A Letter

[Alan Sondheim]

A Letter


I wasn't expecting you to write to me.

I'm a little sad and confused myself.

I'm not very happy when I'm living in limbo.

  Even though it hurt to lose you, it feels better than wondering if you
would ever decide how you felt about me.

  I cut things off because I wanted to move on. When you say that you don't
want to write about how you feel or have been feeling, but you say we need
to communicate, what exactly do you want to communicate?

  What else is there besides how you feel or have been feeling? In the
absence of that, I have to guess how you feel.

  The best guess I came up with was that you just weren't into me all that
much any more.

  And I don't want to waste my time on someone who isn't into me. It hurts
a lot to be with someone who says that maybe he loves me and hints that he
finds me pretty unpleasant.

  When I was with you, I felt like I was a huge disappointment for you.

Now you can be disappointed with someone else.

I guess I'm still angry.

I love you.

  That isn't good enough, though.

  I can't even name what our problems are, so I don't see how those
problems could ever be fixed.

  I have little faith that we can communicate without professional
assistance.

  Are you ready for that?

  Have you been getting therapy for yourself?

  You said you wanted to do that first, so that's more waiting limbo for
me. Anyway, I think you're right.

  Our feelings have never been able to make up for our problems. I'm trying
to solve my own problems now.

  I don't think I can be any good to anyone until I'm good with myself. I
never wanted to lose you either.

  But it would be far worse to lose myself, and I'm the one who needs all
of my spare time and effort right now. I wish it didn't have to be this
way.

  There's this part of me that's trying to figure out the magic thing to
say to make everything work out in the end for us.

  But that's just me trying to manipulate the situation.

  I can't control this or make it work out. You do what you've gotta do.

  I'm doing what I have to do.

  I don't exactly miss you.

  You're heart left me so long ago, I got used to you being gone.

I miss the memory of you from long, long ago, when you were a god to me and
I wanted to be just like you.

  I miss how I felt about myself when I met you.

  I felt pretty and amazing and creative and like I was an extraordinary
being.

  And I thought all of that about you, too.

  Somehow, for both of us, our self-esteem and excitement about being in
the world slowly eroded. Maybe all those good feelings in the beginning
were artificial, or exaggerated. But I'm trying to emerge for real now.
I'm not looking to you to help me feel good about myself, or blaming you
for making me feel bad about myself. I don't know what you're doing, or
how you feel.

  I can't be responsible for that.

So why are you angry with me for cutting you off?

  What would you have me

  I didn't want to talk to you anymore because I didn't want to go
through the agony of hoping it would work out for us. Especially when you
wouldn't even commit to trying. I think I also wanted to prove that I'm not
like      .

  But maybe it's you who's like      .

  Maybe you enjoy the unstable drama of loving someone who doesn't give you
what you want.

I'm getting what I want for myself.

I want things to work out for us somehow, but only on terms that feel right
and healthy.

  I don't know what that would be like, exactly.

This is a long letter.

  Longer than         wants right now.

  He's singing "          " in my face to get my attention. He misses you.

  He asked if you could come over Thursday night.

  I didn't know if it was better to say yes or no.

I know nothing.


_