Dearest Savannah,
I'm not as wise, not as sure, as I pretend to be for you.
When I write these letters, I speak of our future as if I can see how things pan out, but I've got to confess that I have no idea what the future looks like. Tomorrow is a day I can't remotely begin to paint for you. I can't even tell you what the next hour will entail.
I'm just as blind and aimless and scared as you are. I'm a frantic, panicky mess and I have the same fickle heart in my chest as you - though perhaps mine is more worn out than yours is now.
I got a job since my last letter to you. (In fact, I was officially hired a week after that last letter was published.) I love this job. I love it so much that I'm scared deep within my bones that they'll let me go after the holidays are over.
It's a great job. In fact, you'll love it, but I won't spoil the big surprise for you. You love surprises.
Things have been really good, even though I'm still stuck in this same place. The longing to wander and roam about the world is still churning in me, hot and furious like the core of the earth. I still can't afford to do that, but I'm less anxious about that now.
Things have been incredibly good lately.
And yet, as I sit here tapping at the keyboard, this isn't the reason I write to you.
Most things are good, but that deadly loneliness still writhes inside, bearing its teeth and snapping its ugly jaws at me on nights like tonight. Thoughts I had long ago buried resurface daily, and they tear me apart.
There's a cavernous, angry trench in me. It begs me on its knees for "company". It weeps for someone to come and fill that space. Bridge the divide. Find me.
"But who could ever fill that space?" I ask, bitterly. There's no one in the world who could see the depths of my soul and understand - and love - those parts of me.
And - if for some reason, God decided to create someone else on this earth who felt as deeply, who hungered to understand the brokenness of others, who was as tender and desperate inside as I am - why would they want me?
I'm a train wreck of contradictions, so fixated on becoming the person I think I'm meant to become, so flippant with the decisions in my life, so utterly and inexcusably plain.
I'm plain.
In fact, "Savannah" means plain.
A flat expanse of land, barren, thirsty; ever reaching, never finding.
Perhaps it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps it's just who I was created to be.
But it still stings. Friends and family will bump me with their elbows and jokingly suggest impossible things.
"When we go to that concert in February, you're going to catch his eye and 'he' will come over to you, I just know it!"
"You never know, 'he' could stop into your store and just fall head over heels for you."
And that's the thing about wallflowers: when you're close to us, you see the beautiful little details about us that strangers cannot see. You think "certainly this wallflower is more lovely than other wallflowers. Perhaps it isn't a wallflower at all, but really a rose instead."
But you're only showing off a funny looking cabbage to everyone else and calling it a "rose".
I am not a rose, nor a daisy, nor a peony, nor a tulip, and I will never be.
And though I appreciate the sentiment, making me believe (for however fleeting the moment may be) that I am anything more than a cabbage only gives me a false hope.
Savannah, I'm sorry to do this to you. This isn't the letter you deserve, and it's Christmas Eve. Go to bed. Open your presents.
I will be here, dancing around my living room while listening to music made by a gentleman so deep and lovely and beautiful that he could never - would never - be bothered to know of my existence.
Have a little extra eggnog this year, kiddo. For me.
God knows I could use it.
You are valuable, Savannah, even when that value can't be seen by outsiders.
Love,
Yourself
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