High School Letters and Radiohead - Story #12

November 17

A couple days later she sent me this response:

To: lorenzoraymundo@hotmail.com 
From: JessicaT*****7@yahoo.com
Subject: 'Let Down'

Dear Lorenzo,

I know that you’ve never intended to let me down, but you consistently do. It's so easy to talk about happy endings, but if a person can't deliver, if that person keeps making the same mistakes… well, eventually I guess you just have to say fuck you. Or words to that effect. You say you don't want this life – all I ever hear about is how you're meant for something greater; how you want something more, something with substance. Yet it seems to me that you don’t. Not really. Talk is cheap - actions are choices. I'll admit that you're noble in belief, but you're so weak in action. I need something tangible, something I can believe in. You should have chased me out of the club that night. You should have fought for me.

But okay... let's give it one last try.

Jess

November 14 – Sometime after midnight ('No Surprises' playing in the background)

I feel guilty. I technically didn't cheat on her, but the feeling is just the same. It has me acting outside of myself. It's been a couple of days since we've seen (or talked to) each other. She refuses to return my phone calls, and the text message ratio is easily 5 to 1. As a rule of thumb, I generally like to keep said ratio heavily in my favour, but with Jessica, that rule has been completely abolished, and I've pretty much been reduced to stalking her as my only form of contact.

I'm at a dead end. In one final move of desperation, I decide to send a high school-esque “you’re-the-one-for-me-I’m-sorry-I’m-such-a-douche” letter.


To: JessicaT*****7@yahoo.com 
From: lorenzoraymundo@hotmail.com
Subject: 'Karma Police'

Dear Jessica,

I don't even know where to start. I guess I'll start by saying something I never said nearly enough: I love you.

Growing up, my parents never said those three words to each other; I thought that I’d be different, but I guess I'm not. I try not to be like them, but somewhere along the line you slip into what you know. I'm sorry about that.

I'm also sorry that we haven't been happy for a while. I don't remember what went wrong between us, or the exact moment everything changed, I just know that it did. One minute we're laughing and planning the rest of our lives together, the next we're here – in this place – filled with anger and resentment. It seemed like it all happened in the blink of an eye; our smiles turned into fights, our laughs turned into scowls. I don't know if that’s my fault or if it’s yours, or if it's just how things go, but I guess it doesn't really matter because this is the reality of us... this is where we are.

I also have a confession to make. I met someone the other night and came dangerously close to crossing that line. I don't know what combination of thoughts of you stopped me from going farther, but something did. I do these things - coasting along life, acting a fool and making the same mistakes. I don't know why. Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just not built that way. Maybe I'll never change.

I have this recurring dream that I wake up in the twilight of my life in this habitual but unfamiliar place. In a conventional home with a two-car garage, surround sound and a yard with a garden filled with dead flowers. There is a faint whisper of children making breakfast that echoes through the hall. I can hear them from where I lay... barely awake, sleep still dormant in my eyes. I get on my feet and hastily make my way to the shower, aware that I'm behind in my daily routine. I put on an ironed pair of pants, then the suit jacket and shirt to match. I pick out a tie from my vast collection, inhale deeply and fall back onto the bed. I let the sheets and the dark thoughts birthed by the paradigm of mediocrity consume me for a brief, but seemingly eternally fading moment. These introspective thoughts do not escape me – they are buried for the time being, but are carried deep in my pocket until the day that I can muster the courage to act upon them.

I walk down the stairs. There are old photographs of the undying ghosts of what once was adorning the walls. They greet me with an unforgiving torment – haunting and mocking my very existence. I turn a blind eye to them and keep walking. I jump on a train, drink a hot cup of coffee and read the paper. I sit in a box, underachieving for half my day, and return home when the sun turns dark. I go back to sleep and wake up to the same day. Every day.

For so long I've had this dream, and for so long I’ve fought against anything remotely close to it. But then I met someone. She was totally unexpected and, truth be told at the time, undesired. I wasn't looking for her. I wasn't searching. It was totally random. It just happened. She smiled at me and I smiled back. We would lie in bed for hours like idiots, staring at each other. Just smiling. She wouldn't say a word and neither would I. The next thing I knew, I felt at home in that silence. It's a cold, unwelcoming world out there – full of artificial and expressionless people. I was so fearful of being lost in that passionless routine before she found me. The thought of coming home to her makes that routine bearable. Desirable, even.

I don't know if I believe in 'the one', but if I did, I have this feeling that she might be it. She's completely spontaneous and enigmatic, but in a way that is absolutely disarming. She is you, Jess.

I used to be impenetrable - nothing could touch me. Then you came along, and, in that instant, my heart was beating outside of my chest, exposed to the world in all its fragility. Loving you was unexpected and undesired, but it has been the most powerful, profound and agonizing experience of my life.

I wanted so badly to protect you... to rescue you from your past, but in the end you needed to protect yourself from me. I’m the one who ended up hurting you. I know it's been a while since we knew how to be happy together, and it’s become increasingly obvious that maybe we just can't be together. Maybe you're right. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe I never really took the time to understand you. It's true, I don't know how to be with you right now, and that scares the hell out of me. But I have this feeling that if we give up now, we might get lost out there and never find our way back to that comforting silence.

I don't know what the future holds or what's going to happen between us. I don't have any logical reason to give this another shot, but God damn I can't stop thinking about you. I miss coming home to you… and we knock the boots pretty well, that's gotta count for something right?

Please call me...

Lorenzo.

P.S. I've been drinking and, in hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have had Radiohead's 'Ok Computer' album on repeat while I wrote that letter.