Dear M,
You’ve been on my mind a lot lately, but I haven’t really felt much pain. The thought of you would rip me to shreds, but now I don’t feel anything. Have I become stronger? Or did I give you every peice of humanity I had?
I feel numb – and I test this numbness with thoughts of you. Can I feel anything? Not like I used to; I just feel calm. I hope all is well with you, and I really think I mean that. What good does it do the world for you to suffer, especially when you have a family. You were my best friend, and I can’t avoid that. I loved you, maybe even still do, and I can’t avoid that. I just accept it, and move forward.
The all-consuming guilt I wrote to your mother about has dissappated. I don’t hate myself anymore, but I don’t really love myself either. I’m quite apathetic. The shame, it’s not even worth feeling. We were just two kids, who can really shoulder that blame?
So it happened, and I suffered, but I’m not suffering anymore. I don’t feel guilty, I don’t feel vengeful… but do I maybe feel a little bit guilty? I don’t know. I rationalize it so quickly now after building an entire moral compass that’s sole purpose was to escape that feeling.
When I absolved myself of guilt, I absolved you of any of the subjective blame I could place on you. I spent a lot of time thinking that I wanted you to feel guilty too, but I think all I wanted was for you to be thinking about me. It didn’t seem fair that your life moved on when mine didn’t – but I was the one who was refusing to let go. Maybe I just wanted to know that you loved me?
Maybe I still haven’t really let go. As I reflect, I wonder to myself if I’ve built a whole metaphysics around avoiding the pain you put me through. (The previous sentences shows a hint of my irrationality, that I quickly corrected myself and stated “he was a fucking child” – I thought about erasing it to restate “the pain I went through thinking about what had happened” – but it didn’t feel honest.)
I’ve spent years attempting to escape my own self – justifying this idea that the metaphysical being-in-itself of the self is non-existant – that all we have is this being-for-itself – some strange dependent manifestation of qualitative experience over which we have no direct control. If “I” don’t exist – and persist – through time, then you really never hurt “me”. You hurt a previous manifestation – that which I no longer am. I’ve not overcome anything – I’ve just denied it ever happened to “me”.
And maybe you never really did hurt “me” – I just held onto the pain of the little girl that I once was. Built a whole identity on the pain of that little girl. Spent a decade thinking she was disgusting.