Letter to L.

This is what I've written to give to her.
But Im not sure if its right.

L

There was one more that I couldn’t give you then. I don’t know why this one, but it was.
I know you don’t know what to say, and I understand. If I'm honest, I don’t know what you should say either. You were right, there probably is nothing you can say. I understand that too. In my heart of hearts you know I’d love for you to turn around and tell me you still want us and you want us to work, but I know that’s crazy. But if there was anything I could say or do, anyway to make it work, I’d do it. I also want you to know that I'm truly not trying to guilt trip you into anything by sending you this or by giving you the others. I just had trouble getting the words when we were face to face, and my writing might say it better than I can.

What I say still stands; you are too important to me for me to want to lose you. You’ve been all I’ve had these past few months, and all I’ve needed, and I hope that in some way I’ve been as good a friend to you as I’ve tried to be, that I’ve meant something and been an important part of your life too. You know how I feel about you, and it’s because of that I don’t want to lose you. The things you’ve said to me over the last few months that made me feel loved, those things are what I’ll hold onto. I’ll hope and hold onto the fact that you meant them, even if only at the time. I know I have to understand and do what’s right. But the hurt is so huge right now. I hope you can understand that.

This letter has been deleted and rewritten and deleted and rewritten so many times, so I'm sorry if it doesn’t make sense or is confusing. I know I don’t always make things easy. For some reason writing this isn’t coming as easily as anything else. By time time I finish, it’ll probably be longer than I intended, and I’ll have rambled. Sorry in advance.

I don’t know where to go from here, and I know you probably don’t either.
Maybe it’s just space we need for a while, or maybe its space we need indefinitely. I know which one I’d hate to happen, but I also know that things can’t happen overnight. But I also know that it’s not just about what I want. When I think about it, and get past the hurt, I feel that the fact that you are so important to me, and that I feel the way I do about you, means I’d rather sacrifice the way I feel, as I’ve done before now, if it means keeping you in my life. But I'm also scared that things won’t be the same. It’s a catch-22 for me; I don’t want to lose you but I don’t want things to be so vastly different between us that it feels like I have anyway.

Most of this is genuinely my problem. I’ve realised through the help I'm getting that I’ve got more issues than I’d care for, and I think in some ways all of this between us over the last few days has gotten mixed up in my depression. I know I’ve probably not been entirely fair on you, and I am truly sorry. My main problem is that I'm not in control of my emotions, they’re in control of me. I know it sounds like I'm making excuses, and I'm not trying to, I'm trying to explain that I'm so messed up that I'm sorry if I’ve hurt you. When you get this my mood and mind will have probably swung entirely the other way and in my head I’ll be blaming you for everything, which is just a load of crap. Then the next minute it’ll go somewhere else and I’ll be thinking “forget it, my feelings are gone, let’s go back to how things were etc.” and then the next minute it’ll go places I’d rather it didn’t and think things and want to do things I don’t want it do. I hope you can see how I'm struggling to live with myself, so god knows how hard it is for anyone else! Of course a part of me is angry about all of this, yes at you, and at everything, just as I expect and accept a big part of you is probably angry at me. But I know that part of my moving on with my life, if I'm going to have any chance of the life I want at all, involves leaving a hell of a lot of shit from in my head behind. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be quick, but that’s not your problem and it’s unfair to expect you to take that part of me on in your life at all. I’ve got a long way to go, and while I’d love for you to be able to help me through it, I feel that you’ve already done too much for me. You truly have been my ‘rock’ these past few months. Despite how infuriating you can be sometimes, I don’t think I could have got through it all, and still be here, without you!
Part of me feels a fool for some of the things I’ve said to you about how I feel about you this last month. It takes a lot for me to really let those barriers down, and let myself say some of the things I have. I’ve never said them to anyone else before, because I’ve never meant them before.
I need to learn to deal with life again, before I find myself entirely unable to. I know you’re probably tired of hearing all of this. I know from some of what you’ve said before, and not just you but others, that it just seems as though I take things to heart, am too sensitive, cant chill out, and feel sorry for myself etc, and while that does hurt when the people I care about say that to me, I know that’s how it looks.

