From, Yours truly xo

I would just like to tell you that I know.

I know that you don’t love me as much as the others, and I’ve known it for a while actually. I can feel it; call it a sixth sense or intuition, but I know it’s there. It’s so very subtle, so subtle in fact, that a stranger can barely notice it.

But I am no stranger.

The grumbly cadence of your voice and your habitual foibles and gestures are lost on others. To them you’re just another entity amidst the endless mass of the universe. They don’t know you like I do. But for me, reading you comes as easy as a second language. All your animated sighs and laughs are ingrained into my brain, with every note intact. It doesn’t take me a second to recognise the low hum of your voice beneath the floor boards or the heavy dragging of your feet across the laminate. The tightly gritted jaw when you’re angry or the wrinkles sewn along your cheeks and eyes when you smile – all of it is as familiar to me as a flame is to a wick. I’d say I know you like the back of my hand, but I don’t even know that very well compared to how much I know you.

Knowing the truth wouldn’t hurt so much if I was a total stranger. In fact it wouldn’t affect me at all. I could go on with my life, be able to take a walk in town, or stand in a queue at the shop without the thought gnawing away at my sanity. But let’s face it, I’m not a total stranger, and it will never leave me. Even when I push the thought to the back of my mind it still lingers there in the dark…just existing. At times it’s dormant, but it’s never quite gone.

From years of experience, my brain is trained to analyse your signals. My ears prick up at the sounds and my eyes observe with stringent accuracy. That’s how I know it’s there you see - the difference, that painstaking difference. It hangs off the ends of your words and lingers in the stoniness of your eyes. Wherever we are it follows, floating in the air as acrid as a cloud of sulphur, I can’t help but recoil.

The thing is, the iciness wouldn’t feel so bitterly cold if you didn’t wave a beacon of light in front of me. It’s so tantalisingly close but each time I make a grab for it, you yank it out of my reach. Sometimes you even let me stand near it for a while, basking in its warmth, but then you take it away when you stop feeling so generous. It took me a while to understand, but I know now that warmth was never meant for me. Now when you hang the light in front of my face, I turn away. I’d rather be enveloped in an obsidian darkness all day and night than suffer the loss of the light over and over again. It’s embarrassing to admit, but my heart can’t take it.

It wasn’t always like this. It’s hard to fathom now, but do you remember the way things were before? We didn’t just coexist, we were linked. Your mind used to be a place I frequently inhabited, just as mine was for you. There were no barbed wires or jagged fences at the time. We could waltz into each other’s heads freely without using the knocker or ringing the doorbell. There were times when I was stuck in the darkness, but you always pulled me out. You’d draw back the curtains and reveal the truth to me in a way that I’d never have thought of. It was so much easier before, but I suppose we were both very different people back then. I long for that ease once more, but on the dark, twisted road we’re travelling, I know that’ll never be the case again.

So then, why?

Why did it change between you and I, and not you and them? I feel half inclined to dribble out that cliché; ‘It wasn’t your fault, but mine.’ But that doesn’t work here. It’s not even entirely your fault. It was both of us. We worked together so well, passing each other the bricks to build that wall that now stands between us. Isn’t our team work commendable? We built that wall so high and so strong, that now neither of us can try and climb over it, even if we wanted to. That’s the price of pride I guess, and I know I got that at least from you.

It’s almost unbelievable how much can change in just a few short years. I bet that if I travelled back in time to warn my past self of how things would end up they wouldn’t believe a single word of it. As much as I would beg to stay and feel the warmth just one last time, they’d throw me out, ship me up and send me back to the miserable present.

The warmth was real back then, it was sincere and most importantly, it was constant. It was the consistency that fooled me. I revelled in it and took it for granted, became dependent on it. It was as unconditional as the air that I breathed and that’s why I couldn’t understand why it was taken away from me. How could something so essential to both our lives die? I grieved and mourned the loss of a person that still existed.

It changed me.

All my joy withered away and in its place grew gnarled bushes of belladonna as I sunk lower and lower to rock bottom. I stayed there for years feeding off anger and hatred, slowly rotting away. With each vile bite I took, another little piece of me would decay. But why didn’t I stop? Because I knew that if you didn’t want me, I wasn’t worth saving. So I stayed there, undergoing a more hideous transformation each day, as you left me further and further behind. From a distance I watched you thrive and shower your light on the others. I want you to know that I watched you.

But in the end there’s only so much the human soul can take.

The taste of venom never left my lips; I can still taste it now, but I can handle it better. When that dreaded feeling clogs up my throat, I bite my tongue and push down the bile.

I’ve sussed it. You work like a projector. Call me what you like; paranoid, irrational, an over thinker but I know it’s true. You have one tape you use for the others that reels out smiles from your eyes and laughter from your mouth and you have another one for me. It plays the occasional smile and the apathetic forced interest but we both know it’s as feeble as the film it’s played on.

And I’ve accepted the reality of the situation now. It’s something that no longer irks me or makes me want to tear my head off trying to understand it- it’s just something that is. Nothing bad, nothing good, just… something. As long as I accept that I’ll be fine.

In the end there’s a bond between us that can never be broken, no matter how mangled or mutilated it is. If this is the only way of loving me you’re capable of, then that’s fine. I’ve come to accept it. You loved me before I was even born, and I know that as much as it falters, that fickle love will always remain. The real warmth may never return, but that’s alright, at least it nurtured me when I needed it to.

I think we both caused each other a great deal of hurt in the past, or at least I like to think it was reciprocal. Sorry about that? I guess I only have one last thing to say.

I just want you to know that I forgive you.