you I like being alive, even when I oversize the drama to the point that it sounds like I'm the morbid teenager once again.
I'm not a teenager anymore and you're the only person left from those years. And you're not exactly around, so I'm not sure if I should consider you the person who stood. You stood for quite a while, really. Most of people would've given up on me earlier. Most of people did.
Dear friend,
Today I've rehearsed the message I'd like to send you. I didn't get through with it yet because I hate the fact that I'm gonna have to back out on my words and swallow them letter by letter. But I suppose all I can do now is postpone it. I'm gonna get through it, eventually, because I just miss you all that much.
Tomorrow I'll start on the damn piece of work that will assure my graduation. Starting on 17th of October, planning on finishing it by November 17th. Can I pull it? I've no doubt I can. Now I just have to put myself to it. And I'd really love to be on good terms with you when I graduate. You'll owe me a good "congratulations" note.
Dear friend,
Ok, the death theme really got to go. You know me, I was never the morbid type. What is wrong with me?
I slept for 13 hours straight. Thirteen. I can recall a little bit of the dreaming I had through those 13 hours and it's freaking me out – even though I was never the type to wonder about dreams either.
I think my mother was in a hospital-related something. A surgery or whatever. I didn't feel specially nervous about it. And the place looked half like a hospital, somewhat like a college and kind of like a mall. Like I knew my mother was there for something hospital-related, but at some point of it I was windowshopping. And the people who would hang there were college students. Private college, like a building (I attend public, in a huge campus with trees).
So it's me, my sister and three guys. I have no idea who was one of them (even though he seemed like the most concerned and shaken person in the party), I just remember he was buying a half-full 20 liters bottle of water. The other was a close friend of my sister. The other was his brother.
At some point I reach a spot with small round tables and chairs, like the food court in a mall. My sister and her friend are sitting by one of the small tables, the other two boys are in the other. The unidentified one is very concerned and goes for a walk as I approach their table. So I sit by the table with my sister's friend's brother and start telling him some anecdote about my mother (because apparently we're there because of her, but I felt like I could throw a funny story to lighten up the moods).
I'm in the middle of the story when I notice he's holding my hand lying on the table. It's warm and I squeeze back, like reassuring something. He says something and it seems like I can never finish my story, even though I keep coming back to it. And I didn't manage to finish it after all, as he gets up, smiling, jumps on his motorcycle and speeds off. Then I go in to buy some candy.
I think it was about noon when my sister and my father were trying to get me out of bed again (they weren't successful) and my half-awake brain was remembering it – my sister's friend's brother died earlier this year, due to complications after he broke his leg in a motorcycle accident (he wasn't riding it). And just now I feel like we could have been best of friends.
