As According to Lilly

Letter One

Dear Forrest Richards,

Hi Forrest. It has been seven years since we last had any kind of communication with each other and even as I write this letter, I suddenly feel awkward and uncertain about what to say to you. Seven years, Forrest, that's a long time to forget people and memories, and it seems as if you might have forgotten a lot about me.

I've been dancing around the idea of contacting you for a while now but the thought that you have moved on with your life and that I have become an insignificant detail in your world has bore with me through the years. And you can't really blame me after how everything turned out between the two of us senior year of high school. But here I am, finally having gathered the courage and confidence to write to you after so long. I swear I have attempted to write a letter like this so many times that i have lost count and all my attempts have started to blur together. So fair warning, Forrest, I might not make the clearest sense in this first letter.

You're probably wondering why I am writing to you after everything but to be honest, I don't have a clear reasoning behind it. Maybe cause I miss you. Maybe because the fake childhood you have created in your head and filled the public's eye with have filled me with disappointment and the longing for you to remember me in a positive way.

I don't understand how you so easily pretend things don't happen. I was such a big part of your life and yet you have thrown away every memory of me, of us, as if it was the easiest thing you have ever had to do in your life. And you have had a lot of easy choices happen in your life.

I think I got the inspiration to write to you a couple weeks ago while I was in line at the grocery. There was a group of teenage girls standing in line in front of me when I overheard your name coming from one of them. That's when I realized they were all focusing on the magazine display by the register, more specifically though, they were focused on you. You looked as good as ever, if you don't mind me saying.

Your hair was tousled, which was probably due to the female draping off your body in the photoshoot. There was something like a smirk on your lips and I suddenly felt as if i were the female, for my eyes were glued on your lips. Lips that were once the gateway to heaven. The top couple buttons of your shirt were undone and as I listened to the teenagers talking about you, it seemed as if that was one of their favorite parts about the picture. Everything about you was a shade of brown. Your hair, your eyes, your skin, and even your clothes. Everything about the female was white. Her dress, her skin, her hair.

"Fiance?" One of them asked while lifting the magazine slightly out of the display so she could read the entire cover. "I mean, they're cute, but I called dibs first." She joked and I couldn't help but smile. If anything, you were mine first. But that was ancient history.

It wasn't until a couple seconds later that I realized what she had said. Fiance. As in you were engaged. About to be married.

Engaged.

Forrest, you're engaged.

I think hearing that made me realize just how stuck on you I have been. How stupid I was for still being in love with someone i hadn't had contact with for so long. How stupid you must think I am now that you know I'm still in love with you.

"I'm so jealous. I literally have every movie that he has ever been in at my house." Another stated and I could see the third girl roll her eyes, seeming indifferent about all of this

"We know, Hannah, we've had a 'Forrest Richards marathon" way too many times already this year. And it's only March.".

It was nice to see them, or at least two of them, talk so highly about you. As if you were some kind of god in their eyes. A king. A hero. And while I am happy that you have people who admire you and all that you do, I wanted to interrupt them and tell them the truth. You weren't a hero. God, Forrest. At what point did we become so lost and fucked up? Yet you have wandered so far into this destruction and as if the trees swallowed up the path to the true you, I wasn't sure if you could return to the you that you once were. I didn't know if even you could save yourself. Or if you even wanted to. They say change is for the better but no, Forrest. No. How could they say that when change can be this...this ugly and hurtful?

I think I might have strayed from my original purpose of this letter and I apologies. But I'm not going to take anything back. I have agonized over these letters too much to consider rewriting everything all over again. I'm hoping that by pouring all my emotions into these letters, into the last way I will ever have contact with you, that it will be enough to seal the hole that you had carelessly ripped inside of me. You tore a hole and threw away the pieces you had taken apart but I have found a way to patch that hole. And you, Forrest, will eventually mean as much to me as I mean to you.

I'm working on forgetting you,

Lilly Saunders