excerpts

15.1

A LETTER TO —

Nobody is going to love you.

You're difficult. Temperamental. Stubborn. Tenacious. Indecisive.

One moment you're scowling and the next you're smiling and then you're sad again. Like flicking pages of a magazine, your mind latches onto different things and processes hem so quickly that nobody can react.

You mess up. A lot. All the time. And you always end up staring at the mess of an aftermath that follows the destruction in your wake.

Nobody will ever love you.

Because you are undesirable. With all your flaws and quirks and irritating habits and penchant for destruction, nobody will want you.

Nobody wants to deal with it. With that. With you.

The answer is simple: nobody cares.

Nobody will hold you when you're crying. They'll pick up their coat and things and leave.

It'll rip your beating heart out of your chest, leaving you gasping for reprieve, but feeling nonetheless much like you usually do.

A wreck.

You're broken. And nobody wants damaged goods. You're the pencil with a broken tip that won't sharpen easily. You're the eraser that snaps with the first use. You're the linty sweater that rolls and shrinks and gets dilapidated. You're a watch with a cracked face, hands crookedly telling the wrong time.

It's the world that's done this to you. And you sit and take every blow. You even throw a few of the punches. At yourself.

Because you're sick. You're a freak. Sad, sad, sad, you're always sad, looking akin to a drooping willow, an endless fountain pouring from your eyes, sometimes accompanied by deathly silence, other times drenched in pitiful screams.

Pain. What it felt like to hurt. You were never a stranger. You've spent your whole life wishing for someone to fix you before you realized that nobody could do it but you. And by then it was too late.

Fixing things aren't easy. Fixing yourself isn't easy either. It's simple to break and destroy and decimate. But to heal and grow from rubble requires a magnanimous effort.

You're weak. You don't have it in you.

To fix, to heal, to repair- pain is required.

When you sew a seam shut, you use a needle and thread. Imagine it digging into your skin, closing up all the gaps in your body, but leaving behind scars, the remnants of bloodied limbs from nights past.

Even if you healed, even if you stopped being the broken doll, nobody would want you.

And you wouldn't be good for anyone.

You're toxic.

You're a poison that seeps into the skin of everyone that you know.

You're impossible to love. Though some have tried. And others will inevitably. But they'll fail.

They'll leave you.

Better to pound it into your head now-

Nobody is going to love you.

So then maybe it won't hurt as much when you hey attached and then people leave.

If there's one thing that people know how to do, it's leave, dammit.

— A LETTER FROM