An Open Letter To Myself

Dear self,
I wish I had the words to express to you what I'm feeling right now. I feel angry, betrayed, righteous and fiercely scared. The words I have are actionable - all I ever write anymore. I want to fall to the pavement, scream out as the sky falls above us on this dear and dark night that's so clouded over you didn't even see the end of the world coming. I want to gnash my teeth, claw at the earth, feel bone as it drives through skin. Pound my hands against the pavement, grind my wrists against the cement until the adrenaline is pumping so loud through your veins that there's nothing but the sound of that single solitary heartbeat. Do you wonder what it's like, self? Don't you ever want to find out what it's like to be free of it all? To run until your knees give out, to breathe until your lungs collapse and just lay on the field of retribution, staring at the sun until your corneas burst into flame?

Don't you want to know, self? Don't you already know? They say there are a million and one worse things you could do in life. But aren't you already doing them, saying them, feeling them, seeing them every day and every night of your life? Don't you wish you just didn't hold back any more? Why is it always the four letter words we put the most stock in? Love? Hate? Fuck? Help? Gray? Pain? Calm? Why not the five letter words? Black. White. Scream. Shout. Spite. Anger. And what of that lonely little pitiful three letter word that you always used to know so well? Cry.

Why is it that the words you wield every day of your life are the ones that get you into so much trouble, self?? Why is it that you always choose to make a stand at the worst of times, and always prove to be a coward when it matters the most? Self, I have so many questions from you and I'm lacking some serious answers. In December we will have been together for 21 years. Twenty One Years. Two decades and a year. And yet I still know so little about you except for maybe your very odd penchant to turn things upside down.

Maybe I liked you better, Self, when you lost your voice. Maybe I liked you better when everything you were, everything you had, everything that was yours to give and take away at the wave of a hand was locked away inside a little box inside of me, leaving me a broken, hollowed out shell of a person. Maybe *I* liked it better. But what was it like for you?

Did you miss the fresh air? The blue sky? The purple sunrise? The gray sunset? Did you miss the smell of the grass after it had just rained, or the aroma of burning leaves in the fall? Did you miss the crisp cool bite of the first snowfall against your bare legs? Did you miss the sharp intake of a cool spring morning when you realized the snow was beginning to melt?

And I wonder, Self, did you even care? Should I even care? What am I to do with you? Do I hurt you, kill you, hide you or keep you? Merge with you, play with you, hold you close to my heart?

I'm hurting, Self. And you never did anything to help me. Just because I speak in four letter words and you speak in five doesn't mean we can't agree. But when it comes down to it, Self, in the very end - it's you or it's m.e.

Your friend,
Caitlin.