Saturday, November 6, 2010

A Note to a Friend

A longish time ago, in a wrecked state of mind, I wrote an almost-suicide note to my best friend. I've edited some of it down, and I'm going to post it here.

I think I should point out that when I did this, drugs were still running through my system.

So yeah, I'm a bit better.
But I found it almost charming, this letter from my past self.

I don't know when you'll ever see this. I don't know what will have happened by then. I am so sad. I don't even know what this means, why I do. But then again I do know, it's because no one understands it anymore, the way I wonder at things and elaborate on them and everyone just doesn't listen or doesn't care and says I think too much. It's like how we said before--we'll figure it out and then we'll die. I'm just waiting for my truck to hit me and I miss you so much, because you would understand. Wouldn't you? Would you? Sometimes when we talk I feel like you're only half-listening and just waiting to talk yourself.

I don't like being a mean cynical old hag, I really don't. But I am.

I feel suspended in mid-air, like all the things I've ever thought about are completely uncertain and I can never get back in the box, now I'm a sphere but because I'm so open I think about both sides and now nothing makes sense because it can't make sense and it won't make sense and it could make sense if I just step into the box but I can't because I don't want to be that person. And maybe I've had all my opportunities and never taken them and never stood up so now I don't get anymore. And now I'm just a sheep in the masses and you know, this whole life thing is pointless. Because all we want is to be remembered but sometime down the line we all get forgotten so what's the point? Yeah old things are remembered, like Gilgamesh. But there was a whole other time, a whole other ancient before that.

I just wish all my puzzle pieces would fit together right but they won't because I missed something--I've always missed something.

When I was a very little girl I had a dream that God was talking to me. And I got so scared of this giant voice that no one else heard that I just shut my eyes and balled myself up and didn't listen.

I feel like I should have listened, but instead I was a stupid silly girl, like usual.

And there went something amazing. Something important that I missed.

Ashley, I used to live for things. I used to live for music and singing and everyone said I was good at it and it came so naturally. And then the loneliness ate it up and everything else and eventually it just dried up and I couldn't do it anymore. Yesterday I sang. Yesterday I was good again. Yesterday I was beautiful and brilliant and sexy and amazing and everything was right for just a few songs from Phantom of the Opera and the Lion King.

And then no one will listen again. And now I'm here, writing you something that may be a suicide note but I just don't know or understand.

I mean, why do people throw their friendships away? It's the most important thing.

And why are people so obsessed with fitting in and being in love more than being themselves and loving everyone else? Love is just pure narcissism. It's just making someone feel good so that they will make you feel good and back and forth and up and down and all around and it's ribbons tying up the heart and choking it to death and don't these people understand that that love with that person won't last? It may, there's a chance, but for the most part we're always growing so shouldn't they not commit so fully, for life, with this person? Because if they grow apart, chances are they're stuck or in pain. Financially it's just not smart.

Like that saying "only the rich can afford to divorce" well shouldn't it be a step before that? Only the rich can afford to marry and then twenty years later divorce?

It's a fleeting little hot spot that will grow cold one day. Unless you're super lucky and not only is your lover your lover but also your soulmate. But then again the older souls are just split up more so you can have dozens upon dozens of soulmates. and love each of them. Right?

Tell Chelsie that I'm very thankful to her. She and Kaylah showed me what true friendship was for the first time.

that's not to say we were never true friends--we were, we are still.

But we were thrown together and mixed up and our friendship isn't necessarily just because we like each other--it's that we're entwined somehow, that we had to be friends or else our lives wouldn't have moved forward in the right way.

The only thing is...I'm pretty sure my life is stopped. I keep thinking "no, there's always tomorrow, you aren't even twenty yet, when you're thirty you'll look back and see that this was just silly and you were just young."

but I've never seen myself as older. Its just blank.

I'm scared to death (haha, you'll see the humor in that statement some day) that I'm going to be ordinary. plain. just another machine.

I can't do it anymore. Even my plans of going to NYC, even the thought of my plans to go there...it's like I've fantasized it so much that it's already happened and now I'm done. I've gone there and I've done things in my head, and now the universe won't let me do them for real.

Something was there, in my soul, but it was morning. It was morning, the time, and it was also morning, the feeling. It was new and dawny and pleasant and gorgeous and there was my connection again. And it made me feel tingly and not alone.

But it won't give me anything but a sense of peace.

I had a dream today when I was napping that there were two shadow dogs in my grandparent's house and they were trying to attack us all and eat us and I yelled, I roared, and my voice almost but not quite was a Lion's roar and they went away. And then I pushed it down and it was on the floor and it was physical and I could beat it and when I finished beating it it had peed on the kitchen floor, right in front of the stove. and I picked it up and I carried it to a room I'd never seen before where the doors were hooks to the walls and netting in the spaces the walls were missing but instead of a vicious black dog it was a leopard. And then a panther. and some sort of small panther though, like a really big black and brown cat. and I remember looking at it and feeling regret and I wished i hadn't have hurt it. And then I realized that it wasn't a dog, it was a cat, and I love cats. I just hurt something I loved.

Then it began to awaken lying on the bed in the middle of the room, and I closed the door and tried to put up netting but I knew that wouldn't hold it, but maybe just maybe it would. and the cat was my sister, she woke up and sat up and we talked and laughed about something and then I woke up and thought about how much I'd like to be a lion. Not a lioness, but a lion, with a full mane.

Remember when I told you that some people die when they weren't supposed to? And how I thought it worked both ways and that sometimes maybe people who were supposed to have died lived instead? When they weren't supposed to? And how I thought I was one of those people?

(Here I told her about a theory I had and a story that I had to go with it. I tell her to write it.)

I'd do it myself, but I just don't feel it anymore. I just don't understand anything, but yet I understand everything.

I felt like I should be a transparent eyeball, like Emerson says. And this time I'll not repel everything because it has two sides, I'll pick what I love and believe and like and what I don't care for, and I'll suck it into myself and let it paint itself on my skin and color the twinkles in my eyes and let it whisper into my hair. And there I'll sit in the stars.

And the scientists? they're wrong. they aren't just giant balls of gas. they're the world's lovers and a race of their own. They are where dancers and grace are born and sent to us way down here.

So maybe, hopefully, I'll do that and be that and everything will be fine.

Ignorance is bliss, knowledge is conflicting, but loving and accepting things is the stuff where dreams thrive. I want to thrive again.

I have been cutting myself open and sewing myself up, but not physically.

You were right.

I'm not sure anymore, what to do. I don't want to outright make myself die. But if it happens sometime soon, at least now you'll know all of this.

Hah, the little there is to know from my brain. I only put down about 1/99th of what I've figured out. Oh well.

If I do die sometime or somehow, recognize me in other things, and other places. I don't believe that time is linear, i believe it is cicular and intertwining in the most elaborate fashion. I believe my life now is also my life then, and another is here on this earth at this moment in a different place. Hell, maybe all the good feelings we get from places is just a future or past self saying hello in passing. if that makes sense, hahaha!

Do me a favor. if I don't die for another ten to fifty years, don't speak of this message to me. The next time we speak on the phone, don't bring it up or hint at it, or ever again.

By the way, if I do die you can bet your bottom dollar I'll fight through hell and highwater (hmm. maybe literally?) to come visit your board and cards and self and dreams. So it's never really goodbye, right?

See you on the flipside.

2 comments:

  1. this is really beautiful.
    sad, but beautiful.

    it's interesting to read letters from yourself.
    xo

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  2. wow, this was so powerful. i'm sorry you were in such a sad place in your life.

    ReplyDelete