A Letter to An Old Friend

Let me start with your husband. The man is a piece of white trash. I see the photos you post of him. I see him on his ass, his fat gut protruding from his unattractive body, his unattractive face stuck in some perpetual expression of apathetic lethargy. Sometimes, he contorts his hand for the camera; he’s showing off what I can only assume is some kind of gang sign. This, coming from a fat white guy, reminds me solely of my older brother, who once ran with a gang and continues to occasionally speak like he’s still part of that lifestyle. Not that I actually think he ever was. I’ve always thought he was all talk and no walk. But that’s another story.

            I loved you. I love you, still, in my memories. Do I love you now? I’m not sure anymore, if I’m completely honest, but honey, you will always have a special place in my heart and I will continue to look on your status updates with a fond eye, even if what I’m seeing is visually offensive in some way (see above about hand signs). I do not love what your body looks like, now. I do not love your double chin or your sagging breasts or the gut they barely cover. I do not love your poor spelling or poor grammar, nor do I love your choices in life. By the time this letter is finished, perhaps you will have concluded that I do not love you. For all I know, while I write this, I may convince myself of the same. All that remains for me now is to write it, and see.

            I admire your fortitude. I admire your dream job and I want to help you reach your dreams, but the life you want is now the life you have and I know I will never bring you away from it, no matter how much I so desire. You wanted marriage and kids and now you have a husband and a baby. Your primary hobby is also your dream job. It looks a lot to me like your life is moving in precisely the direction you always wanted. I’m glad things are going your way, sweetheart, I really am. Yet, I feel certain sadness when I look upon it; I recognize that now as disappointment in the fact that you are not living your life to a standard I have somehow set in my own mind. That isn’t fair to you, honey, and for that, I am sorry. Perhaps there is an imaginary scenario in my mind that I have clung to for far too long; now is the time to let it go and look on your life as your own, rather than some extension of mine.

            I want to see you get healthy. I want to see you be happy—truly, toothy-grin happy. I’ve never seen you upload a photo in which your teeth show when you smile. All of your smiles are close-lipped, barred, like there’s a wall within you that prevents you from letting go and letting the world see the light I know burns within you. I think that a large part of the sadness I feel for you is sadness in the knowledge that you have never had an orgasm. While you have not lived your life in any way like I thought you might, or like I’ve imagined perhaps that you should, you have not experienced the one thing that can bring a significant measure of peace and serenity to your life. For that, I pity you. I pity you greatly, because I experience an orgasm somewhat regularly and I believe every man and woman should. I want your life to be a fairy tale and I know it never will be because your husband looks like disappointment personified and your child has the pointed chin of Rumplestiltskin or Peter Pan.

            It should not have disappointed me when you asked about the crowd we used to mutually know, before you left. I should have felt happiness at the fact that you wanted to pick up right where we left off, as if all the years between had never even happened. That’s what good friends do, isn’t it? Best friends? We’re best friends, aren’t we? Yet, I felt disappointment because so many years had passed. I wanted to see a woman who had grown and learned, maybe even been educated, but ultimately who spoke like an adult. What I felt I was met with was a bloated teenager and that’s not fair to you because you are so much more than that. Maybe that’s the kind of thinking that leads to disappointment. So be it. So be it that I believe you are a woman who could do so much more than that to which you limit yourself.

            May you see this, my love, and know it is for you and you alone. May you know that I still love you, the way you were and even the way you are now. You are a woman who has achieved her dreams and continues to pursue them because some are still out there, waiting to be taken by the horns and forced into your repertoire of success, while I am a woman bereft of dreams because one of my greatest fears was realized instead of a greater desire and I suffer greatly from a depression that keeps me thinking, believing, even, that my dreams will do nothing but fail. You are a woman who lives a simpler life than I do and for that, perhaps I envy you.