Sweetheart

You've done well for yourself.

Who am I kidding? You were always the good kid. So this doesn't necessarily surprise me. At all. Let me take this opportunity to express, how truly happy I am for you. I know, not everything is what it seems on the surface. Let me rephrase that. Is anything ever what it seems on the surface? Don't think so. A lot in this world happens to merely keep up with appearances. 

The rosiness of lives is utterly lost in its dark and disturbing underbelly. Adulthood is difficult. Pretending to be a whole person is hard, when you've got parts of yourself flung up in the air. Not just because there are bills to be paid and jobs to be done. It's also on account of the fact that everything we are is a disturbing contradiction. You know?

We begin life believing in some things. And for quite a long stretch, we're taught, deeply and precisely, how accurately wrong we were. We waste away years, unable to grasp to simple truths, hold ironies in our little hearts that embitter us, make us so cynical that we become monstrosities within, fashioned in facades on the outside. 

I have become that. And for the sake of all that is holy, I have given up. I choose to be embittered, lost, pained, forever fighting the voids that are capturing my insides, day after day after day. And I cannot care enough to dress in facades, hence I am just my true unclothed self. I am an angry, disappointed and exhausted adult. Locked in my own chains. Muted, hearing my own screams constantly inside my fucking head. I am.

But you. Sweetheart. 

Allow me to call you that, it's been ages. When I loved you, I loved you with the passionate intensity of a nineteen year old. It feels crazy now, and also impossible, to have ever been capable of loving that way. Anyone or anything.  I am not capable of that love anymore. I hang in between thin threads of obligations.

But sorry, I was writing about you.

You've done well for yourself. Some of what appears may be a sheen. May be. But I am sure all that glitters for you, is gold from within. I hope I am not fantasizing and I truly wish you the happiness you deserve. Everyone deserves happiness, love. And why wouldn't you.

Despite everything that happened, I have always thought of you with affection. I will not lie, sometimes I've been upset. Regretful. But that's inevitable. Over the years, so many many still years, when all that has happened in our lives is just everyday, I have always remembered you with glee. The way memories fade, I am sure a few more years later, all I would remember is the glee itself and I would have erased you, involuntarily. So let me write this today.

Sweetheart.

I hope, being married to her makes you feel lucky everyday. Because that's what marriage is supposed to make one feel. Lucky. I hope you hold her hand every now and then. I know you do. I hope you smell her frizzy hair and take off her spectacles so that her vision fades a little, before you kiss her on the forehead, once in a few days. You two, so do look like the couple who would do that. 

She's an infinitely charitable woman. I know this, if not more about her. She has lot of mercy in her soul. Lot of compassion. I cannot imagine how anyone can be that way because all I feel in my soul is a certain soullessness I cannot translate into words. So I am thankful, you ended up with her. That you moved on from me and found her. Life's nice that way, isn't it.

And we shall let today be, precisely about that.

Sweetheart.

Happy Valentines'