On The Edge

Dear me,

You're breathtaking. You're not thin, nor pretty, and sure, beauty is only skin deep, but who wants to be beautiful these days? Beauty and taking someone's breath away are two different things, and only one lasts forever.

Beauty is superficial. You can take someone's breath away with a look, a touch, a word. A picture is worth a thousand perfect songs, but photographs pale. A memory is just a sliver of forever, and you can't help but watch them fall from outstretched fingertips, lost in the rain that rages, tears tumbling from the sky. Angels cry- and you cry with them.

One such memory is the feeling of loss. The one emotion that never truly fades, red raw sutures jagged on your soul. On September 6th, 2008, you will lose a friend. [the wound opens, white hot poker to the heart]. Two days later, you lose him again. On September 9th, one of your best friends is lost to the abyss also [blood flows like a river of ruby heartbreak] as you watch him float away on grief [and sometimes, in the dead of night when you can hear your pain, you imagine him hand in hand with cowardice. how dare he leave you when you needed him?]. The weeks following that, you watch your one remaining anchor drift away, lost in an ocean made of droplets of myyourhis soul [the wound scabs, never to heal, a constant reminder of what i lost, what you can and will lose]. In another circle of friends, another world away at this point, the girl you've known for a decade forges a chain made of steel and friendship and hope, and you no longer drown in the ghosts of dead friends.

With common ground, she lifts you above the swirling fog of the past. She'll be the best and worst friend you'll ever have, with more ups and downs than a jolting elevator. You'll watch movies with her and stay up all night making key lime pie and only eating the filling. You'll drink cider and eat cookie dough at two in the afternoon. But behind this lurks the dark secret of your pulsing, broken [but still beating] heart, chanting for the two things you can never have.

But enough meandering. I must go back to the point of the letter [all the better to wander off down the treacherous side-lanes of reminiscing]. I wish I could tell you that you'll fall in love with the perfect guy, that he won't care that you're not size zero [the eternal curse of fashion never stops rearing its head] and that he'll love you for what's behind your face, not what you put on it. But I'd be lying. The truth is that you'll fall for all the wrong guys, the guys who will never reciprocate the intense feelings you feel for them. You'll fall for the bad guys, the untouchable guys, the taken guys.

Falling feels like you'll never hit the ground. Sometimes you don't know you're falling until you hit the ground. And by then it's too late, and you can never crawl out again. People say a lot of crap, like love being a butterfly, or a flower, or the best thing to happen to you. They lie. Love is the most destructive emotion you or I will ever feel. Love rips you up and feeds you through the shredder and you will always come back for more. Most people only have enough hate in them for one person. Love lasts forever, and it will never stop hurting, until you stop living. Only when you don't live, does love stop gripping you tight.

[but never stop living]

Life is a challenge. A war with a new battle every day. Love, hate, relationships. The chemistry test on Thursday, the date on Sunday, the eternal fight with our parents about this and that and everything in between, your life is a series of never-ending war torn battlegrounds, bloody shreds of your dreams on some, shreds of your nightmares on others.

[don't ever stop living
living brings you the best days of your life]

Some days, you'll think you have nothing worth offering. You're not pretty, not smart, not sporty or musically gifted, or particularly easy to get along with. You think all you have is your writing. [sometimes, it is all you have] But just because it's all you have, don't think for a second [a heartbeat] that it's in any way second to any other talent in the world. A handful of scattered words on a crumpled sheet of paper has won and lost wars, broken and fixed hearts, opened up a world none of us knew existed [like a world where people believe six impossible things before breakfast] Your writing brings you a cosmos of new friends, and brings you back to old friends you thought were lost in the folds of time, like that forgotten jacket in the back of the closet [it still fits]. Your writing no longer defines you, you define your writing. The writing is all you are and all the writing is an extension of you by default [like hindsight, a wonderful thing]

One day, about five years after you read this letter, [for me, today] you'll have a defining moment, an epiphany of sorts. This moment of pure clarity, staring at you from the bottom of an icy lake will redefine you. It will give you a whole new pair of glasses with which to view the world. [it will also give you a label. ignore it]

You'll find a group of people who love you not for the label, not in spite of it, but ignoring the label completely and loving you, not the scrap of paper on which a single word resides, hanging around your neck, feather light some days, too heavy to bear others.

I'm not going to tell you when this day is. See if you can spot it for yourself.

A screech of tyres brings me back on track. I wish I could tell you that you lived a life filled with happiness and joy. But all I can tell you is that you lived a life. Who's to say if it's good or bad? A life is a life is a life, and no one can take away the life you have already lived. Even the thieves of lives not yet lived can take away a live already lived to the full. You may find your life unsatisfying and short [like you could have done so much more], but life is long. The longest thing you'll ever do. The greatest gift of all is looking back on a life lived, not a life spent merely existing.

You may have troubled thoughts and a self esteem to match, but above all, you are yourself. Never compromise yourself for the sake of something else. Nothing is as important as who you are, and who you will be. And who you are is simply
You.

So, all there is to say is goodbye [good luck]. I'll see you next time I look in a mirror, or flick through a photo album, memories on fast-forward.

Love,
You.