Anger is the common currency for estranged lovers, and estranged lovers we most definitely are. And sure, anger has frequently accompanied my thoughts of you. But it's not the purpose of this letter, I can promise you that. Anger shuts me down, doesn't make want to put things on paper, on walls and in the air.
In fact it would be misleading to claim that there is a purpose to this letter. Don't get me wrong, there is a reason, just not a purpose. The reason would be nostalgia, self-assessment, catharsis, saudade, and a strong disgust with the dishonesty that has been our relationship for the last year. What I mean is that there's no purpose, there is nothing I expect or want to get from this. I still don't want to see you, or talk to you, certainly now, probably forever. But I can now admit that that is not because of who you are, it’s only because of what you did.
Spring always seemed to bring changes to our relationsip. It was six years this spring that we first met, five that we fell in love. We moved in together four years ago and I left your bed, thinking our love was stronger than that of mere mortals, two years ago. Last spring, you left me. It’s not okay.
Since then, all I wanted was to tell you something that would really hurt you and your bones. I wanted to tell you’d be alone forever, to make you think that once your beauty fades, so will the entourage of fools that follow you every day, because they don’t know you like I do. I frequently entertained the idea of you, ten years from now, staring outside a window and, finally, feeling regret. More than fantasizing with that, I relished the idea of TELLING you that, and of my words making you suffer in front of my very eyes. I guess that would be mean of me. But for once, I just wanted us to be on the same playing field.
But that's not why i'm writing you today. Firstly, I don’t know if any of those things are true, secondly, if I really wanted to say that I would call you, so I could bask in your silence of disappointment as one more bridge between the two of us got burnt. No. I don’t want to make you suffer anymore. I just want to imprint some truth in our book, I just want the memories of this moment to be registered, with all the ones that came before. “Even if everything else fail us”, says the motto you wrote.
When was the last time you dreamt of me? I have no qualms in admitting I dream of you, more often that I'd like. My subconscious misses you more than I do in my own life. In my life, I have control, I have new friends, new people who care about what I'm doing at any given moment, and there ceased to be any room for you. But when I fall asleep, a part of me, like a dog who misses it's owner, remembers a certain kind of connection. A connection I’m sure few people in the universe have felt. I’m glad I had it once, but it's memory can be a tough burden to carry and I can be a weak beast.
Sometimes, in those dreams I'm meeting you. And I wonder, if pure chance hadn't placed us across the same table six years ago, would we know OF each other? It’s very likely we would. And in that case, if it were to happen that we would meet for the first time, Alice & Julian, in the year of twenty-twelve, what would happen? Would we jump into each others arms, like we've been known to do? Would we despise each other's views on film, art or life? Or would we just have a polite and unremarkable encounter? For some reason, this last one seems to be the most unlikely. We're not really the polite kind.
But if the people we are NOW met today, if we ever saw each other again, we would be like gladiators of history, fighting over a version of the events that paints each other as a monster and ourselves as a victim of circumstance. My case is well known and easily summarized; You abandoned me when my personal life was at it's very worst and I didn't have a single person to rely on, and you tarnished the entire point of our relationship, which was it’s uniqueness and importance, by not giving it a single chance to recover. I'm sure you see things differently, I'm just not sure if you understand the way I see them. Good people change, and I don't resent that you did. I just hope you had given me a chance to catch up with you.
Out there, in some other universe, I'm being introduced to you today, across a table, with a handshake and a smile. I hope I don't screw things up there.
