"I want to love you again, but I don't know how. Maybe I'm not like the moon. The moon is pure, an incandescent light in the midst of bitter darkness.
I have never been that forgiving."
WARNING: This is Book Three. If you have not read "affluenza"...
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Dear Mom,
Is it possible to change overnight?
Or does it happen gradually?
I look at myself and I know I've changed. I've beyond changed. Maybe I've evolved, maybe I've transformed.
Sometimes I feel like I've lived a thousand lives. It started in Maine with you, continued in Malibu with Aunt Amanda, led me to college, to graduation, to my life now. Some of it's been good. Most of it's been hell. Maybe it's wrong for me to say I've lived a thousand lives. Maybe a better word would be that I survived.
I survived it all. Do you know that? I made it without you. Without you congratulating me on another straight-A-filled report card. Without you being there after my first date when I nearly passed out from anxiety in the damn movie theater. I survived my first panic attack without you. Survived one of the biggest heartbreaks of my life when I lost Sebastian. Survived again when I lost Roman. Without you there to hold me. Without you there to tell me it'd be okay. Without you there to tell me that it gets better.
I don't want to be angry, but sometimes I still am. Because I survived the worst things life could have ever thrown at me and you weren't even there to see it.
I know it's not all your fault. You were trying to survive just as much as I was. My survival was different than your survival, though. Sometimes things just don't fit. No matter how hard we push the puzzle pieces together, over and over again, their shapes aren't any different. They don't work together any more than they did when you first tried.
I thought about coming back home to Maine after graduating, but it didn't feel right. I wanted to stay in Malibu, where things were good. This is home now. This is what I know.
Sometimes, I take my car to the beach in the middle of the night when nobody else is there. I like it better then. When the only conversations that take place are between me and the waves. I look at the moonlight, watch its light reflect off the water, and think that if I could be anything in the world, I'd be that. The moon, that is. It changes too, you know. Every night. And sometimes it changes back. But it's always bright.
I'm a lot older now. Things don't scare me like they used to. Things don't hurt me the way they used to. There are a few things I never really got past, though. You're at the top of my list.
I want to love you again, but I don't know how. Maybe I'm not like the moon. The moon is pure, an incandescent light in the midst of bitter darkness.
