Dear Savannah,
I wish I could write this to you, two weeks since my last letter, and tell you that things get easier and that you stop crying.
Certainly, your family and friends will have moved on. They'll start giving you funny looks when you get emotional. They'll offer up half-baked platitudes about the future and how much potential there is out in the world. When you mention a new co-worker, they'll ask you if you think he's cute, and you'll dig your fingernails into your palms until you bleed to keep from lashing out.
Cutting your hair (something you will have sworn off after an incident in the seventh grade) will start to look like a good idea. You'll consider cutting it short, to the ears - hell, shaving it all off will start to sound relaxing.
You won't eat. The first week of the break-up, you won't eat a thing, and you'll drink so much water that you'll have to pee every twenty minutes. First, it will be because you haven't got an appetite. Then it'll become a fast. Somehow you will convince yourself that God will fix things so long as you can manage to starve yourself until the week is up.
And He won't. You can cry like Hannah in the temple, you can dehydrate yourself with your tears, and you can force yourself to not eat for a week, but nothing is going to change.
I'm not going to tell you to eat. I'm not going to say "take care of yourself".
Mourn.
Grieve.
Scribble on your arm while laughing so hard that you cry.
Freak your family out.
Telling you to do anything else would be hypocritical.
Look, this is a warning. If I thought my letters could reach you, I'd tell you to avoid the musician at all costs. No movie nights. No sharing poetry. Don't get close to him. Don't go over to his house on June 4th.
Do not kiss him.
Do not let him kiss you.
Do not offer him your heart.
Little girl, the crush will go away, and you'll get over it over the summer, but I'm asking you -- I am begging you -- to stay away from him. He's got the sweetest heart and the most gentle hands, and losing him will feel like your lungs are filled with lead.
Oh, if I thought I could reach you, I would take you by the shoulders and shake you until you listened.
It feels so much worse than you could have possibly imagined. And maybe it's God's way of teaching you sympathy, or a lesson. Maybe it's because you mess up. You break the boundaries you set at the beginning. You move too fast and go farther than you ought to.
Savannah, you'll lose your mind over this boy. You will be driving home from church camp with your mother in the passenger's seat when you drive past your sister's high school where he teaches music, and you'll break down in tears. You'll cry over goddamn freeway off ramps that you took with him. You'll cry over Harbor Blvd because it's the street you took to get to his house. You'll cry over shitty 90s music he liked. You'll cry over plays you had planned on reading with him, and movies you had wanted to see because of him, and you'll sob your eyes raw over anything and everything Greek, because he was so proud of his culture and you had learned to say "thank you", just to impress him.
I'm afraid that you (we) get attached way too easily. Our heart is a needy thing, and we so dig our roots into whoever is stupid enough to get close. We say "I love you" too soon, and we move in, unpack our belongings, and start painting the walls before the papers are signed.
And I'm afraid this is going to wreck you. I'm scared that this will be the last straw. It feels like the last straw. It feels like the end of the line. The end of a book. That shitty, unsatisfying kind of ending to a book you don't end up recommending to your friends. Already, the walls have started to be rebuilt and reinforced. I don't want to speak to anyone. I don't want to tell them how I'm doing.
I want to plaster a smile on my face and tell people I'm "okay". I want to become even more of a background piece. People are telling me to do something wild, to stand out more, to be bold. They think that breaking me out of my shell will help me feel better about myself, but all I want to do is sink into the earth. I want to be the person people don't see at all. I want to be a whisper, then a breath, then nothing.
I don't want to be here. I don't want to do anything.
My heart is hurting too much.
I was supposed to be healing, but I think this wound is infected. It's not healing right. Something is desperately wrong inside, and I am petrified.
Jesus, I wish I could stop you from loving him.
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