broken dreams club

Dear K-

I waited for your letter to come. Even though I couldn't find a way to work up the courage to talk to you in person, I found myself anticipating your letter more and more with every afternoon it did not arrive. Discovering now that you never sent it, I can't help but feel a twinge of disappointment, but there's also a breath of relief. You say you wrote it to someone else, someone who wasn't the me that you had envisioned. Your realization of the incongruence of your ideal, romanticized version of myself and the actual, less than idyllic reality comes as a painful yet necessary conclusion. This is why I stopped writing you. This is why I stopped answering the phone. I became afraid because I knew I would never live up to the image you had projected in the cinema of your mind, that shimmering, scintillating portrait glowing on the big screen in the dark, smoky theatre. You were the only member of the audience, but you were captivated by your own production as it glittered before you. But I am not that film. I am the girl with messy hair in the light booth running the film through the machines. I am the bored, dull girl with sad Slavic eyes trapped behind the thick glass of the ticket booth, tearing off your stubs and shoving them back to you with a thin, tight lipped smile.

And I know, I know, that’s exactly what you wanted. You wanted that perfected love that flickers pure and beautiful in the soft focus, a distant and untouchable idea that could be pined for and dreamed about but never realized. And you achieved that. But I couldn’t take it. I am not that girl, and I don’t think I could ever be that girl, and it hurts me to admit that I cannot be what you desire me to become. I’d hate for you to waste any more ink or any more dreams on someone as miserable as me.

I understand why you did it, and I understand why you need it. But it can’t be me. It can’t be me anymore, because I’m just as lost as you. I start every day the same way I end them: with a handful of anti-acid tablets and the sign of the cross. It’s a rough world out there, but we’re both battling through it and searching for a happiness that may never come. We were born with some sense of entitlement, as if we think we deserve to find the perfect life and the ideal love. But there is no guarantee. Our searching may be in vain. Our happiness might only go as deep as a tidy new flat with a neat little garden or a memory of a distant city visited long ago, or the smell of her perfume or the sound of a lingering chord played upon our heartstrings. There may be nothing more than those simple, brief daily pleasures. We may spend our entire lives yearning for something that was never promised to us in the start.

And I don’t think I can make you happy the way you wish I could.

I did my best; it wasn't much,
-K