Another girl series post. A short continuation of the story last week.
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The girl paced around in her room, like a lost little puppy. The girl’s foot hit something, and she bent down to see what it was. A piece of loose-leaf. She would write something on it.
She grabbed a pen and placed the piece of paper on her desk. She began.
Dear Boy,
I wonder why I’m writing to you now. Sometimes, I wonder what happened, like a little droplet of water about to fall down from the sky. I wonder and think.
I want to get everything out so I can move on. Perhaps you’re reading that last line and thinking, “Oh this is a love confession letter.” No, it’s not a confession letter. I don’t think I’d write one after I finished liking someone because there’s obviously something about that person that made me not like them anymore. But, no, I never liked you in that way to begin with. It’s not like those Asian movies, comics or anime, where the girl shyly slips a letter to a boy she’s liked for a while. This is not that. I am and never was, that girl.
Maybe I have a gilded memory of events, events that we both shared. Friendship is an interesting thing, and I wonder if you knew how happy I was that someone, boy or girl, had the same mindset, same likes that I did. Maybe you did, after all, we are so similar. So similar yet so different.
I can’t pinpoint the exact day that things started falling apart. It was slowly and surely, like a train on tracks. There was no changing it. The speed at which things crumbled got faster, and now, all that’s left are the broken pieces of memory, which account to nearly nothing. After all, they’re just brain cells and nerve impulses. What are they? Fractions of a millimeter small and so fragile. Memories fade, and perhaps when I’m old and grey, I won’t remember who you were, who I was, and the jokes we shared. It’s funny how that works.
I wonder what your face is when you read this. Maybe you will think I am very, very strange for thinking like this, or the fact that I am writing you a letter. Or you’ll put this letter on some place, never to open it.
So where was I? Right. The time when things fell apart. Whenever I write that, I think of the Chinua Achebe novel, Things Fall Apart, and I frown. In that novel, the white men’s ways had destroyed the traditional Nigerian ways. What had changed things between us? Was it an intrusion by a third person?
I will not dwell on the matters of why, of tracing the lines of memory, forwards and backwards to reach a conclusion. Pardon me, but I don’t care that much. Perhaps what we had, the great friendship, bantering, joking and laughing weren’t meant to last.
The Fates had willed it to be so, maybe, possibly. You will read up to here, and frown. Was I always that much of a melodramatic? Maybe that thought will go through your mind, reaching your breaking point. You will then place this letter somewhere, maybe in the garbage can, or maybe you’ll save it for later to show your friends how melodramatic you think I am. It just occurred to me that I don’t know you, the real you, despite how well we got along. I don’t know you at all. You may think that I’m a horrible person because I wrote that you may share this with your friends. I don’t know what you’ll do. I can’t gather what kind of person you truly are from the jokes we shared.
It occurred to me that we never really talked about the deeply philosophical questions, the questions that would reveal one’s true self. That is why I don’t know you, and the reason that I want to have a so-called clean break, like how Edward Cullen wanted his break up with Bella Swan to be. I’m not the type to be mulling over the broken pieces.
I will say this now and here, before I purge my mind of the broken memories. The good memories will remain, and that is all. What happened between us, the good, was like a brief summer rain, cool and relaxing. The bad? Well eventually, a similar experience was bond to fall my way, the confusion of things lost. You in your quiet way, me in my similarly quiet, non-verbose way. It was you, and now I know.
The broken pieces, the cracks, the awkward silences, now I can fully say goodbye to them. If I ever run into you, I will give you a tiny smile. That is all.
The girl stopped writing. She had released everything. The broken pieces of a friendship. The cracks. Everything. She could finally move on. The walk did something for her, to find the willpower, and this, this letter, released everything out, thoughts formed on paper.
She tucked the paper somewhere and went to sleep. Tomorrow was truly another day. A fresh new start.
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For an archive of the girl series post, you can go here. New girl series posts are released every Friday on this blog.
