untitled letter to friends
I'm done telling stories. If I don't figure out how to change what I see in front of me, I will regret it. The truth of the matter is simple: I have spent the better half of my small life running -- running away from my mistakes, from pain, from disappointment. And in a desperate attempt to fool myself into thinking that things were okay and that things were fair, I made up a life for myself. Sometimes that life existed on the pages of a notebook, and sometimes it existed in the assumptions of other people -- assumptions I never bothered to correct. Most of my lies were born out of sheer dumb luck and my ability to let another person's mind come to whatever conclusions it wanted to. I rolled with the punches, instead of taking control of myself. I understand that reputation means nothing: reputation is what other people think of you, and that does not matter. But I want to think good things about myself, and I don't.
It's harder than it sounds. I don't know how to change, but I'll figure it out, somehow, someway. But I'm not trying to become a new person: I want to dig up the girl I buried twelve years ago. I miss that girl. She was so full of hope; she was so full of promise; most of all, she was so full of kindness and forgiveness. That is who I was born into the world as, who I tried to forget, and who I am now sorely missing. She was honest, and a lady. And deep in my own heart, I can feel the stinging weight of her sadness, her disappointment in me.
I cannot be the person most of you have known anymore. It hurts too much. The person I really am hates who I've been for so long. I'm sorry if this doesn't please you, if it makes me unappealing as a friend to you, but I am not sorry for changing. I am sorry for pretending for twelve years straight. I am sorry for hurting the feelings of others, but more than anything, I am sorry for wasting my life trying to be someone I hate.
On November eighth, last year, I died inside. Seven months later, I found my way back into the world, and found that without the dead weight of all my pretense -- without the burden of keeping up appearances for the sake of pseudo-friendships, I was free at last to act of my own volition. Maybe this doesn't make sense to any of you, or maybe it seems like I am exaggerating. But, twelve years is a long time to live inside a lie, and as painful as it is to feel the world as it is and not as I'd contrived it to be, I prefer it this way.
I have so much work to do. But I believe that it is the only path out of the grave I've dug for myself. I hope you all understand, but it's okay if you do not. I hardly understand, myself. Just know that if I've ever considered you a friend, that hasn't changed. It is up to you, though, if you want to know me as I will be, and not as I have been. Those of you whose friendship is real: you deserve me only as I truly exist, not as some stupid, narcissistic facsimile. You deserve a human being, not a cold, lying, stone-hearted calculator of odds and chance.
I want to know you better, and I want you to know me for real. Is this reasonable? I'd like to think so.