Dear M,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it happened, and I suffered, but I’m not suffering anymore. I don’t feel guilty, I don’t feel vengeful\u2026 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78,"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/78"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}