I didn’t actually intend to say half of what I’ve ended up saying, but I think the Pringle effect seized me, (Once you pop…) so I am sorry.

I know you don’t understand this, but I honestly do think it would help me if you felt able to tell me the things you went to say and then didn’t, and now don’t want to because they’re not ‘appropriate’ and you don’t think it’d help. It would help me, because the not knowing is even now still driving me crazy. Like I say, I know you don’t understand that, but I’d rather have a few minutes of pain if you told me and be able to move on, than be wondering and not. I know it sounds crazy, whatever it is might not even seem important to you now, but to me, hearing something that might have been good then might conversely still feel good now. I can’t explain it, I can only hope that you can feel able to tell me, to help me out with that little bit of stress.

As I said, I really didn’t intend to write this much, but I think it’s because I'm so shaken at the minute and all over the place that talking to you was so hard. I really am sorry if my leaving so abruptly upset you or made you angry, I was just finding it so hard and didn’t want it to turn into a confrontation, so I had to leave. And I am sorry for the way I left the envelope with you. If it came out cruel, I didn’t mean it to. But I did always tell you, I only write about things I'm going crazy over, and as a rule, it aint usually good news if I do! For that, I'm sorry too. And I know the text message thing might seem lame, but when I couldn’t sleep and didn’t know what to do with myself, I ended up going back over things. I hate it, but I always do it. That’s what I mean about learning to leave things behind. Some of them really were good memories though, those will be the ones I hold onto, as long as I can forget the what happened next when I do remember them.

In some ways I really didn’t expect a text message after I left it with you, I didn’t even know if you would read any of it. But a part of me did hope you would say something, yes, and I was happy in a way when you did. I hope it did make you feel special, as you said it did, because you are. So special. Even if you don’t know what the Thames Barrier is, and even if you think you’re not ‘clever enough’ for me, even if you think Sheffield is near Essex, and even if you can’t eat in front of people you don’t know, all of that and everything you are is what makes you so special. At least to me. I think I know, in that heart of hearts of mine, that we wouldn’t work, as much as I also think and hope we would. Aside from you moving away, I’d probably end up making you feel you need to get away from me anyway, like most people end up feeling. It’s probably better, I know, that it happens this way. It was just hard hearing you say it so bluntly. It was hard to hear because it was such a change from how you’d said you felt. It was painful, I won’t lie. Of course a huge part of me wishes this wasn’t the way things have to end up, from when you told me how you felt, of course I still want us to happen more than anything, and I think we could make it work, but I know you don’t feel the same in that respect.

I just hope that whatever happens, now and in the future, whoever you end up falling in love with, wherever you end up going, whatever you do in your life, that you are happy. I hope that whoever is lucky enough to have you fall in love with them, treats you like you deserve, and loves you as much as you should be loved by someone you love back. I hope you know that I mean it when I say that you always have me, should you need me. (My iPod has decided to play The Script’s ‘Breakeven’ at this point, which is definitely not helping me stop crying while I write this, because I listen to the words in songs too much.) I hope that you realise how much I do love you, in every kind of way, and that means I’ll be there. The way I feel for you is like heaven and hell colliding, and I’m standing in the crossfire, but I’ll take it again and again if you need me.
Whether or not you feel able to reply to this, and I hope you do, know that I love you.
The thought of losing you, even though in a way I already have, is too much. To lose the one person who was there for me when no one else was, who stuck by me, who cared enough to even try and understand, to lose that one person who has come to mean more to me than almost everyone else I’ve cared for, is too much.

I don’t really know how to finish this now, I’ve always been crap at endings.
In some ways this feels like a goodbye, almost like you’re moving away tomorrow, or that I'm never going to see you again. Perhaps space from each other for a while is the way forward, I don’t know. I don’t know how you’ll feel when you finish reading this. I know that soon, I'm probably going to get away for a few days. Somewhere, I'm not sure where yet, and fairly soon. I just know I need to get away from everything before it’s too late.

I hope you do feel able to say something in answer to this, in some form. If you read this and want to call me, call me. If you read this and want to see me, call me. If you read this and want to write something back, do it. If you read this and never want to speak to me again, please just let me know that’s what you’ve decided. You know the not knowing kills me. All I ask, is honesty. Talk to me.

