TO ROTTEN LOVE; TO COLBY
Dear Colby, this is my final letter to you and one I will not be sending.
Colby:
“i know it’s dumb
i know it’s stupid
i just feel like
fuck
i feel like i can save my younger self if i dont damage you
that’s so stupid and self centered
im crying
im sorry”
Violetta:
“i don’t want you to cry”
* * * * *
Dear Colby,
This is my final letter to you and one I will not be sending. It’s been two years now since I last felt your touch. There was something so beautiful about the way I fell in love with you, like how autumn leaves decay in hues of red and yellow.
You always told me that I gave you chills whenever I said your name. And now whenever anyone casually says my name in conversation, I feel the chills myself. I don’t think that I noticed this before I loved you, but it is one of the few parts of you that I do not mind carrying with me.
It fascinates me how we adopt aspects of the people that we love. Their mannerisms, likes, dislikes, motivations, interests, activites, etc., become part of us as our love becomes part of us. For a while now, I have held onto the belief that love and admiration are two sides of the same coin. In some way, we must want to be the person we so attentively share our time with. I feel embarrassed to admit that I admired you, but not that I loved you.
You introduced me to the art of sobriety and the art of addiction in one fell swoop: you’d drink and yell and leave me alone for weeks on end. You would hurt me and I would miss you the way one craves a cigarette. My love for you excused your cruelty: it is not his fault, he is his pain. You treated yourself like a disaster -– self deprecating, ashamed. It was uncomfortable, and yet I couldn’t help but want to help you. I guess that’s part of why I made you really leave in the end. I would’ve killed myself to save you, and you wanted so badly to be saved.
What happened in the following months of your forced exile (years now, I guess) was quite spectacular. In your absence, your lack-of, I created an apparition of you -– something between a memory and a ghost. I’d hear your voice in the solemn empty space and see your shape in the silent blue hours before dawn. After a while, you no longer existed. What lingered in my doorway and snapchat and nightmares was your vacuum: a presence created entirely by your absence. And I loved it just as much as I loved you, if not more. I’d watch you sleeping quietly next to me, your imagined body cloaked in the darkness, and wonder what you were thinking. Did you miss me? I’ve learned to accept that it doesn’t matter. You can’t matter to me anymore, for she is a girl and mourning, and I am a miracle and healing. It’s crazy how many months can pass in the space between nightmares and daydreams.
I hope you hold onto memories of the old me, because I don’t remember who I was when I met you. But I loved you, and I think I am my best self when I am loving. I never wanted to hurt you. I still wouldn’t hurt you. Do you remember when I called you last year, weak and remorseful? You hated that I still cared about you.
The guilt of what you’d done to me was eating you alive. You called it by a name I could never say myself. I forgave you, but I didn’t mean it. I just didn’t want you to die. (You asked if I knew your home address. I said no. You gave it to me and told me that you’d pull the plug whenever I said so. But I remember how you cried when you admitted that you were drinking yourself to death. I never understood the guilt until you showed me how. Even with a knife in my gut, my blood pooling on the white cotton sheets, I couldn’t forget the fear in your eyes.) I didn’t talk to fill the quiet space. It felt so easy to be with you as long as I held my tongue.
I’m in college now. I am happier than when I met you and much happier than when I knew you. I have grown out of my girlhood and have learned to survive in the shadow of what I lost, what you took.
Last week, I met a girl who went to high school in Chicago with you. She told me that you two used to swap poetry and that she was worried about your drinking. I told her that we dated and that you’re a horrible person. She said that she never really felt like she knew you, but I knew she meant that she never knew you to be a horrible person. I wanted to ask her a million questions, but I kept quiet. I cried after hearing your name. I wasn’t expecting you -– living, breathing, drinking you -– to exist outside of my memory. I ended the night feeling empty and sour like the air that lingers around rotten fruit. I hate that you still exist, and I hate that no one who knows you knows who you are.
I still think about you. I still hear your raspy, soft, bitter voice in my head. I still talk about you in therapy. And I still miss you so much. There were moments of tenderness -– the way we could laugh together, the way you’d run your fingers through my hair, the way you’d hold my shoulders after making me cry, the way you believed I was the best person you’d ever met, the way you’d look at me, all knowing -– that made it all seem worth it.
Do you remember what I said to you the night after you left me? I do. Over the phone, through hot tears, I said: I love you so much, but you hurt me, and I think I need to stop letting the people I love hurt me. I don’t want to believe this is what love feels like. We can’t be friends. Please don’t contact me again. I’m sorry.
Colby -– my first love, my first true heartbreak, my sweet, my cruel, my beloved, my critic, my anger -– I think it is time for me to let you go. I hope you are well. I hope you are dying. And I hope I never see you again.
With love and no remorse,
Violetta ◊
AUTHOR: Violetta Balkoff
ARTIST: Elise Carman is a deer in Providence.
Last Spring, XO published its first print edition. This was one of the featured articles, now online! Enjoy!