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Dear Sir or Sirs:
That is to say, To Whom It May Concern:

I've never been good at talking to you. It almost never gets fully casual, there's always an air of consciousness. We're always looking out for what we might say, or might not say, or might have said but didn't. Maybe that last one is just me, who knows. When we talk seriously it can be quite comfortable in an uncomfortable sort of way. Did I say I was going to make sense? No, so just hear me out. I will caution, though, I have no idea how long this will be so take a seat. You'll need the anchor to the earth.

I met all of you at different times, usually fairly spaced apart but sometimes not. One of you, of course, knows what you mean to me (I accidentally typed "meant" – I considered leaving it) and that you've been that way to me for almost two years. That's a long time. It's a longer time than I expected, but looking back it's almost a longer time than I wanted. I always said forever, shit we both said forever. We had that idea to die together, remember? We were crazy, and for as young as you were I was younger. You hadn't gotten old yet though, you were still a bit of a child. Now you're old as dust, about ready to return to those ashes, this time not to arise again. You're still soul-searching, but it's been dreadfully unsuccessful.

Guess what?

It didn't go well for me either.

You said I was scared of something, but I'd love to ask you what it is that you're scared of exactly. It's not the personal issues you're having, the decisions you're going to be forced to make. It's something deeper – deeper than the fear of failure, even of failing your unborn child. You did something, a long time ago, and I only have the vaguest inclination based off of what you half-whispered to me in the balmy night of an August that feels like forever ago. Even at that time, we were still thirsty children, oh we thirsted after some kind of water that might cleanse us of our sins. Your sins are different from mine, of course. But if the same water worked for both of us, then all the better. I don't think you thought I'd remember – nobody ever thinks I'll remember and then they wonder how I know so much – but I did, and I won't forget. It made you who you are. You might not think so, but I think it was the turning point. You can't go back, and you know that as well as I do, but still in your childlike way, you're trying to.

Don't.

Cos that would mean I'd have to relive those two years, and damn me but I wouldn't change a second. I wouldn't change any of the hurt because for every moment of hurt there was some sort of happiness. There was happiness left over from hours of talking, from misadventures, from not thinking. Even though you abandoned me (frame it how you want – you abandoned me, and you're a liar if you say you didn't), you just so happen to have returned. You can do what you want, doesn't affect me, but what I beg you to do is remember. If I had any influence on you at all, just keep it in mind and don't forget it. Don't forget one of the people who really and truly loved you in the purest way.

There were various people who came in between, who showed up and left some sort of a mark, but they were bruises, not scars, cos they faded away eventually. Some of us don't even talk anymore. I take that back – anybody from that in between period and I have stopped talking. I hate it, I'd love to have them all back but since when does anybody ever get what they want? If I had to lose some people, I had to lose some people. It happened because it was the best possible outcome. Who knows what might have happened. It could have been that they were taken from my life because it would have been trouble if they'd have stuck around. All I know is that it took nearly another two years to begin the process anew.

You confuse me, though not as much as other people do. Your impact on me has been pretty different too. Because it's not obvious at all – nobody would think I was any different for having met you, except that I have another friend. They'd be wrong if they thought that. I think the influence on me has mostly been in the decisions I make. I can't look at some people, or listen to them, without thinking about things you've said about them. The worst one was "I don't trust him." Hopefully you're wrong, but you haven't been wrong on this topic very often. Please be wrong.

I thought I might trust people more, if I met more of them, if I met more people like you who give good hugs and good advice and when they say "I hate you" it really means "I love you." It didn't turn out that way. I second guess every person I run into who says "Tell me your story." I tell them bits and pieces now, things I think they might identify with or that they might understand, or just enough to send them looking in the wrong direction. People aren't aware of who I know, or who I'm talking to, or who I'm close to. I don't advertise it, but I might have before I met you. I might have been proud. Don't get me wrong, I still have pride. I still have too much pride, but what did that ever do for me? Absolutely nothing, that's what, except make me stubborn enough to stand up to you and hit you back.

But the way we viewed our sins is different. If ours happen to converge, neither of us has let the other know. I've told you as much as I'm going to but it seems that we couldn't be more different. Do you have sins? Your sins seem to be more like white lies when compared to real and true deceit. We've never tried to help each other, we've never gone seeking help (at the beginning, though, it was different). If help happens to come from the other, then it's an accident that's taken in stride. You take me in stride. I try to do the same with you but I can't. You knock me over every time. All I want to do now is stand there and take the charge, and that's all that ever happens.

You've never sinned in your life.

You will never find out what you mean to me (typed meant again, this time I didn't think about taking it back), I'll make sure of that. But I think I can express it easily enough in what I beg you to do: Don't leave. Don't ever leave. I don't necessarily mean "Don't leave me," I've been left enough to know that's a stupid wish, but just don't go. Stay where you are, be what draws us back home, what makes us want to come back to humid days in July and days in March where there's three inches of snow on the ground one day and it's sixty degrees the
next. Make us want to come home.

Make me want to come home.

And it wasn't too long after that I ran into the most confounding problem I've ever had in my life.