The last thing I can leave you with is what I couldn’t give you before. I left it out and I'm still not sure why. It was both the easiest and hardest thing I’ve ever written.

I love you Lucie, a part of me always has, and a part of me always will, no matter what.

“You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met.
You’re the most special person I’ve ever met…
You’re gorgeous. You’re kind. You’re funny.
You’re sweet. You’re so cute.”

And you said things that touched me.

You’re the most beautiful person to me.
You were the best friend a person could wish for.
You were my rock.
You’re one of the most infuriating people I know, but it’s all part of your charm.
You’re a true blonde at heart, but it’s all part of your charm.

You’re all I needed, and all I had.
My best friend.

“And you make me feel something I’ve never felt before.”


You said it better than I could.
“my words just break and melt.”


Me.




You.

You taught me that what I’d always thought was love,
wasn’t.

You taught me
that somebody you love
becomes something you’ve lost
all too easily.

What could have been
and couldn’t have,
becomes a painful dream of you and me
where I miss your face,
your voice and your smell,
your hands
and your heart,
where when I woke
I was sure I felt your fingers
running through my hair.

You gave me those few moments
of brief embrace and warmth,
and all there was,
was you.
Nothing but you.

I never even got to hold you,
to kiss you,
like I wanted to
like I thought you wanted to.
Like I still want to.

If there was any chance of one goodbye,
one real goodbye
that wouldn’t shatter me,
then I wish that I could take it.
Make that mistake that I didn’t make
that I wish I had
that I wish you wanted me to make.

I’d hold that one pure never-moment
and measure it.
Measure my pain
against my love
and see if I could let you go
so as not lose you.

I hope I could.
I think I could.
I'm sure I could.

If you called
I’d still come to you.
As long as you need me,
I don’t matter.
Not to me.

You taught me,
what I’d always thought was love,
was nothing even close.

Breaking, I reach for the poem.

I thought I had a break.
A break in the madness,
but now the break is somewhere else.

Crushing bleak love
hammers inwards.

The desperate black
months long been so threatening
the hand wavering and hovering
falls again.

A hand punches
a hole in my chest
back again. The last time it was here
it never really healed.

The face that soothed me
turns no other cheek
turns no cheek whatsoever
just turns away.

Someone else will get what I wanted
again. What I loved
what I needed.
What I thought, for a I moment, I had.
Or so she told me.

Mountains rise and fall
but mine just keeps on keeps on rising up
and I havent got the legs
or the heart
to keep the climb.

One heart healed the other hurt
and now they both burn as new as a baby
feverish and fatal,
damning heart hurt.

The desperate, crushing black
the illness in me
learning me and thrilling
ripe on my shoulders, rippling as it runs across
and thrums through my brain.

The illness in me
that is me as I was born and bleed
wants to kill me soon.
The illness that destroys me moves
and pushes all away soon.

The black belief has no reprive
and no relief.
Not so as I breathe I do it freely from’t.
Damning black.

So black it has no name.
So full it has no mass, no weight.
So wrong it knows no right.
So swollen, cruel and crushing,
all in a moment and every
one of them.


Smothers me in all it's hell
and laughs at me.

So long as I remember me
I remember it too.
Days and nights and shame
and frights.
Always living.

The illness in me hates me
and I hate it back, with all the hate I feel for me
and more.
All the fuel they give to me
the words and wounds
I use to hate it.

The black wont leave when I bleed
and the black wont leave when I scream
and the black wont leave when I cry.
The black leaves
when I leave.

And it wants to leave as much as I do.

Hate me and I’ll hate me too
hate the blackness and brightness that I wish for
that slips away and runs
like the light from the light.

Fix me
and I’ll be perfect.

I've got the makings of a wonder in me,
the mind works too much
the body works not enough
because it's all broken.

Fix me
and I’ll be perfect.

Fix me
and the black leaves and it’ll just be me.
As I want to be,
As I dream to be.

Swallowing me and thorns in the back of my hands,
splinter and spit me out
slashed and scorned and sleepless.
Laughter in the black.

You didnt see the hell in me
but now you do.

Now you do.