you & i

thirty-six » strangerhood

dear infinity,

to be honest, i never thought i'd write another letter addressed to you again. you had honestly just become a thing of the past, a simple memory from my high school years. i no longer remember the things i used to—the exact shade of your eyes, the sound of your laughter, the smell of your shampoo, the feel of your skin, nor the taste of your lips.

i don't mean that your memory is no longer significant to me. it's just not as significant to me as when you were the girl of my dreams back in high school. instead, you've become my ex-girlfriend from high school.

the only reason why i'm writing this letter is for nostalgia's sake. i miraculously managed to keep all the letters i wrote for you in a box all these years. and what's even more miraculous is that i managed to find them.

i laugh at the person i was. honestly, i was such a desperate young boy with too many ideals forced to come to terms with harsh reality. i was smitten by you the first time i met you. i was completely and utterly infatuated with you until things started to go awry in our relationship. i was stunned out of my dreams when you turned out to be unlike the ideal i had created out of you. i was a heartbroken, lovesick fool from the moment i met you until the moment we drifted apart.

i'm sorry. if i had just realized that my infatuation and idealism had made our relationship toxic from the start, we could have avoided the whole ordeal. of course, you weren't a saint in our relationship, either, but i pushed all of the blame onto you indirectly and directly instead of taking my half of the responsibility. i never treated you right. i certainly thought otherwise, but i never did, and i'm sorry.

i didn't love you as i was supposed to. i certainly could have been "in love" with you, but i never loved you. you deserved to be treated for exactly what you are—a human. and i never gave you that.

but that doesn't mean that our relationship was completely negative. you and i both know that we had good times. if they had just been in a different context, then maybe we would have lasted for that infinity that i so often wrote about. i doubt that, however. our goals were far too dissimilar for that.

i hope you're doing well. if you ever wonder about me, i'm doing very well for myself. i'm actually married now with a young daughter.

she's the most adorable child i could have ever asked for. she walks now and is starting to talk. perhaps i'm still that lovesick fool from high school because i probably dote on her more than i should. but that's okay because she's my baby girl, and i want her to know that she is loved and loved properly.

it's the least i can do as a father.

in any case, this will be the last letter i will ever write to you because, as i wrote in my last one, some memories are better left untouched, and this one has been touched for far too long. i'm even going to burn all of the letters to give myself that final push toward closure.

goodbye, infinity.

sincerely,
beyond

~*~*~*~*~*~

{ f i n a l • r e m a r k s }

Thanks for reading "you & i" up to this point! I hope you've enjoyed it, and if you haven't, that's okay. This honestly wasn't my favorite story to write, but it challenged me as a writer. That's all I wanted from this story.

I've decided to take a little time to explain why I wrote this story. I've had some people ask me why I bothered to write it even though I'm not the biggest fan of it, so here's my explanation:

One » I've always wanted to write a lowercase intended story. Some people absolutely abhor it, but for some odd reason I'm completely in love with it. I doubt I'll ever use it again, though. Also, I wanted to try a letter or "dear diary" format for a story, so I just put the two together for this one.

Two » I wanted a challenge. What better way to do that than to write a story from a lovesick teenage boy's perspective? I honestly was freaking out with the first few chapters because I wasn't sure that the voice sounded exactly like a guy, but I realized later on that I was doing pretty well for myself. It sounds like Beyond, and Beyond is a guy, so it sounds like a guy. Also, I challenged myself by trying to write more purple prose (despite all of my teachers telling me not to in class). I wanted to practice writing fluffy stuff. (I just didn't realize fluff would be so painful.)

Three » This is my take on relationships. No, I'm not saying that every relationship will crash and burn. My point is that unless the two people in the relationship are working equally as hard (or as equally as possible) to maintain their relationship, whether platonic or romantic, it's not going to work. Someone will get hurt. Perhaps even both. And if there isn't equal effort from either end to heal that wound, it will eventually drive the two apart. Also, infatuation is not love. Infatuation is very self-centered and very dramatic. Love is often quite the opposite (though love can be very dramatic at times). Hopefully Beyond has learned the difference by now.

In any case, I tried to keep my explanation short. I still have more to say, but you're probably bored of my ramblings (if you're even still reading this), so I'll end it here. Thanks again!