Dear Savannah,
I've written you a dozen or so letters now, though I fear I may have given you the impression that there is any semblance of a certain future ahead for you - for us.
As I write this one (and I've rewritten it over and over in my head a hundred different times these last couple weeks), I have to take pauses - breaths - between sentences. I knit between my dishevelled thoughts, mostly to take my mind off of it.
The truth is, I reread these letters to you every couple days, hoping for some sort of answer. It's silly how we do that. We look into our own words, our own minds, expecting to find something we missed before, something only recently relevant to our situation.
And after reading these letters (and wishing I were old enough to drink in this country, because I would do well to have a nice old bottle of red wine to myself on nights like these), I open up a new document and pound feebly at the keys until my heart is raw and I retreat to the emptiness of the bed I share with my sister.
The truth is, sweet, wide-eyed little girl, that I have no answers for you or for me. I can tell you the simple things, like how your heart will throb from emotional beatings you'll take from nasty friends, but how the pain will pass and you will arise anew, stronger, more compassionate each time. I can tell you about the great things you'll go on to do in high school, like befriending everyone and anyone you can maintain eye contact with (and even some who intimidate you at first). I can tell you about the rush you'll feel going onstage to take your bow as your first lead character.
But what about love? you ask in that hopeless little voice of yours. When do I fall in love?
Oh, silly girl, you'll fall in love with everything. You'll fall in love with ideas, with lyrics, with art, with other peoples' talents. You'll fall for the crookedness of strangers' teeth, and the snorting laughter of close friends, and the fire in the eyes of someone who is studying accounting at university and loving every minute of it. You'll fall in love with ideals, with brokenness, with stories, with poetry, with the stage, with musicians who don't even know that you take up space in the world (good God, will you fall in love with musicians who couldn't possibly be aware of your existence!), with dreams too big for your parents' paycheck, with adventures that will never happen.
You will love all this. But none of it will love you back.
I don't know what the future for me looks like yet. But I can tell you what I know so far:
You will give up on love entirely and not at all. On nights of watching sappy romance movies with your best friends, or after listening to your friend dole out the details of her date with her boyfriend, you'll feel this odd tugging at your chest, like something so great and big is swelling within you, tearing your ribcage apart at the seams. You'll bottle it inside until you find the dark sanctuary of your bedroom, where you'll curl up, squeeze your pillow impossibly tight to your body, then after you've had a good cry, you'll sleep for far too long.
On other nights, you'll have decided you cannot possibly be loved. You're too plain, too needy, too short, too everything, all at once. Boys don't notice you, and the ones who do usually do so with probing, hungry eyes. Not a man in the world exists who will understand you, and after disgruntled car-ride conversations with your sister at midnight, you will resign yourself to this conclusion. You'll get home, toss back the sheets, deny yourself the comfort of a pillow to cuddle, and curl up tight in the dark, tears slipping down your cheeks.
The thing is, you haven't given up on love because you aren't interested in finding it. You haven't given up because you want to end up alone. You haven't given up because you prefer to be on your own.
You give up when you realize that the terrifying voice in your heart was, is, and always will be right: there is no one for you, Savannah.
And this would be tolerable, if you didn't have to sit by and watch all your friends hurry up and pair off. You'll watch them walk down the aisle toward each other, and you'll be invited to baby showers before you hit twenty. And that dream you had when you were little will not so much fly out the window as it will clumsily tumble over the edge and splatter on the ground.
And you'll be here, typing away letters to a younger, more hopeful you at 4 a.m., wishing you had a bottle of wine and some serious painkillers to knock you out so you could fall asleep without the tearful routine every night.
I'm sorry, Savannah. I wish I could tell you that you go travelling Europe as soon as you get out of high school, or that you get to go study theatre at your absolute dream school, or that you meet someone who makes you feel alive for once.
But I can't.
Because it just doesn't happen.
Because this world isn't about making wishes come true and making people feel whole.
You're valuable, Savannah. I tell you this and I hope you'll trust me. There are other things in life besides love, but I won't lie to you and tell you it doesn't hurt every night, knowing you will end up alone.
Love, Yourself
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