One time I wrote a letter to somebody else and at the bottom I defined love as something like caring and affection, not anything related to sex or devotion or marriage. I'd like to point out that I don't get anything like that from you. But I'd also like to point out first that I was getting happier in the month or so between one and then the other, the other being you. I didn't know where we would go – if me and some people have very little in common, at least we have something in common other than simple biology. You and I have almost nothing – when we talk, it seems like that whatever one of us said gets discounted by the other. It's always debate, and arguing, and very rarely simple discussion.

Yet I always seem to be talking to you. I can't stop. It's the same pattern that I always fall into, but with you it's been so much worse. I can't break out of this cycle of attachment and it's been going on for quite a while. Usually if it happens it's over in a month. I'm still so attached to you. And I'll tell you what it is. It's that you don't think before you talk, you just say whatever comes to mind and sometimes whatever comes to mind is exactly what I want to hear. It's all lies, I know that, but I still go for it every time. Every time. I still think eventually you'll make a decision about me. You won't, and most girls would look at it as you're stringing me along, not saying one way or the other because you're afraid of what the reaction will be, no matter what the actual decision is. Honestly I'd love to slap you and say "Make up your mind."

But you might hit back.

And you might mean it.

And sometimes it seems like I'll never be good enough for you, that I'll always have to try to live up to your standards. You never set your standards, though, you never actually said what they were, so I'm left to question what I should do to gain your approval. I'll never get it fully though, I will never reach that highest height that will make everything perfect. Why do I say perfect? It will never be perfect with you. Because there's nothing I can say to make you stop playin and just tell me how you feel. That's what I beg you to do: please tell me how you feel. Be honest, be brutally honest. Be so honest I can't think afterwards. But please, stop leading me along.

Because you have sinned against me. That is the nature of our beast. We haven't sinned alongside each other, or in similar ways. We've sinned against each other. Your sin is to be unclear and to make me feel special when I shouldn't; my sin is that I allowed myself to love you.

You, though, you're the last, and you get a special distinction. I miss you the most out of all four of you. I remember how it used to be, not long ago, when we talked to each other every night, guiding each other daily through bad days and smiling constantly through the good ones. We were such laughers, though weren't we? We had the best time, and we made it through a lot of shit in a short amount of time. We were pretty perfect, we were so similar that it was interesting and completely easy to relate to each other, but not too similar to where we ran out of things to say too quickly. We were pretty perfect.

Then everything went wrong and you disappeared. It probably felt like I disappeared to you too. But it was the strangest disappearance – we see each other every day but there are entire weeks where we don't say anything to each other of any significance. There are days when I think I was dreaming, there are days where I think I still am dreaming, and there are days when I wish I was dreaming. I wish that it could be the way it was but it won't be again. I'm afraid you forgot about me, or that I just sort of got pushed to the side. I hate to think of you that way – most of the time I think I care about you so much because you're basically a better, a much better, version of myself that might have been (obvious differences such as gender aside). So I'll give you the ultimate benefit of the doubt, the most forgiveness I can muster. I'll transfer it from everybody else and bestow it on you, or save it in your name. Part of the "For you" that I write everywhere belongs to you.

And what of our sins? I told you already – I've already put yours on top of mine, made your sins part of my burden. I've also given you the ultimate clemency – I've taken all that you've done wrong and made it mine. Don't worry, it doesn't look bad for you. I'd rather you have a tabula rasa, a clear conscience, than me. I wasted my chance. You still have yours. And I'd stand in your shadow just to catch some of the brilliance that might come cascading down off of you. I'd stand in your shadow just to know I was alive.

So that's what I beg of you, finally, you of all people: I beg you to keep your tabula rasa. Don't sully it, don't make it dirty more than you have to. Of course it will become a little smudged and it won't be as clean as it was before but it comes with living, with life. I beg you to keep your life, and use it well. Be what I couldn't be. Be what I'll never be. Be all you can be, and we'll have been lucky to know you. Hundreds of people may actually know you now, but by the end millions will claim that they did.

And I've told you I love you. I'll only say it once, and it's that pure love that I thought would only exist once. It may be the one time, who knows what's even going on in that situation. I will only ask this of you – remember that one sentence. If you remember anything I say, remember that once sentence, because in it I expressed all the emotion I can possibly feel.

Part of that "For you" belongs to you.

I thought that in this process, in what I was trying to do, all I wanted was to know each of you as well as anybody can be known. I've failed with all of you, but I'm okay with that. You all have given me different things – experience, cleverness, strength, and spirit – but the one common gift I received from you was the hope that I will meet one more person, that one more person may sit on the echelon where you reside. And hopefully, that person will transcend your level, be the one to leave me breathless. I won't need that breath, because when I run into such an angel, I won't need to breathe ever again.

And I won't ask or beg, I'll tell you.

That "For you" will simply be theirs, and I know how it will go in every way. One of you will ignore it, one of you will caution me against it, one of you won't realize it's happened, and one of you won't see it for what it is.

But I will.

I will know.

And I'll burn brighter than any star you've ever seen.

I will be light.