Avid: A Letter

I almost mailed a page from my journal today, I may still mail it; essentially written as a letter, torn from the binding, crinkling about with a rustic charm, it was one of the only pages I've written that has been so explicit as to actually bear the name of its intended audience at the top.

So... maybe I did write with the intention of sending. Maybe I was imagining the response it would receive... hoping it would be one along the lines of what I felt while writing it.

But when I finished, and when I looked at what inspired it... my confidence in my intentions faltered... was I trying to say something meaningful, or simply falling back on something that, now gone, I wish I had more than ever?

Was I expressing a true sentiment, one that would be mutually felt? Or was I imposing on something that followed its course when I was there and continued on without ever looking back once I left?

It's impossible to tell with these kinds of things, but when it's been several years since words were last exchanged... impossible is more of a jumping off point on the spectrum of predictability.

People change... I've felt it - in more ways than one. There are times when I look into a mirror and as soon as I leave the room I can't remember if I actually saw anyone looking back... and there are times when I look at pictures of things that were supposed to be memorable, yet are as possessing of memorability as the first three years of life: you know they happened, but you have no idea what it was like.

In some ways that may be a good thing... it leaves less room for painful memories... but it's pretty indiscriminate, because the good memories are gone too...

An holistic purging of years of one's life, and what's left but the husk of emotions that have hopefully shaped it for the better... it's--

"Oh great, he's been rambling for days and now he's probably going to pitch the movie."
"And what would be wrong with that? Isn't this right now the biggest reason why it is his favorite movie? Showing that even though some memories are brutally painful, it’s not worth getting rid of the good ones just to be free of them?”
“Yes yes yes, it’s all good in that sense, but for him I think it’s something different.”
“I wouldn’t be too quick to land on that conclusion, he lo-”
“Well I’ve already jumped and you’re just going to have to deal with it. What if -”
“I”m not playing this game, get over yoursel-”
“WHAT if, the memories that came before the ones he hypothetically erased, what if those are in fact the memories that truly make him happy?”

--like in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind when he realizes he wants to call off the procedure--

"I don't think he's realized where this is going yet."
"Surely not."
"But... he couldn't really feel that way? I mean it's been a long time."
"I know... but first impressions are... well, they're tricky."
"So you think he'll decide to go through with it, just live, forget, and love what has long since run it's course?"
"It may be a vestige of feelings that are no longer there, but he knows they were real when they happened, he has proof. That's all he needs."

--except...--

"There it is..."

--I don't fall to my knees, I don't beg for the procedure to stop. Instead I beg for the happiest moments I can remember to be forever emblazoned in golden pictures, blown to the size of building facades so that I'll always remember them--

"He's found it."

--There are some that may fall along the way, but what's left was so sublime to begin with, that having an aged view of it makes it shimmer all the more... so maybe I won't send the letter. Maybe I'll keep it as a testament to the love I still have for her, but only as a complete validation of how good things can be if I let them, as a reminder to not let my worst enemy always be--

"Yep."
"Well, I gotta say, you know him best."
"Oh, come on, you know I can't let you say that. We're on the same team here."
"God... it's weird though. Sometimes I just feel like I'm talking to--"

myself.