My Dear Dear Aster

My Dear Dear Aster,

I don’t know how to tell you everything that has been on my mind these last few months, in my heart all these years. I suppose I could start from the beginning, but that would take far too many words and leave me far more vulnerable than I think I can bear.

I will start, then, from this last Fall. This story starts with an author who does not believe he deserves his own story. He believes his worth is only in the stories he can provide to others. He’s stuck on his latest tale, yet another romance. He believes that he is sick of romances, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. He loves romances. He’s simply tired of romances he can’t see himself in.

But then, a Star. A Star showed up in his life again, the greatest thing he’d ever had and lost, his biggest regret and his deepest desire. He’d all but forgotten them, too drowned in his own misery and self-pity to remember the best thing that ever happened to me. I know, I know, changing the perspective in the middle of a story, I should know better as a writer. But I should have known better in a lot of things, and you have seen me clearly enough my whole life to know that despite my knowledge, I have an extraordinary gift for fucking things up. You’ve witnessed it firsthand time after time, across decades.

Now comes the apologies. I don’t think I ever properly apologized to you for what I said back in high school. I remember a pathetic non-apology, perhaps the words “I’m sorry” were said, but they were never acted upon. I do not remember who started drifting away first. You, maybe, because I’d wounded you so deeply with my actions. Or it was me, too afraid of the possibility that you would never forgive me. In either case, my fault. And for what it’s worth, I am truly sorry. I aimed for the weakest point, and I struck to kill. I knew the effect it would have on you, how that was the only thing I could say to hurt you so intimately, and I did it anyway. There is nothing I can say that explains away my actions, nor anything I can do that will ever relieve me of the consequences. I have no one to blame but myself. I see the distrust in your face still when I get too close to that weak point, too close to seeing your perceived frailty. What you don’t see is that every part of you is stronger than the whole of me.

I’d like to give you the whole story, with the knowledge that it excuses nothing.

At 16 years old I was deeply and foolishly in love with you. I was not foolish in loving you (to not fall in love with you would be more foolish than anything I have ever done), but I was foolish to think I was prepared for what loving you meant. Loving you meant loving myself, plainly and wholly. In you I had a home, a place to feel safe and worthy of love, and that terrified me more than anything in the world.

Do you remember, Star, what our plans were the day I ruined it all? I do. I’ll never forget it. We had intended on going to the park, one of our favorite kinds of outings. You didn’t have to walk farther than you could (do you remember me carrying you home when you would inevitably get too tired to walk back?), we could watch the animals and the people, and make up stories about the strangers that passed us.

But you weren’t up for it on this day. You’d had a rough night and couldn’t make it more than a few steps out of your room to the bathroom and back. This was not out of the ordinary. Usually, we’d pivot without issue. I’d come over and we’d watch Clue for the millionth time and have just as much fun as we would have if our plans had never changed.

Not on that day, on that day I had planned to surprise you. It was cheesy, but you loved cheesy. A picnic basket full of your favorite snacks, the biggest blanket I could find to spread out on the grass, and a sunflower. Your favorite. I got there an hour before we’d agreed to meet to set up. Wracked with nerves, I went over the words over and over again in my head. I was always better at writing than I was at talking about my feelings, so I had written it all down, scared of forgetting the words that had taken up so much space in my mind. They left me no room to think of anything else for months.

I love you. I want to be with you. It’ll never be anyone else.

As far as I know, you never knew how I felt back then. Even these past few months, I don’t think I ever told you.

By now I’m sure you see what happened. It’s what happens every time my nerves get the better of me. I lashed out. It is something I have worked on every day since, in an attempt to never hurt anyone the way I hurt you.

And yet, here we are again. Me, the coward, the fool, the one who hurt you the same way I did ten years ago. I see the error of my ways, but it feels impossible to correct them. I am on a predetermined course set to crash against the rocks, blindly ignoring the warning of the countless lighthouses lining the shore. I follow the navigation of a man who knows nothing about direction, or love. These waters are too rough to survive, so I’ll choose to surrender to them, to drown in the loneliness I created for myself. My only hope is to move you out of the line of fire before I take you down with me.

I write none of this to make you pity me. It is not your responsibility to save a drowning man when he is the one who jumped into choppy waters, knowing and intending the rip current to carry him deep down into the darkness of the ocean. No. I do not want you to feel any sort of guilt or remorse for me. I merely aim to give you the closure you deserve, the closure you deserved back then but never got, because I was too much of a coward to give it to you.

So where does that leave us now? A bright star shining all on their own, and a man who does nothing but dim their light, and in turn can never deserve it. It is like I said, the kindest thing I can do is remove myself from the equation and avoid all the inevitable pain I would cause you. I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry. I will never say it enough to deserve redemption. I can only hope I’ve written it enough for you to know I truly mean it, more than any page, chapter, book I’ve ever written.  It all pales in comparison to the regret I feel in how I treated you.

I leave you a parting gift. A signed copy of a first unofficial printing of Robin Schultz’s newest soon-to-be-published book. Do what you want with it. When you discover my secret within its pages, I do not blame you if you choose to tear it to shreds, to burn it, to destroy it in whatever manner you see fit. It is yours to do with it what you wish, and if it brings you sadness, I do not ask you to keep it.

I have been far too vulnerable for my atrophied heart to take, and half as vulnerable as you deserve. I will cease my mad rambling and leave you with simply this: You deserve the entire world, the recognition of all the brightest stars. Don’t ever let anyone treat you the way I did. People like me don’t deserve you. Nobody does. Find someone who gets the closest and love them anyway. The world isn’t nearly bright enough without your love in it.

-Ren