Meeting in the Margins

Cassidy

Hey Drex

I'm writing this as I wait for you to show up. I have this sinking feeling that you are not coming.

I feel like I'm standing in front of a cliff, and you'll push me over, or talk me away from the jump.

Probably push me over.

"Not that I don't trust you, of course, but I don't trust you."

Anyway, I think we both know that this will change us. Either we will come away from this meeting with regret for ruining our written banter, or I'll leave this library, having even less faith in male-kind than I did before I showed up.

Or, off-chance that you do come, we might form a... I don't know, some kind of connection. Friendship.

But however our meeting, or non-meeting goes, I just wanted to write something down, because it's still hard for me to put to words. Hell, it's hard for me to put anything to words.

I'm leaving.

This week is my last here. I've gotten early acceptance, and I'm taking it, and I'm going. It's nothing you would know about. Damn. That sounded bad, but I mean it's nothing you said/wrote. It's not your fault.

I'm just saying this so you don't mark up the book any further, trying to goad me to respond. Oh wait, that's my role.

And hey, if you see a short kid with thick glasses and a penchant for reading around here (I know, descriptive) don't be a douche. It might be my sister. She won't need any more negativity around her when I'm gone.

You wrote once that you liked the dark, you welcomed it. You said you didn't live in a paradise. You tried to shrug off your pain, but as a favorite author of mine wrote, "That's the thing about pain. It demands to be felt."

God, that's depressing. Thanks, John Green.

I hope our silly, argumentative conversations gave you a respite from your reality. I know it saved me from mine.

You read my letters to a world that never wrote to me. I thank you for that. It's mostly what kept me sane.

"So long and thanks for all the fish,"

Cassidy Jean Albiani