Alone With All Your Letters

Title: Alone With All Your Letters

Author: Harper

Rating: R for language, even if there isn’t much of it.

Archiving: Kim does that for me at http://www.realmoftheshadow/harper.htm. Anyone else just ask.

Disclaimer: Not mine. No profit. No job, so not worth the effort to sue me.

A/N: A short one. An angry one. A letter from Brooke to Sam. Any mistakes owe their origin to the fact that this is un-beta’d. If you’d like to provide feedback, I’d love to receive it. I’m at Xfjnky2@yahoo.com.

Sam--

I think I want to throw up. It’s a strange feeling, that teasing hint of nausea pushing at the bottom of my throat, that wave of unease curling up my spine. I don’t understand how mere words can cause this, can transform themselves from stark vowels and consonants into a distinct physiological sensation that has me wishing that I could purge the baffling swirl of emotions currently poisoning me. Wishing that I could take everything that your letter brought to mind, each image and memory and unwanted feeling, and watch them swirl away in a splash of putrid color against the white porcelain of the bottom of my toilet.

I don’t want to know what you’re doing. I don’t want to hear how happy you are or how exciting your life is. I don’t want to hear about the great things you are doing and I don’t want to hear about how you’ve found someone else. Not that you outright said that you’ve found someone else, but I know you. Ever so easy for you to fall into hopeless infatuations, isn’t it? The only thing is that I think you’re more infatuated with seeing yourself through a new pair of eyes than you are in anything else.

Maybe I’m not being fair to you. Is that it? Have I let my personal biases, my pain and my hatred and my rage at you color everything. There will never be another platonic interaction between us, will there? Its gone, over and done with. People say that you live and you learn. Implicit in that is the notion that its better to experience something, no matter how painful or how disaffecting, than to live in the comfortable shell of a world with no risks and no emotions and no hurts.

I say that’s bullshit.

What did I learn from you? Really, what did you teach me? Did you teach me how to walk away? Did you teach me how to be a coward? Did you teach me how to fool myself? Did you teach me that years of socialization and inbred eons of struggling to fit into an artificially rigid mold are vastly more compelling than the fledgling joy of being myself?

You taught me that being myself meant being different. You reinforced that with the strength of a blow from the hammer of the mighty Thor himself.

And then what’d you do? You left. You say that you left to pursue other options, that you knew there was a great big world out there waiting on you to come and claim it and that you were ready to don your klaxons and climb the mountain. What did that mean, exactly? It meant that you moved away to the other side of the country, that you created a new life out of thin air and forgot about the old one.

You forgot about me.

I don’t want to be on the receiving end of your e-mails. I don’t want to hear about your new friends and the new adventures that you’re having. I don’t want to imagine your satisfaction as you sit and type them out to me, smug smile on your face as you show me just how much there is out there that you can have without me standing in your way.

Why even bother, really? I can understand the perverse satisfaction to be had in proving the superiority of your life. It’s a desperate egotistical ploy designed to show not only me but also yourself that everything is fucking wonderful in the lily white snow-covered barren and pristine vistas of your future. Yes, I can see you, standing there with a triumphant grin on your face, looking out at the undisturbed and peaceful expanse of the rest of your life, reassuring yourself that you’re maxing out your potential, that you’re taking life and squeezing every single last drop out of it until you leave it spent and dying, forgotten as you push your quest just that much farther.

Making up for inadequacies? I think you are. Someone who is never happy with their life is looking for something they can’t have. And you… well, you can’t have perfection. Actually, you probably wouldn’t realize it if you did.

So you left me. I’m well aware that it was fun while it lasted but that I wasn’t enough to break up the glorious monotony of a well-planned life. Interesting little diversion, to be sure. Diversion, as in short term, as in a temporary deviation from the path, as in one more life experience to add to your ever growing collection.

Proud of yourself? I mean, you did conquer me, after all. And here everyone thought I was an impenetrable fortress, a bastion of cool aloofness and detached indifference, a pinnacle to be reached by only the most deserving.

You enjoyed the game, enjoyed watching me slowly succumb to you, enjoyed reveling in the private knowledge that you were slowly ripping the fabric of my life asunder, snapping apart the seams of who I was one agonizing thread at a time. I applaud you really. Masterfully done.

Or, do I give you too much credit?

Is it really your fault? No. Of course it isn’t. You were only the first. If I hadn’t had to confront things with you, I’d have had to confront them later. Denial only bars the gates for so long. Eventually even the most strong-willed has to yield to the realization that this new revelation was an inevitability. Pity you had to be my catalyst though. My introduction, my initial foray. Regrettable, but true. I guess we all have dark stains marring our pasts, don’t we. After all, I’m one on yours too.

So anyway, Sam, here’s my last letter to you… You can keep your newfound happiness and you can lose yourself in the pleasures to be found with your new friends. I’ve learned all of the life lessons from you that I can take. I imagine you’re sporting yet another smirk now, thinking that you’ve won some final victory. Razed me to the ground, or so you think.

Not true, ex-lover of mine. I’ll admit that you had enslaved me, had chained me to a wall of my own making, one made up of bricks of self-recrimination, held together by the mortar of hate. Things are different now though. Will I ever be totally free of your hold on me? No, I won’t. You taught me important lessons… You’ve taught me how not to trust, how not to love, how to manipulate my world into the form that I desire. Or, perhaps more importantly, of the satisfaction of self-deprivation as opposed to the crushing oppression of the enforced kind. Now I’m alone because I choose to be alone and not because someone has left me. That’ll never happen again.

Where’s your place in my new world? Why, there isn’t one, unfortunately. You have no power over me here, no influence in my sphere.

Maybe I’ve waxed poetic for far too long. What I’m really saying, I suppose, is this…

Fuck you.

Oh, and don’t bother to write anymore either, will you? I’d hate for you to waste your time.

I know I won’t be wasting mine any longer.

Good-bye. And guess what… this time I mean it. You’re banished, exiled, stricken from the rolls of what is important in my life.

But, enough of that. Its time for me to go.

So long, Sam.

Not yours any longer,

--Brooke

THE END

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