That is that, and this is this (a bitter unsent letter for Valentines Day)

Dear (name removed, but some jackasses know who they are),

Last year at this time you and I were exchanging instant messages from across the globe, contemplating our respective patheticness at going to concerts of bands that we love by ourselves (I didn't end up going alone, so I was less pathetic than you. loser). For the record, if I could go back to that day and convince myself to stop messaging and e mailing you, if I could erase the ee cummings poem you e mailed me from my journal, I would do it. I would take away the few good times I had with you, if it would save me the pain that you have caused me.

A year ago I never would have thought I could write those words. Such is the absurdity of youth. I never thought I could regret something so thoroughly as to want to erase not only the experience, but all of the things that occured in my life subsequently. I have always been able to look back at miserable, painful experiences and gather some solace from something good, or at least reasonable, from it.

My interaction with you is bereft of anything good. Yes, I had good times with you. I might not have seen Jonathan Safran Foer in person if not for you. I might not have seen the Dresden Dolls, or gone to a free Spoon show if not for you. But I remain confident that I could have achieved all of these things, and that I inevitably would have, without your intervention. It might not have been at those times, but it would have happened. Yes. We had some good sex. But in the words of Tori Amos "so you can make me come, that doesn't make you jesus".

So I may be bitter. I suppose many people would, if someone had seduced them with the downright contrivingness that you did. You listened to my fears about betrayal. You understood my intolerance for dishonesty. I told you I was not interested in dating you. And then you were perfect. We talked long into the night about the various ways we have both been damaged, and damaged others. You acknowledged that I am, perhaps just a little bit... fragile. You held me close in the darkness. You wrote me letters. Beautiful letters. (by the way, i didn't deign to set them on fire. when i moved leia and i just threw them in the trash. with the cat litter and rotten crap out of the fridge) You were deliberate. And even if you weren't quite scheming... well. It's enough.

I moved because of you. I was going to move, I was planning to move by September, and it happened to work out that I moved in September. But knowing you made me jump a little faster. It doesn't make me proud to think that I ran away. And in many ways I was running towards something different than where I was. My friends tell me that they admire my ability to have decided to move and just picked up and done it. Like that. Poof. What they don't understand is that I was running away. I was running away from the room where we lay until 2 in the afternoon. The floor where we read the Sunday New York Times. The diner where we had breakfast in the afternoon. I was running away from the Bluebird, the Gothic, the Tattered Cover, Coors Field, the lightrail, places that were mine long before I even knew you existed, and that by knowing you, by experiencing them with you, have been tainted. I was running away from Washington Park, and my favorite place in the entire world. A place I wanted to take you, I dreamed of walking there with you, explaining how I used to go there for comfort, and telling you a story I have never told anyone else. Ever. I was running away from that dream. Thinking back on the ways that knowing you has made me into a coward makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable.

I met with you about two months ago. I almost didn't tell my best friend about it because I didn't want to know what she would think of me when I did. The entire time I was with you I felt nauseated. I don't understand how I can still like someone, still care about someone, still be attracted to someone who has shown me the deep and disgusting nature of humanity. I'm not talking about you and what you did and did not do. Because that is the oldest story. The fact that it hurt me does not make it original (in fact I am quite certain that nothing I feel is unique, but since I have nothing to compare it to I have to own my pain in the only way I know how). I am talking about the ways that knowing you has changed me. I disgust myself, thinking about the glee I felt in hearing that you had been hurt. The smile that plays across my face when I think about the ways you are not who you want to be. The fact that I can remember being crumpled on the floor, the same place I fell when you told me the information I didn't want to know, sobbing uncontrollably and without the strength to move. The recollection of having to literally force myself out of bed every morning for a week, past the physical illness that accompanied waking up in the morning and any thought of you during the day. The fact that I would keep myself awake until I passed out from exhaustion every night because whenever I closed my eyes I remembered you, and imagined you in ways that made my want to removed my brain from my head and soak it in bleach. The fact that I can have all of these small loathings, and still have sat across from you and thought "I want this person to like me". That, more than anything, is what makes me wish I could go back to a year ago and erase you from my life. Completely.

This is just the latest in a long stream of unsent letters to you. Some of them have been written down, some of them stayed in my mind, some of them made their way out in conversation with people who were better able to guide me through my subconscious than I was able to stumble along on my own.

Please don't take any satisfaction in thinking that I feel this way any percentage of the time. That point has long passed. I may not be happy right now, but that has nothing to you (blasted winter and brain chemicals). No, this is really just my response to the fact that I hate Valentines Day, and this year I have just one more really good reason to want to throw snowballs at the disgusting couples I see on the street.

me