The Twelfth Letter

 
Tuesday, November 6, 2001                                                               
3:10 PM
Dear Ducky,
            Today, again, I want to cry out to you.  I haven’t the strength to ask you many questions, or to tell you many things.  I just want to cry to you: “Where are you?”  I have been here in Seattle for one year, and I am getting used to my daily routine, and I feel less and less acquainted with the past.  I live sometimes as if it’s the future, as if everything is so far behind me I can’t hear its heavy footsteps.
            The city has made me less open, less noisy, less friendly.  The city has made me quiet.  I look at things more.  No, that’s not true.  I look at things the same amount, and I have always been very observant; it’s just pretty much all I do now—I just don’t interact with it all as much.  Sometimes when I speak to other people the sound of my voice surprises me.  I don’t recognize my external voice because I most often am using the voice in my head.  The Internal Monologue.  Sometimes I want to forget everything that has come before and start over.  Start from right here and become a whole new person.  Other times I yearn for the aches and pains of childhood, the easy tears, the difficult friendships, the comfort of the arms of my parents.  More than anything right now I want to crawl on the couch and snuggle between my father and my mother and get hugs and kisses.  They are getting older now, and are less inclined to cuddle and hug and kiss.  I remembered the night before I moved back up here I was in the living room crying to my dad because I knew that I would never be able to just sit and feel protected by him again.  Once you are in your twenties you can’t rely on your parents for snuggles and comfort.  It’s not acceptable.  Maybe it’s not because they are old that people don’t get hugs, maybe it’s because they don’t get hugs that they are old.  Hugs are so necessary.  Hugs and saying “I love you.”  My family would always say, “I love you,” no matter what, even if we were mad at each other, or said it 20 times a day.  Is it possible to say, “I love you” too much?  I don’t think so, but because Matt never heard it growing up, he doesn’t want to get used to saying it now.  You would think that it would actually be the opposite, that I would be the one not wanting to hear it.  Did I ever tell you that I love you, Ducky?  Probably we weren’t in the habit because we were so young.  I wish so much that I could see you to tell you.  I wish that we had been able to have a relationship of love and trust and could be growing old together.  I don’t have any childhood friends.  Who is going to be my maid of honor when I get married?  I don’t know if I have shared enough of my life with anyone.  But it’s not really as if I could have you do it either: we don’t know each other anymore if we knew each other at all to begin with.  I’m not going to get married any time soon anyway, don’t worry.  I’m not ready.  I don’t know if Matt is the right guy for me if he can’t say “goodnight” and “I love you” to me every night.