I'd say that this is one of my less graceful letters and it's also one I've been too scared to write. I guess you do get braver as time goes by. I've always avoided using the word lonely in any letter, any conversation; I tiptoe by the word cautiously, circle around it like a potential threat, I make sure never to use it as a description of myself. If you get to close, it bites. Don't get me wrong, I'm not really scared of loneliness; I've known lonely, I've been lonely, I lay down my weapons and sleep next to it every night, it doesn't scare me. It doesn't scare me as long as it's unpronounced, because saying it is an open and public declaration that I "need" someone and that is a place of vulnerability I absolutely refuse to step into. I know you frown on my constant flight from vulnerability and I know you think of me as too proud. Maybe I am. Believe me, Tom, I've tried to be like you; open, vulnerable, graceful even in turmoil, but I'm not built like that. I'm built for the graceless disarrayed quiet. The one you brush by, scrunch your nose at and never stay. You hold your breath until you're well out of sight, then you breathe right again. I know you can see through me so I won't tell you I've made my peace with it. I haven't really made peace with anything, but I repeat like a mantra, over and over again, trying to manifest it into existence. "That which we manifest is before us", I tell myself through the disquiet. That which we manifest is before us. Hoping it's true. Hoping I can be light. If one thing remains ceaseless, it's that I look to you for the light I do not have within me. And it perseveres.
Yours always,
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