I do not still wish that we were friends. I did, for awhile. In fact, I think I may have been surpressing the urge to write you up until last week.
I don’t write this to be mean. You don’t read this. Still, it’s a letter to you, and a little to me, because it gets it out in the open. My dad drowned his troubles; my mom bottles them up; I tie them to the seeds of giant dandelions in northern Californian forests and watch them float away. Give them up.
Or at least I try. Sometimes it’s difficult to break the habits of your parents.
I am happy. I am occassionally shocked at this, because, to be quite honest, I do not think I ever understood happiness. Maybe it was the climate, maybe the religion, or maybe the drunken stupor, but I always thought life was misery interspersed with bright moments. Like a storm with spotlights of sun. The illuminated areas appear so bright and perfect. I know better now.
And for this reason it’s hard to be angry at you or anyone for very long. (I’ll admit there’ll be some grudges that’ll be hard to get past at my wedding, but those are deep-down scars that take more than one lifetime to heal.) So, no. There’s no *ahem* “hatchet” (a little snideness here, but, c’mon, shouldn’t such overly dramatic language be reserved for blogs—guilty—and poorly written screenplays?).
Still, there’s this desire to contact you and yell at you that we don’t need your wishes for future happiness. We’re happy now. It’s funny. It’s a part of me that must be patted on the head and explained that it doesn’t matter. One little person in all the world making a back-handed wish does not change anything at all. I am blessed.
Thank you, for your kind note to Tom. I am glad you didn’t write to me. I know myself well enough to know that your name in my inbox would have stirred a flash of red and perhaps a regretted push of the “send” button. Irish blood flames quickly.
But none of your words were ever that deep, and you’re forgiven. My pride’s a lot less brittle. I guess, like muscle memory, there are still some immediate reactions to specific things—like going home turns you back to a child, an old ache turns you back to defensive positions—but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t go away.
And, no, I don’t wish that we were friends. But sometimes I wish that we could still talk. Provided that you were grown, that you weren’t still who you once were, in the way I’m not who I was. But maybe if you were, just a little bit, the person I considered family. It’s hard to let that go.
