Robert S. Duncanson, Ruins of Carthage - 1845

Letter Not About Love

by Laura Lemmon

There are few people who elicit strong enough emotions to write letters to. So maybe you’ll appreciate this, since you enjoy eliciting strong emotions just for the sake of it. I think you’re obligated to read. I think I’ve earned 10 minutes of your time after 5 years. I’ve gone upstate and don’t know when, or if I’ll return.

And yes, I left without warning, without a trace, mostly to be dramatic. But I think I’m entitled to that, as the former passive object of your maliciousness.

Sympathy is a tricky thing; the person who wants sympathy is weak and the person who perceives this is powerful—but then becomes the weak person if they give too much sympathy.

You were never so wonderful to me as when you broke your arm. I didn’t mind bringing you Chinese takeout in the slightest. How desperately I wanted to feed it to you. And all I did was lie about how annoyed I was to be helping you.

I wonder how you perceived me—as someone whose sympathy was easily accessed or sparingly given. I was never so torn as when you would ask if I wanted to come over to rescue you from loneliness. There was rarely anything else I would have rather been doing, and I could—and obviously did—spend hours and hours pressed up against you, running my hand over your arm, your back, your hair, your back, your arm, the same way over and over. It was unexplainably wonderful, this suspension in intimacy that never progressed. But of course I would consider— does this make me weak and pathetic? There is so much more satisfaction in giving sympathy than receiving it—you become needed, valuable, and nothing else compares to this.

You saved me from such humiliation just to humiliate me.

There we were, in front of the manager. It was I who had made the mistake with the client. Unprofessional. Sloppy. Would probably lose the client, maybe my job—but you told the manager that it was your fault, you did it. Apologies. My heart stopped for a full second, which doesn’t sound like a long time, but it is when it had been beating at about 2 beats per second. There was silence and then the anger rained down on you, you my shield against all the arrows. My sacrificial hero. How dare you. You knew it would make me love you, you must have. Better not to have saved me. Better to let me endure the short but intense pain in the moment instead of long, drawn-out torture.

I used to think that I could either love someone or admire them. The admiration one feels for someone goes away once you know them intimately enough to love them. And yet I still admired you. This must be why you frustrate me so.

I think I liked you right away because you broke up the peace. The unbearable, stagnant peace. I was never bored when I was with you, not that I can remember. Your constant stream of witty insults and the absurd humor were a merciful break from the uniform positivity and politeness. When I first revealed my interest in you to my friends it was like a confession of enjoying some deviant activity.

Nothing easy to get is worth having, you said. I knew this to be true about the charming fix-er- up-er I optimistically bought out here and didn’t quite know how to fix up. Inconvenient, demanding. Hostile at times. But I chose to live there, nonetheless. Ladybugs are constantly invading from the many cracks. I carefully collect them and put them outside. Catch and release, my elderly neighbor calls it. A pointless pattern. Does that make me an idiotic martyr?

Maybe you are only so significant to me because I have had so few experiences and known so few other men. This is to say, you’re not as special I think, probably.

But I could not survive merely on some metaphysical pleasure like you seem to be able to. I wanted the mundane things. Dinner and a movie. Be my date to the party. You wouldn’t have any of it. Only late night phone calls, last-minute invitations, drinks never dinner. The spontaneous adventures that are always better than the dinners and movies but are unpredictable. No way to look forward to them.

You are willing to say things which you believe to be true, and that you know will make others dislike you. You’re outspoken, or is it obnoxious? You’re discerning, or is it overly critical?

And why exactly was I not good enough for you? Because I wasn’t as pretty as her, or as deferential? There I was, turning away men in hopes of having you. Even the slightest bit of interest I showed in them sent you into a cold jealous tailspin that I thought would end in you never looking at me again. My indifferent prison guard, you were.

I’d have happily lay at your feet like a rug. You wouldn’t even know you needed me until you noticed that your feet, normally cold, were warm, and a stranger came over and offhandedly remarked that I tie the whole room together.

I often hope you are having a sad, pathetic life. Then I miss you and imagine you happy, waltzing through the big city as if you’re skating on ice as I trudge through the snow to get to my mailbox.

