January 14, 1992
Dear Friend,
----I feel like a big faker, because I've been putting my life back together, and nobody knows. It's hard to sit in my bedroom and read like I always did. So much has changed since the last time we talked. So much has changed since a moment ago.
----When I was twenty two, I read a book for fun. Except that I don't really read books for fun at all: it's always so I can remember that there are people out there who think my thoughts. And I know having real friends is a lot better than having fictional ones, but the fictional ones seem a lot more real sometimes, and books don't get married or move away or commit suicide. When I met Charlie, he was the realest person that I had ever come across--not because everyone else was uninteresting but because when you're depressed or confused or trying to figure out who you are, that is the only real thing to you, and everything else just kind of subsides into a gray blah. I think it's a defense mechanism.
----So maybe when I first read Perks, that's why it had such a profound impact on me, because I was trying to put my own life back together. Except the things I was dealing with weren't things that you can just talk about to whomever. You can't just say to people, "I'm still not over the fact that my friend killed himself" or "I still doubt sometimes, even after my mission," and even if you did tell someone, what are they supposed to say back? It's okay? These things take time? Charlie did understand, though. I knew, because he wrote all the things that I could never say--the disappointment, the loneliness, the fact that when your mind is a maelstrom, people keep thinking you're crazier and crazier, because you can't see things the same way that they do. And even though you're trying to be what everyone else expects everyone else to be, sometimes it's like there's something missing, and you don't even know what it is so you can try and fix yourself.
----And then I got to page 39. It's hard to concentrate enough to read more than a few pages at a time when your mind's play-repeat button is stuck, but after all that time that I had felt like there was something missing in me--all those thirty nine pages, played out over and over in my mind--I stumbled on infinity. There are moments when we feel that all we do is not enough, that somehow, all we are is not enough, but as I read those nine words, it all disappeared: the feelings of inadequacy, of brokenness, of loneliness. "And in that moment, I swear, we were infinite." It was as though the ceiling had rolled back from my bedroom and the streetlights dimmed low, and the midnight sky cupped me in its hands and held me there in the infinity of space, and for that moment, for that hour or that eternity, I was in that place of awe--the place where you only know you're there once you get there, and no one really knows the way back until you're there again.
----Perks made me feel as if I had been reading someone's soul rather than a story made up by some guy living in Tinseltown, and I remember thinking that with Charlie, I could just be me, I could quit putting away my feelings, so that night, I finished the book and then I cried for the first time in a year, one part for Charlie, one part for Greg. And as I read those closing words, as I paused on that last "Love always, Charlie," I knew that everything would be okay, that some things take time and that even book friends move on, and that doesn't have to be a bad thing.
Dear Friend,
----I feel like a big faker, because I've been putting my life back together, and nobody knows. It's hard to sit in my bedroom and read like I always did. So much has changed since the last time we talked. So much has changed since a moment ago.----When I was twenty two, I read a book for fun. Except that I don't really read books for fun at all: it's always so I can remember that there are people out there who think my thoughts. And I know having real friends is a lot better than having fictional ones, but the fictional ones seem a lot more real sometimes, and books don't get married or move away or commit suicide. When I met Charlie, he was the realest person that I had ever come across--not because everyone else was uninteresting but because when you're depressed or confused or trying to figure out who you are, that is the only real thing to you, and everything else just kind of subsides into a gray blah. I think it's a defense mechanism.
----So maybe when I first read Perks, that's why it had such a profound impact on me, because I was trying to put my own life back together. Except the things I was dealing with weren't things that you can just talk about to whomever. You can't just say to people, "I'm still not over the fact that my friend killed himself" or "I still doubt sometimes, even after my mission," and even if you did tell someone, what are they supposed to say back? It's okay? These things take time? Charlie did understand, though. I knew, because he wrote all the things that I could never say--the disappointment, the loneliness, the fact that when your mind is a maelstrom, people keep thinking you're crazier and crazier, because you can't see things the same way that they do. And even though you're trying to be what everyone else expects everyone else to be, sometimes it's like there's something missing, and you don't even know what it is so you can try and fix yourself.----And then I got to page 39. It's hard to concentrate enough to read more than a few pages at a time when your mind's play-repeat button is stuck, but after all that time that I had felt like there was something missing in me--all those thirty nine pages, played out over and over in my mind--I stumbled on infinity. There are moments when we feel that all we do is not enough, that somehow, all we are is not enough, but as I read those nine words, it all disappeared: the feelings of inadequacy, of brokenness, of loneliness. "And in that moment, I swear, we were infinite." It was as though the ceiling had rolled back from my bedroom and the streetlights dimmed low, and the midnight sky cupped me in its hands and held me there in the infinity of space, and for that moment, for that hour or that eternity, I was in that place of awe--the place where you only know you're there once you get there, and no one really knows the way back until you're there again.
----Perks made me feel as if I had been reading someone's soul rather than a story made up by some guy living in Tinseltown, and I remember thinking that with Charlie, I could just be me, I could quit putting away my feelings, so that night, I finished the book and then I cried for the first time in a year, one part for Charlie, one part for Greg. And as I read those closing words, as I paused on that last "Love always, Charlie," I knew that everything would be okay, that some things take time and that even book friends move on, and that doesn't have to be a bad thing.
Love always,
Greg
No comments:
Post a Comment