One Hundred Letters for James

031

031:

Hard Candy

(My roommate broke up with her boyfriend today, and she's really sad. At least I have someone to mope around with.)

I'm really not in the mood to write to you right now. I want to talk to you, though, want so badly to once again grasp the idea that you are real, not a figment of my imagination. But, for now, these letters are the closest thing I have to you, to communicating with you.

This is the longest we've been apart, ever. The only time we've actually been apart for a long period of time was when you almost died, choking on a measly piece of peppermint candy.

It happened in a flash, almost in separate frames of time, it seems. One minute you were taking off the cellophane wrappings, and the next you were on the ground, red in the face.

I called your mother in, of course. We were only in Grade Three, so I didn't know what to do. Soon enough, the paramedics came, with stretchers and flashing lights. They took you to a hospital, I'm sure. They found cuts in your throat from the candy, and had to send you all the way to New Zealand so you could get proper treatment.

You stayed there for a whole month, while I stayed at my house, most of the time alone, and when I wasn't, giving my mother medicine for her everlasting hangovers.

We communicated only through letters, since the hospital didn't allow telephone calls. You told me about the scary doctors that wielded syringes and needles. I responded with hope for your recovery and with updates on how the summer holiday was without you.

It was fine, in the end, not being able to talk to you that month.

But this separation, I can't handle. I'm slowly sinking down back into depression, and I don't even have someone to console me. My life is becoming routine; wake up, take a pill, go to class, come back, take a pill, sleep, repeat.

Wherever you are, James, if you actually do ever get these letters, maybe you'll see that I've missed you too much, too much for my own good, missed that stupid apartment, even missed that stupid house that I grew up in, the house that is probably sitting on the street, empty.