Please Understand This
creation
Some days I don’t know if these letters ever reach you.
But I’m too big of a coward to ever ask you face to face if you get my letters. Because if you do get them, then you might look at me and really see everything underneath the wrinkles and lipstick and cigarette smoke. You’ll see it and walk away, or even worse, you’ll want to talk it through. I hated when you used to try to do that, not because I thought you would judge me, but because the words that would work their way out of my mouth were sharp and they tended to cut me from the inside out.
Or, you would have no idea what I was talking about and you would want to know. You’re a good person that way, you want to understand.
It’s a really rare quality.
Most people are just curious, but you actually care about the answers.
I think that’s why I never wanted to let you in.
You are such a bright light, and I am so dark. Who would I be to drag you down with me into the dark corners of my mind? Who would I be to let the monster in me embrace you so tightly?
When I was younger, in college, the monsters were smaller and easier to wrangle back into their cages. I was still fragile. I never felt good enough, smart enough, hard enough. It was like people were always pushing me to be more, and somehow, and I have no fucking idea how, but somehow people put these expectations on me.
They would always tell me how “much more” I could be. Everyone was always telling me their ideas and their feelings and their plans and their expectations for my mind and body and future.
That’s the type of world we live in.
We raise our children and we groom them and we whisper in their ears as they sleep that they can be anything, that they can do anything, that they hold the very soul of the universe in their palm.
But we don’t mean it.
Anything is a relative term.
Anything is a harsh term.
Anything is a lie.
That’s probably why I hate it more than anything, not because people say anything, but because they lie about it. They say anything but they mean anything that is of use. They mean anything outside of what they deem the criminal. They mean anything but the strange or awkward.
I think that’s another reason why I couldn’t do it anymore. It was like my life had turned into an empty charade and having to run it over and over and over again for every stranger that walked through the doors of my life had taken too hard of a toll.
Do you know what I would do?
If I could do anything?
I think I would create.
I would create everything. I would make art and books and I would create people and pieces of furniture and I would create love and laughter and then I would roll it all up and light it on fire. I’d inhale it and let it sit in my lungs and I’d cough it up and sit in the smoke of my creation and feel it running through my veins.
I would like that.
Jenna
But I’m too big of a coward to ever ask you face to face if you get my letters. Because if you do get them, then you might look at me and really see everything underneath the wrinkles and lipstick and cigarette smoke. You’ll see it and walk away, or even worse, you’ll want to talk it through. I hated when you used to try to do that, not because I thought you would judge me, but because the words that would work their way out of my mouth were sharp and they tended to cut me from the inside out.
Or, you would have no idea what I was talking about and you would want to know. You’re a good person that way, you want to understand.
It’s a really rare quality.
Most people are just curious, but you actually care about the answers.
I think that’s why I never wanted to let you in.
You are such a bright light, and I am so dark. Who would I be to drag you down with me into the dark corners of my mind? Who would I be to let the monster in me embrace you so tightly?
When I was younger, in college, the monsters were smaller and easier to wrangle back into their cages. I was still fragile. I never felt good enough, smart enough, hard enough. It was like people were always pushing me to be more, and somehow, and I have no fucking idea how, but somehow people put these expectations on me.
They would always tell me how “much more” I could be. Everyone was always telling me their ideas and their feelings and their plans and their expectations for my mind and body and future.
That’s the type of world we live in.
We raise our children and we groom them and we whisper in their ears as they sleep that they can be anything, that they can do anything, that they hold the very soul of the universe in their palm.
But we don’t mean it.
Anything is a relative term.
Anything is a harsh term.
Anything is a lie.
That’s probably why I hate it more than anything, not because people say anything, but because they lie about it. They say anything but they mean anything that is of use. They mean anything outside of what they deem the criminal. They mean anything but the strange or awkward.
I think that’s another reason why I couldn’t do it anymore. It was like my life had turned into an empty charade and having to run it over and over and over again for every stranger that walked through the doors of my life had taken too hard of a toll.
Do you know what I would do?
If I could do anything?
I think I would create.
I would create everything. I would make art and books and I would create people and pieces of furniture and I would create love and laughter and then I would roll it all up and light it on fire. I’d inhale it and let it sit in my lungs and I’d cough it up and sit in the smoke of my creation and feel it running through my veins.
I would like that.
Jenna