#four am and here i am: drafting lyrical letters to [redacted]

[elendchen]

I told you not to let me down and that one time we talked, during that surreal three-way phone call, you asked me if I intended it as some kind of secret message.

It's still strange to think of it. You, a person I spent so much time puzzling out, analyzing your behavior or trying to predict it, speculating about your motivations, your feelings, wondering about me.

I must be a strange creature to you.

(That's all I ever wanted to be. Unknowable yet in possession of secret knowledge you can't hope to guess at. By the end I felt stupid for it, for thinking that I mattered. Humiliated for losing to someone who wasn't even playing.)

You certainly are a strange creature to me. It was almost nice, I thought, that you wondered. That you kept asking her if I really was okay.

I said it then, I said it a thousand times, and I say it again: you had no reason to care about my feelings or prioritize them over yours. I'm not mad that you took what was offered, you owed me nothing. The secret message - I hand you the knife, I close your fingers around the handle, move your hand to point at my heart and press the tip to my skin, just shy of drawing blood. I say "you can do it" and I mean it, the sentiment itself an offering I lay at your feet - was never for you.

But if you'd really thought so - that your decision mattered, that you could have spared me pain by saying no (you couldn't have) - then why didn't you?

I'm not mad that you didn't care about my feelings, I'm mad that you pretended to.

I haven't said this to her yet ( I don't know yet how without it sounding far too much like I'm blaming you for her actions ) but you never meant a word of it, like all your pointless protestations, token resistance, easily overriden by a more decisive mind.

You think that if you never make a decision then you cannot be blamed, can't be responsible if it doesn't work out. If you don't commit to something, someone, it doesn't matter if you lose them.

That's your fatal flaw, it's inherent to your being, I see that so clearly now in hindsight.

It's funny. You did let me down in the end. I meant exactly what it sounded like I meant: "don't break her heart." And you did, by doing what you always do: not even playing.

And that means I win.