3/25/18 -- 2:00 AM
They say that when you're angry at someone, you should write them a letter. Put
all of your anger into words on the paper, put it in an envelope, write their
address and stamp it.
And then dont mail it.
Who am I angry at?
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I've been thinking a lot about you, Hanna. It's almost been a year since you
died. It's been over 2 since we talked. Over four since we REALLY talked.
There's this line in a poem about someone who died.
"Though you chose to die
five years ago, Alex, I still write
your name on chalkboards
and stray sheets of paper.
I always leave out the E
I am not finished with you yet."
When I blogged about certain people, I refused to use their name. instead, I
would stylize it. You were italics. She was strikethrough. Others were bold.
Everything is a metaphor.
I think about the parts of you I keep with me. I still look up at the moon every
night and comment on its beauty. Nobody stops to stand and stare at it with me
like you made me do. I find myself saying "oofta" far too often, and always
smiling at the wrong moments in conversations because you taught me how to get
lost. I think about the hollow emptiness you gave me to keep buried in my chest
that night. That night, you taught me fear, pain, sadness.
That night, I became so much more like you.
I do not carry parts of other people with me like I do you. It makes me fearful
of the other parts I kept that I don't yet know about. You gifted me with
confidence and courage and pride, but how many more people do I have to cheat on
before that lesson becomes a curse? Did you leave me anything else? Under the
pillow, where we both kept knives? I started taking medication to help with my
"low mood". I remember how you hated that idea, of either of us being less than
a 10, less than perfect.
You killed yourself with pills.
Did you leave me that too?
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