Letter to My Generation

The one with the red hair. The girl in the hat. The writer. The artsy chick. I could be a lot of things with little to no meaning, what I could have you believe of me. The surface things, the petty things, the I-know-you-better-than-you-think-I-do things…come on now, we’re all strangers.

It’s a busy, self-involved life. It’s the prime of our existence, the beginning of everything. We’re allowed — we’re expected — to be inexplicably selfish. But what a lonely life that is. What a barren time it seems to be when questions are never asked, cares are never given, and the crowds we gather round ourselves are only as filling as our solo cups. I want to know from my dearest allies to my nearest strangers the simplest of truths by asking the cruelest questions: Who are you? How do you feel? What’s going on in your life? What makes you sad? What makes you happy? Are you loved?

I want to know because I want to care; otherwise, what’s the point? What’s the point of spending all this time crossing and re-crossing each other’s paths when the parties always end too soon, each of us crawling into or out of beds for that sleepwalk home? I want to know because I do care — I’m wringing my hands — and I’m not sure why.

I’m not ashamed of my morality, of my fervent belief in right and wrong. I’m not ashamed to make mistakes and keep making them until I learn what I need to, until I’ve lived the way I should. I’m not ashamed to be reserved, to be a buzzkill, to be awkward, to be uncool. I’m not ashamed to be religious, to be afraid, to be sensitive to all the sharp edges of the world, to be an unfaltering friend despite the footprints on my back. I’m not afraid to fall in love, stay in love, love the people I should and especially the ones I shouldn’t. I’m not afraid to not be loved in return. You see, I’m not afraid to be who I am, only frightened by those who should know all this by now. I’m frightened by how little I know of them.

To the women I befriend and love and most especially those I don’t, you wonder what he sees when he looks at you, if he sees you at all. You place your value in his incapable hands and keep it there so long as the attraction remains. You believe yourself a figment of a person when he no longer glances in your corner, calls you for a reprieve from youthful ignorance. You’ve forgotten what the world was before aloneness occurred to you, before he was a revolving figure in your mind. We make easy enemies of each other because of him, because of them, and at the brink of it, we are all the same. We are all lovers driven mad by the pain of uncertainty.

And to them, those beautiful Casanovas, I loathe you and love you and wish I could make forever friends of all of you without fear of disappointment. I wish I could understand the turbulence of your mind. I wish you could wonder past our physicality, past the careful words we craft to pull you closer, push you farther from our light. Do you need so many of us? To empower you, to praise you, to heal you of wounds the first left behind. Or is it the loneliness you can’t stand, the devotion you can’t be without because to stand alone is worse than giving yourself, your time, the tepid beatings of your heart to strangers who know nothing of what makes you you?

I won’t fall to this.

So here it is. Here’s everything I am and have been and will be. I offer it to you as I would my pride, my loyalty, and all the varying in-between. Here are the darkest and lightest parts of me, the greys and blues and supple pinks. Here’s what I don’t say and won’t say because I believe it to be futile out loud. You’ll find me here, always in truth, always with the hope that I am not alone in my inquiries, my thoughts, and my dreams.

Though I’ll remain silent and straight-backed among the crowd, among the ghosts we each carry of love and loss, my heart is here. You’ll see my face again, remember this, and choose to forget. You’ll proffer a cool beer, slick in my grasp as I pass it to another once you’ve gone. You’ll tug on my shoulder in lazy greeting and size me up for what I could offer you, unrelenting in your perception of who you believe I am. You’ll talk of various nothings, unknowing of the distance in my eyes, glazed in the absence of enthusiasm. You’ll be what you are to me on the surface of it all, the parts of you you’ll allow to be seen. And I will do so in kind.

We will carry this on until we’re each gone from here, bettered only in our resolve to never betray our emotions, to never be known by our souls. I am guilty. But at the end of all our vanities, you could’ve caught it; it was there.

I don’t belong here and never will.