Carthage was destroyed, its soil poisoned with salt, as retribution for taking Sicily away from the Romans. Burning a city creates ash, which enriches the soil. It will eventually rebuild. Same with flooding, once the initial destruction is over with. But salt ruins it forever. No recovery, no renewal. If the Romans couldn’t have Carthage, no one could. Selfish conqueror.

I wonder if the company you started has grown. You’re good at attracting people to you, but not at making them stay. I was amazed when you said you were starting it. It hadn’t occurred to me that people could create their own jobs, their own place in the world. But of course you would feel like you could. I hoped you would make a place for me in the world as well. I could never seem to.

I saw my neighbor at the mailbox the other day. A rare occasion—my mailbox is almost a quarter mile from my house and his house some distance from there. He said something innocuous about the deluge of snow and offered to get my mail if I’m every going to be away for a while, or bring it to my door if I don’t want to trudge through the snow—he has snow shoes. I thanked but no-thanked him curtly and turned to leave. He seemed innocent but I was wrong before, so I could be wrong again. Now I curse myself for turning away from him so fast. Who knows when I’ll see him again. Now I’ll be trudging to my mail forever.

Why am I drifting away, you ask sarcastically?

Because you had expanded to fill almost every inch of space in my brain and I needed to expel you, push you back into a small enough corner, with pottery and yoga and other men. Your presence in my head cannot be more than your presence in my actual life—that’s the rule.

When I was annoyed at you for something and you asked why I continued to stay if you were so terrible and I said nothing. I wish I had said “don’t make me say it.” Don’t make me say what I can’t imagine is not obvious. Let me have this one thing over you, please.

And of course you will be successful, because you are smart and charming and can get people to turn tricks for you, go above and beyond, and reward them with your admiration.

You’re one of those unfortune people who is such that you can only be with someone who doesn’t understand them. If they did understand you, they would leave.

I remember when you played the guitar and sang. I wanted to tell you how wonderful you were when you were immersed in this activity, the one thing you didn’t seem cynical or self-conscious about. I told my friend that I felt like the only time when you weren’t being a bad person was when you were playing the guitar. She was not impressed. “Well it’s pretty hard to be a bad person while playing the guitar, unless you’re bashing someone over the head with it.”

You couldn’t do the simplest thing for me. I devised a series of tests, constantly making them easier and easier in the hopes of you passing, so that I could justify not expelling you from my life. Watch this movie with me. Give me a ride while my car is in the shop. Help me carry this couch inside. Extra credit.

And yes, I lit up around you. And yes, I always enjoyed myself. And no, that doesn’t really mean anything.

And I want so desperately to hate you

And I want so desperately not to think of you.

Sometimes I want to put you on trial and lay out my case against you.

I can say with confidence that you are the most selfish person I know. You display so little empathy for other people that I cringe when I think that you consider yourself to be helping humanity with your healthcare start-up. You love humanity, but not any person. You find a million insignificant reasons to look down on people and use them as joke fodder. You claim everyone is really as cruel as you are but just pretends not to be. You are superior in your honesty.

I rode the train into the city with great anticipation, looking for you on the platform. The world had more color when you came into sight.

I had only had the party so that you would come over. I hate throwing parties. But to have you on my couch, in my bedroom, with my friends and some more interesting and impressive people I had got to come to impress you—was worth it. And then there I was with all the guacamole and wine and people and no you. You had said you would come. That you would try to come. So I have nothing to accuse you of.

I’ve spent countless hours waiting for you and then wine turns to vinegar. “Why are you so sour?” you have the nerve to ask me.

But now I am prohibited from levying any wrong against you because what is the point: 2 + 2 = 4 and there’s nothing I can do about it. You never did anything to me, never promised me anything, where do I even get off.

There is no point to writing any of this, it’s just indulgence. But don’t I deserve to write a letter? Doesn’t everyone deserve to write one, decadent, indulgent, letter in their lives? I believe such a letter should be written in cursive, but I haven’t used that since grammar school and I think the skill has well atrophied. Too bad though. Cursive would really add to the decadence.

My demonstrated self-awareness will be a successful pre-emptive strike. Like any army blowing up its supplies before the enemy can get to them. And yes, I’ve moved onto military metaphors, I know...

“Is there anything in particular I can help you with?” You asked in the voice of a salesman in a high-end shoe store while you paraded the new woman around in front of me.

