My Last Letter to the Boy

Dear Boy,

I was thinking back over my blog posts, because, you know, I'm starting a new blog for Europe and I don't really know if this is something I want to continue post-college, and if I do, it'll probably be much more intentional and focused, or something like that, and I was thinking about how I have all these little bits of writing that are Letters to A Boy. I've decided for sure that this is my last Letter to A Boy because I'm done doing passive things like this. I'm done being the kind of person who sits back and pines after someone but never does anything about it. I've seen the kind of person that makes me and I don't like it.

Listen, I want you in my life in some manner. I know we're in different places with all these different plans and I know where your passions lie and I can't pretend mine are in exactly the same place, but I also know that I really like the person you make me be. You've said things that still make me see the best in me and now, even when I feel really convicted by something you say, you still remind me of the person I'm meant to be, so it's still a good thing. I mean, I know it's never about me but sometimes I think that we're not in such different places after all.


Ugh, but I don't know because I never see you and I never get to talk to you and I would dearly love to talk to you and figure out what you're thinking not only because I get so much inspiration from your drive and your purpose and your clear calling but also because we're friends, you know, we've been friends in the past, and I'm a pack rat- I hate giving up anything that could even remotely still have some kind of value. And I think you're valuable. I think you're a worthy person and I'm tired of letting worthy people walk out of my life. You know, this entire month, this semester, all of my friends have been saying good-bye to things. I think that's why I might be ending my blog, so I can have some closure, some good-bye to something. But I'm not going anywhere next year- I'm still around and so good-byes don't seem appropriate. Though maybe I have been saying some and I just didn't realize it because I cried so much during Michael's last episode on The Office. I mean, really, if Jim is allowed to cry, I'm allowed to bawl. Anyway, off topic. My point was, I don't think I have to say my last good-bye to you yet, and I don't really want to.

Then again, maybe we're not friends. Maybe I'm just making that up. Friends tell each other things, right? Keep each other updated on their lives? Like, a friend of mine just told me that he and his wife are having a baby and I am so extraordinarily excited for them. My world just lit up from vicarious happiness, all from the good news of a friend. And friends tell each other bad news as well. Like, I've been telling all of my friends the story of my subletting woes, and even though things like this are exorbidantly trivial, my friends pretend to be interested and for this I am superbly grateful. Yeah, it's actually probably a smart decision on your part to not be friends with me, what with all the complaining and the whining and the inaction. Or maybe it's not, maybe I am actually a worthwhile person as well, I just haven't been acting like it recently. It's so hard to tell.

Sorry, sorry, all of these things are not to the point. You know, I don't really even know what the point is anymore. I can't say that I love you. What a funny phrase. I meant that kinda idiomatically, something along the lines of, "I can't say that I'd ever want a zombie unicorn, because they just seem to be an ineffective combination of two very different imaginary beings," as opposed to the literal meaning, that I can't physically say that I love you, which is also true. One of the things that I've learned about myself is that I find it difficult to verbally express affection. I will do your dishes because I love you, I will listen to you talk for hours because I love you, I will cease to judge all of the insane yet adorable things you do because I love you, but I will hardly ever use those three words. And I can't say that I love you, not only because love is a creepy obsessive kind of thing that's only healthy when both parties are in on the game, but also because maybe I don't. Maybe I don't and maybe I've been lying to myself for a long time to limit all of the negative potentials that are available to me in a world where I don't, in fact, love you.

So I don't love you but I kinda want you to be around in my future life (isn't Facebook a wonderfully convenient way to keep people in your life and yet at that great safe distance where you never actually have to care how they're doing?) because I respect you as a human being. Yup, this is a winner of a letter. But I think I wanted you to see how far I've come, even though, looking back, I think I envy the faith of the person that walked into an empty dorm room freshman year to nervously check her email more than the tired doubt of the exhausted soul that moved out of her apartment four years later. We learn so much, you know, we see so much. And I just wish I knew how to keep the practice and the promise and the hope of the person I used to be and put that into the person I am, 'cause I feel like she could use it. Do you have that problem? At all? I just, you know, I just think you're perfect. And I know that's not fair, but, hey, maybe it's just the boost you needed, maybe you needed to hear that today. Goodness, I hope you never need to hear that, but, for my sake, I hope that you did.

OK, two more things, even though I know you stopped reading like three paragraphs ago. One, I really want you to listen to The Avett Brothers because I feel like your life would be a better place because of them because, even though there's no name dropping with Jesus or God or anything, there's this wonderful beauty in the things they say, and I think you can find God there too. And two, poetry, because I hear English majors like that kind of thing and also because I'm trying to turn into a person with a soul and I hear poetry is helpful with that (even though I stole this from my best friend's wall, no lie):

In men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still,
In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I do not dare to draw a line
Between the two, where God has not.

-Joaquin Miller

So there, that's the best I have to offer, a recommendation to people braver than me and words that were written by someone more inspired than me. No, I know it's not. I know I have such wonderful potential, like we all do. It's hard to feel it sometimes, you know?

Especially after you've written a letter to the love of your life telling him that you don't love him.

It's just that I'm going away for two months without any hope of seeing you and I had to say something because part of me is crazy and that part of me thinks with a nameless hope that our future will be gloriously different from what we make of it. Whatever we make of it.

Anyway.

Much love,
Addie Jo