Letter to My Familiar

Dear my Familiar,

I have difficulties expressing myself. I am hardly myself when I think about you and I hate how largely that has a grip on me. Back then you told me not to think about you everyday because what good would that do me with everything on my shoulders, but how could I? After all, we’re young, and that being said, why have a care in the world, right?

The stories you told me were tasteful and I fed off of your energy and the way you loved your mom so much. Thinking of you adds up into piling debt of wanting to call you and tell you how terrible I’ve been without you around. I’d be a fool to tell anyone that. Time has slowed significantly. I hope it’s not too late for me not to take back the many slip-ups in the times I’d allow the “L” word to be the adjective in describing how It was I felt about the sound of your lips uttering my own name.

One hour feels like a week today, and little by little I can feel my chest cave in as I see the mirage of you and I sitting by the ocean waves. I didn’t have to look at you then to know you were talking to me. When our toes knitted into the sand and you told me you wanted to be the one who lights up my whole world. You believed I deserved better. Maybe that’s also why you held onto me tighter than usual. You knew it would be the last time I’d ever get to hold you again. Times were gentle kisses back then. Back then I felt like you were the only person who saw me beyond my whips and long eyelashes batted by others and bruised by an absent parent. I think the hardest part of saying our farewells is knowing that I don’t have the honor of opening up to you like that again.

Others have told me I’m too emotional for them. I’ve been shot in every limb of my body by harsh words and tight grips. I’ve been kept in dark places, been fed tasteless excuses and handcuffed to those who refused to allow me to be me on my own. You’ve had to have been my first taste of what I believe I truly deserved. Instead of lying you spoke of honesty and tender at first. You allowed me to feel all of the feelings and never once turned me away. No, instead you encouraged my strength and believed in me as not only someone you could trust, but as a woman. I think the hardest part of saying our farewells is knowing that I have to let that go without knowing if I’ll ever get to see that again.

While you avidly march onto the next chapter, I pray in my heart that you find what you’re looking for behind the barbed wire walls of long hours, major risk and a big responsibility.

A year from now you would have gone your journey. A year from now I will have gone through my ups and downs remembering how softly you used to kiss my forehead and think of how I’d wake up blanketed by your soft skin… and loud snoring.

I’d have to be a loser for kidding myself when I tell people I’ve moved on so fast. I feel like a loser because I haven’t yet even though I know, “It’s a process.” Kissing him is a process. I have to process that it may not be you, and that it’s alright that I like holding him too.

It’s always a process.

It is always a process.

I know you’re fine, and that wouldn’t ever be something I’d ponder angrily on. After all, I joined forces with you for the soul purpose of making you feel good anyway. I guess sometimes I wish I had what it took to make you feel like you were weightless for once in your life. Because at one point I believed I could, and the next I knew I didn’t have what it took. You had to grow up so fast. The world around you was always a battlefield anyway.

My mother tells me that maybe someday you’ll return after you’ve had your journey because sometimes something really beautiful takes longer and more distance to grow. My mother also said that if I keep hoping in my heart for that to be true, I’d be closing a door for someone who truly wants to be the brighter light. I do sometimes pray that you weren’t just a nightlight that trained me for sleeping in the dark. Because of you though, I appreciate the daytime much more.

I’m thankful for the nights we stayed in drinking. I’m thankful for the late phone calls on your busiest nights. I’m thankful for the tears, the laughs, the songs, and the short memories. I’m thankful for what you have shown me on how to care for another human being as much as I’m thankful for getting to know a person with such strong, yet beautiful heart. I feel like I’ve been awoken to a brand new beginning that will allow me to go through my next chapter too. At least I know for sure I am capable of love even after all the cracking, breaking and parting ways. I’ve reminded myself. I might sometimes find myself signing in the sand once again writing to the ocean for the deep blue reminders of what could’ve been. Despite that and the natural inevitable that I will move on. I will never not forget what I have now without you here.

Here’s to the better days I pray for, for you and myself. Onto meeting the new life.

See you on the flip side, or not,

Writer of the Familiar