Dear ******,
You said I could talk to you if I needed to. And I guess I kind of do. I never talk to anyone about anything that ever really bothers me and it fills me up until I explode at the tiniest things. And then I feel like a douchebag. Or the female equivalent. Like a cross between a Snooki and a bitch, I’d wager. Snookbitch.
Microsoft Word recognizes the word “douchebag”. But when I spell it “douchbag”, without the –e, it says it’s wrong but won’t spell correct it into “douchebag”. What the fuckity fuck fuck is up, Word? Pick a side: pro-cussing or anti-cussing.
I started Driver’s Ed recently up in West Boylston. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to see anyone from Oakmont outside school. Sometimes I feel when that once I’ve gotten off the bus the rest of the world needs to get the fuck out of my face. I’ll see a classmate standing outside Wal-Mart for god knows why and I will refuse to make eye contact. I don’t know. I don’t want to have to explain “Hey, mom, that’s so-and-so and I think that they think I’m a fugly bitch and they make me wanna punch myself” and I don’t want the mutual recognition I’ll get from the classmate when I get back to school, the single-second-eye-contact-moment when they look at me and their eyes go “I know where you were on Saturday.”
It’s an insecurity thing, I guess. You get so used to taking up as little space as possible in the world so that you don’t have to touch people and suddenly what’s yours is yours, and if someone takes that from you it’s like they cut off a finger – you only have so many and it hurts and it won’t grow back once it’s gone. Even if a doctor or some shit reattached it it’d still be lopsided and painful and stitched, and even once it’s scabbed over and healed I’ll still have to look at them - my infiltrated space, my reattached fingers – and know that they’re not mine anymore. They belong to everyone else now.
I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’m crazy or something, and that scares me. That’s why I’m trying so hard to change. I want to be happy.
I want to be happy. That’s been my mantra for a while now. Sounds better than a prayer, I’ll tell you that. No threats of damnation, false promises of salvation. Only me and what I would like to become.
When you wrote on my paper, it made me happy. Actually, for the longest time I’ve felt like no one cared about me. And it hurt. I don’t know why. I think it’s me. I’m getting paranoid and insecure and I see you and the rest having fun together and being happy together (or at least in front of me) and I wanted so much for it to not be me at fault. I wanted to blame all of you. Say it was your fault, that you were leaving me out because I wasn’t pretty and dressed in shitty clothes and was annoyingly weird. I tried so hard to blame you, because I thought admitting I was the one who was leaving myself out would hurt more than losing all of you would.
I was wrong. My fondest memories include you. When I think of the days where I was actually 100% god-fucking-damnit happy you are always there. Remember when we made the Duncan Spork Squad with *****in sixth grade? Remember the Potter Polo Patrol (patrol? I think that was the name anyway)? Remember when we took that field trip to Lowell and you and I just ate our lunch far away from our homeroom because, well, we didn’t like ninety percent of them? Remember the last day of eighth grade when we all went over to your house, strolled down to the center and got ice cream, then partied (the 8th grade equivalent of partying anyway) at the playground? Remember when you were started dating ***** and I was excited 50% for you and 50% at the fact that if I married ***** and you married ***** we’d have been sister-in-laws?
You are one of my closest friends. Like fuck, I’m kind of tearing up. And I hate it when people admit that they’re tearing up in letters because IT’S SO FUCKING CHEESY but fuck it. I’m crying and I love you. You’re one of the best friends I have, you’re the only one who I’ve actually talked to about this shit with and you aren’t going to judge me for it.
The happiest I’ve ever been were the days when you would grab my essays out of my hands and run away from me while you read them. Nothing made me happier, or will make me happier. It’s a kind of quiet recognition that I don’t get from anyone else, and it make me feel like I am here, I am tangible, and I am doing something right.
I hope you don’t mind if I keep sending you letters like this. Both of us will be seventeen this year and of all of my fears about the future, I’m the most afraid that I’m going to lose you.
Love, *****.
