One Million Tiny Things

Losing is a victory

Dear Sir,
I've been with your family for a long time now. As a certified butler, there aren't a lot of places to get employed at any more. People have finally figured out how to open their own doors and people like me, we are part of the old world.

To most people, we possibly belong in museums with archaic dinosours because, today, it's just as hard to find a good butler as it is to find a Tyrannasouras. A black suited man serving a wealthy man-child is a common movie trick. A relic of long forgotten days of Lords and Ladies, Counts and Duchesses.

I know that after this letter, I'll be lucky to live till the next sunrise. But for once in my life, I'm willing to put aside my professionalism and take a risk to tell you this.

In all honesty, Miss Julia's stunt last night might not have affected you at all. You were just as composed today as you were tonight. You barely seem to recall that your wife pulled a suicide attempt and is currently being stabilised at a hospital with no one near her death bed.

That girl, she loves you. More than angone or anything. She adores you, worships the ground you walk on. You're her love, husband and in all probability, her God.

She's young and a little naive. She might be a bit of a hero-worshipper. But she loves you in a way that nobody else does.

And as someone who's seen your life in third person for years, I can honestly tell you that you've never had love like that and you'll never get it again.

And as stupidly optimistic and frighteningly annoying as she is, Giovva is a good person. Far too good for you to understand.

I never expected your marriage to last. After Doria, that steel-hearted, cold woman who's heart you managed to break and to drive away. A sweet, glowing child didn't seem to fit in your world.

Her eyes shine every time they see you. Her lips quiver up into a smile when she hears you. She loves you. The damaged, broken, cold-hearted brute. How she manages to find affection in you, I'll never understand.

But, Sir, the fact that your having Sunday dinner with your ex-wife and kids without so much as batting an eye to your wife struggling to breathe in hospital.

It's just wrong.

Madam Doria and Miss Julia sbould know better than to plan out a play of such nature.

The public are always on tenderhooks to know of the latest developments in your family. While I and your family, did not necessarily approve of your marriage to Giovva, (more for her sake than for yours), the crowds loved it. They swallowed every word without the slightest distrust. They believed everything you said. And with the way she looked at you, how could they not.

And now, you're allowing the entire country to drag her name through the mud for sonething she never did? Tim is her best friend. The only person close to her age here. You're too stiff and old to have fun and chill with.

She loved you as her everything; she found my son to be a friend.

Someone to drive her to the mall, someone to help her with seating arrangements for balls you randomly felt like throwing, someone who taught her how to ride a horse and showed her to grow roses.

Friends.

Someone to spend time with her...time you never found in your heart to give her.

And is that something to die for?

Giovva is sensitive.

You know that.

She lives by some flowery, glittery image of the world. She's never seen society for what it could be, she's never experienced people having two completely bleak sides to each other. She's still in her early 20s, she hasn't seen enough of the world to understand your disturbed mindset.

To her, you're the sun, the stars and everything in between.

You are, and always has been, her universe.

And she expected you to feel the same way. For you to love her the way she deserved to be.

But with the mountain of issues your personality has got, your inflatable ego, arrogant dismissal of everyone and the impermeable armour you surround yourself with, of course, you couldn't love someone else.

People say that you're undeniably complex, that you've got many layers to you. But when it comes down to it, you're more of a potato than an onion. There aren't any layers or complications in you. You've just got one, dirt-filled, brown layer to you.

A layer of self-love and selfish adoration.

You've only ever loved yourself, Kyle. From your childhood, you've been the only thing you've cared about. You've been the sun, the moon and the stars of your life, everyone around you was merely negligible. They were scraps under your soles, the underdogs, the ignored. 

You walk over everyone, big or small, young or old, powerful or weak. It doesn't matter. 

And to someone young, someone foolish, someone like Giovva, you could come off as a god, a supernatural being, an entity of enormous power.

But, Kyle, I have lived for years with your family, I faintly knew your grandfather. I saw him around the house. An invalid during the years I knew him, confined to a wheelchair, half-paralysed, crippled, suffering; and yet holding so much aggression, envy and anger in his misconception of power. Unable to let go of years well lived, pushing and pulling endlessly, creating arguments, fights, injustice, unfairness, and all that for what?

To create a legacy...one you've already forgotten, moved past him, taken down his portraits and overwritten his desicions.

I knew your father much better. I was loyal to him and he trusted me. But that didn't mean I liked him. I understood the decisions he had to make, the risks he took and the consequences he caused for his buisness. But the ruptures and disasters he caused at home were far more inconcievable to a lowly butler who'd grown up in an united , loving family. 

In those ways, I didn't understand him. I never did and I never will. Those weren't his choices to make or his promises to break. But I was young, impressionable and lightly putting it, stupid. I thought that if I saw and heard no evil, then it couldn't possibly be happening.

But you saw, you heard, you encountered all sorts and forms of evil with that man. You hated him, you despised him and yet, you never stopped adoring him.

Because whatever humanity your father lacked, he knew exactly how to charm people, manipulate them, and lead them so far down the tracks that they have nowhere to run when the train comes barreling down.

And however much he hurt, broke, destroy, villanised, people never stopped loving him, idolising him and doing whatever he told them.

And all it lead to was another funeral on his appointments and another family left broken

Kyle, you're not him, not yet. But you're walking down a path that looks a hell of a lot like the one he carved.

I'm not threatning you, I'm not scolding you, I'm simply cautioning you from stepping into the shoes of a man who's possibly kneeling by Satan as we speak.

All I'm saying is, sometimes in life, we win, other times we lose. But don't lose in what matters just to win in what is expected of you. Sir, in certain rare moments, losing might be the biggest victory of them all. 

Respectfully,
Andrew