All I ever wanted help with was you. And how dare you speak to me like that, so politely.

I’m finding spring nauseating. I want it to remain winter forever.

Everyone is saying how wonderful it is that spring is FINALLY here, after such a long winter. I stopped hoping for spring a while ago and now the fact that it’s just decided to show up annoys me, makes me angry. What are a few flowers and more sun going to do for me anyway. T.S. Elliot had it right, calling out our morbid and unjustified obsession with spring: “April is the cruelest month.” He saw right through its false brightness to its disappointing core. Do I have the right, like Eliot, to complain about April? He was referencing the fact that the first World War had destroyed society for no apparent purpose. The passing of time would not make any of the deaths fruitful. I say I have the right and give no justification.

Spring. Ugh. You think you’re so pretty.

Or maybe it’s more about the loss of winter and the cold that stops time from passing, stops things from rotting, stops moving water. Once everything unfreezes it will become clear just how many months have gone by having not heard from you.

You said I was significant to you, but where does that leave me when I’m dragging a much too large bag of cat food up 5 flights of stairs because you ‘don’t do boyfriend shit’? No I can’t have sex tonight, I threw my back out.

A discrepancy. I had put so much in. You had taken it, given little. I could go over the records, but I don’t think it would convince the court.

You are the essence of a pier: a disappointing bridge.

I cannot get justice, so I seek to hurt.

And already you have become an object, a vehicle from this letter which is becoming the real subject. And I don’t see any way out of this.

This is all for my own entertainment.

I felt that I could be arbitrary and changeable with you because you understood and wouldn’t punish me for it.

But none of this matters. It’s really just emotional masturbation, an indulgence. I wonder which phrase will be plucked out and sardonically repeated by you and your friends, become its own joke with a myriad of variations, joke offspring as numerous as the stars in the sky.

Before you were successful, you took so much pleasure in a toothache.

I wonder what you’ll make of all this. You will laugh, I’m sure, and say ‘well obviously, none of us are supposed to get what we want, don’t you know?’ And the idea of this makes me very angry, because it’s all just an indulgence in the pleasure of a toothache. But eventually you have to pull the tooth, otherwise it slowly rots away and ruins your whole mouth- even can damage your heart I hear.

And again I find myself not speaking to you but meditating on you, objectifying you. But I’m allowed to because you do the same.

You didn’t get the promotion. I was there. You crashed your car. I was there. You needed contacts when you left the company, I provided them. I fed your iguana. Who has an iguana anyway?

You are a thousand times better than whisky.

You may take an inordinate amount of pleasure in a toothache, but I do not, and so could not live seeing and hearing from you only irregularly, having some significant moment every once in a while. You took up too much space in my mind to just move you into the corner. You must either be there entirely or none at all.

I wondered if, as it went on, I needed to be held by you just as much as you needed to be touched by me. And I didn’t deny myself, knowing that the more I did it the worse it would be when it stopped. Like how every successive drink brings you farther and farther away, higher, to a better place. And even though you know the next day will be worse and worse, you still have another and another because it’s worth it. Except you were solid and real and sentient.

I am no better. I still enjoy toothaches, or rather enjoy the pain from the bloody holes where the teeth used to be.

And this is what is so infuriating: I could easily find another sad, painfully intelligent, darkly witty man, but he would only ever be an object, a character, modeled after the original, you, who was a “real person” to me.

You’re worth writing a letter to because I’ve decided you are.

And why did you have to agree with me when no one else did? Make me think we thought the same.

And why did you have to remember what the things are that I like and the things I hate, and the small details about myself no one else remembers?

And why did you have to bring figs that day and share them with me? Who does that anyway?

And why did you have to make me love you?

And why did you have to make me love you.

I assert that I only fell in love with what you did, not with you.

In my defense...

But that’s not any better, is it?

Can I really say that you are not what you did? If only you could be fully evil so it would be easier. How dare you mix the good in with the bad. Unnatural monster.

Already I have lost, having spent so long writing this. You’ll read it in a fraction of the time it took for me to arrange it and then forget. You will be immortalized, as a villain, and I will slide into anonymity. Unfair.

But that’s the truth of it. At least you were an interesting villain.

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