Dear Helen

I have been a disappointment. I can barely enjoy the days anymore and all the free time that I have from the one career that you never wanted me to pursue I spend drugged out on my emotions or in the alternative, alcohol, doing everything I can it seems so that that part of me that wanted to be embraced the sky is lost and forgotten. Back then I had felt like all the love in the world was coming down on me. Now I want to fill every moment of peace with a lifelike daze of nothingness. I now know what numbness is. I have destroyed everything in me and now there is nothing left. I want to move but I have nowhere to go to. I want to know who I wanted to be, for you because at least then I always wanted to be better.

The blue sky has been hiding from me, much like the sun and the rain. It is all happening out there but it is nowhere within me. This is my refuge from the silent cold that has already gripped me. There is a reason and a purpose for pain, it is a warning, a reminder, always telling us when we have come too far and that we must stop and turn back or face death. I walked willingly into the darkness. There is neither pain anymore, nor any want for it, no need. I know that I should know to need it, but I cannot even bring myself to wanting it.

How could I let all the love in me die in such an undignified manner, let the world strip it from me layer for layer like it was theirs for the taking. I always thought I could handle it, that I was the one in control of all this madness. It was okay if I let it all devour me from the outside in. It was okay because it was my choice not to fight for my life. To meekly dance with all my demons as they fed off me, to have them sucking me dry until there was no more than a shell of a spirit that was once beautiful. To hear myself being spoken of in the past tense and not think to wonder whether I am still alive or not. Not even glance up at my accusers. After all it was my choice. My choice!

How did I forget how to cry so that I could mourn? How did I forget how to fight so that I could overcome this? Most truths about this world I have come to find are scary and we hide from them behind the walls of our homes and the laughter of friends. Things get lost in the smoke that emanates from the dead fires in our hearts. We stop seeking knowledge and only take what we are given. We watch as our fellow humans are being murdered right in front of our eyes and then move on as if nothing were happening. The humane moments are rare and when we see them we do not recognize them as a type of greatness that is within us. We are too overshadowed by the fear that where we are and what we are doing is not important but take comfort in the fact that everyone else is doing it too. For some of us this world is already a hell and we cry out to be saved some of us die a silent death blind to it all.

I stopped dreaming. I stopped thinking that you were watching over me.
Nothing is like I thought it would be. I don't get any of it. I draw a blank at everything. Where is that life spark that I find in the memories that at least keep this part of me intact? Where is that girl that strongly thought that my greatest achievement would come to me as I lay sleeping? Where is that brilliant intelligent girl that stared out into the world and wondered...why capitalism? Because then I thought that what I thought about this life mattered. I didn’t just do, I questioned, I lived.

I used to slide my hand on every surface so that I could always sense everything with all my senses. Life was like one big ritual. I prayed ten times a day, making promises that I never kept. I believed in a love that transcended anything that I have come to know. How did it all turn out so wrong?

How did I forget about you, how could I forget about me?

The day outside my window looks like an oil painting. The grey clouds look heavy and smudged in the sky blue sky. The towering trees are a representation of green and yellow and right below the houses are being tended to. There is a soft cold breeze, winter is almost here. I am sitting at my desk unsatisfied and very unhappy with my job, searching for meaning in words that I have used so often that it has almost become redundant. I am thinking of you and of how I regret that you had to see all the worst of me. I am missing you and wondering whether I would have been worse off if you were around. You were my favorite person in the world and after you died I took on the lovely burden of loving the one you loved the most, the most. It was always just enough that you saw me for who I really was, saw everything of me. It was enough that after that you loved me anyway. I just let you die and let that claim that you left to greatness wither with time.

I should taken better care of your legacy, made sure that I pushed her harder and was there for her more. Made sure that I made grandma happy by showing her, contrary to what I said that there was in me every inch of the heart that was in you. I was always giving. I was always fair and just but I failed you. I have managed to taint your memory with regret. How can you rest knowing that we are all so lost in all the turmoil of this?

I was selfish and stupid.

The clouds have dissipated. The sun is streaming gloriously. That soft breeze feels so terribly good on my skin. I was scared, I am scared. I am scared of my dreams so much so they have become nightmares. I wish so much that I could start making promises now, vowing that I will not run away anymore, that I am ready to fight. I really want to do that but for now all I can say is that in my worst hour, I come here and I remember you and I remember me. I can almost see us lying on your bed when you said that you were the only thing that held me there. I knew it was true. I never wanted a world without you but you left so much of you on me and my sisters, everywhere you went with your good deeds and intentions. You did your best and all you have to show for it…guess we are as stupid as you said when you said that we were all stupid, and that I was the stupidest of them all, although that may have been the dementia talking.

At least I wish was.

Where has that fire gone, that conviction? That thing that made me so disappointed in Maria when I could not see you in her. I never worried about who was going to bury me; I worried about holding us together as we were breaking apart. Back then the emptiness was secondary to the pain of it all. All of you still lingers I think at the house that the bank took away from us, I remember when we would take those walks, I want to take one now. I feel you with me like you aren’t even gone. This is how I should remember you.

I am defined by this grief and this loss. It is something so significant that it made new contours around my heart; I had to learn how to breathe again. I have yet to see anything more beautiful than you. May be it is about time that I stopped looking so hard for what is out there and try and see better what is in front of me.

This is easy, this pointless death. It is harder to go on knowing that you are gone but accepting all of the life that is in me. It is almost like a mockery of things, a blasphemy of sorts that this world should continue moving. I can't let them win, proving them right that death kills everything. I will bear out the loneliness, suffer the discomfort and crawl back towards that buried line of pain that I shouldn't have crossed and come to bear the pain again. Everyday, I will live and be the stupidest of your daughters that there ever was, and try to keep you alive inside of me. Be proud of what I accomplish when I deem it worthy.

I wanted to blame others, I wanted to make them suffer me, I wanted to make them bleed for me but it was out of my nature. I only knew how to give and thus always get in return and it took me to the edge, because I gave to nothing and received nothing from people that I had come to call friends because I let them abuse me. For a second I wanted to blame them for my own weakness and lack of judgment instead of accepting my own stupidity. It's heavy; it weighs on me like a ton of regret. I wanted to hate myself for not hating them. Purge it all out with all that undeserved flogging of the spirit as if I was the only one eligible to deal out punishment. It's a bit funny, I feel forlorn about losing it all, like it was ever anything worth fighting for. I know I wanted it to be. I just never got there.

How did I come to forget you, how could I come to forget me, when I saw you every day? You always saw everything in me, and loved me anyway and I lost my way.

I will love you always and I hope that for now it is enough that we walked a while together.

Your daughter,

Gloria.