Saying Goodbye

When do you quit when there’s no game over screen?

I’m playing a game called Save the Date…it’s a story game, where you go on a date with a girl named Felicia, and she keeps dying. I keep getting new options, and I’m trying to find one that ends without her death.

I’ve come to really care about her.

She’s talking me through why someone would make a game like this, now. It’s…oddly really helpful to dealing with my sadness over you and I not working out.

How do I know if someone actually cares about me, or if they were lying? Did you care, at 3am, when you couldn’t hang up? When you yelled that I wasn’t allowed to stop being your friend, did you want to be mine? How do I know if I screwed up, or if it was doomed from the start and there really wasn’t ever a way to do it right? Were we over from the start, right from when you responded to my letter?

I don’t want to give up in the game until I find a way that Felicia survives, and I don’t want to give up in life until I find a way that you and I stay friends, and don’t disappear from each other’s lives like we did 3 years ago…

but in the game, Felicia has died 26 times in 10 different ways so far. In life, you’ve taken yourself out of reach again…the fifth time in five years.

Maybe to keep yourself safe, because you’ve figured out that I’m a whacko jerk after all. Maybe because you just weren’t that into me, and realized that it wasn’t useful to what’s important to you to keep responding to this persistent guy, making plans, and rescheduling something that you know you will never let happen.

Maybe I broke your heart.

In the game, Felicia calls me in the morning to ask where we’re going to dinner. If I just cancel our plans, she’s sad at first, and so am I. But eventually, she finds someone, and gets married and has a great life, and I’m genuinely happy for her but always wonder if things could’ve gone differently. It was the second option I tried.
Two years ago, in real life, I chose not to accept your friend request.

In the game, choosing not to go on the date is the only option I’ve found that ends with her happiness.

I met and became friends with the guy who made this game. He’s large, and heavy, and thoughtful, and kind, and creative, and capable, and from getting to know him, a very good person. I wonder if he had an experience like the one you and I had. Where he didn’t know how to be a great friend to someone. But he kept trying when he wanted to give up, and pushed through the pain. I wonder if he did everything he could think of, and it ended anyway. And afterward, he decided that the only way to be a great friend to her was to take himself out of the picture, and he made this game to help people like me find peace.

I really want him to find love some day. I think he’s a wonderful person, and that one day there will be a girl for whom he can be a great friend.

Maybe there’s no ending in which I can be a great friend to you. Maybe you’re great already, and the best thing I can do for you is trust you to find happiness.

There’s someone in this world who does need a friend. Someone I can understand, because they made this game to share themselves with others. Who helped me understand me. Someone I can be a great friend to.

I should probably be talking to him about it instead of you…but, I couldn’t help writing this letter. I guess I’m still working through us, just like I’m still working through the game. I don’t even know if you’ll ever read this. I might never know whether you did or not, since once you see that I contacted you here you might block me straightaway and be done with it. This is a long letter, after all. I have no idea why you blocked me in the first place. The last time we talked we were rescheduling dinner plans. But if you figured out that rescheduling and reading and listening and talking to me was taking you away from what matters to you, reading this would not be your prerogative.

Maybe the way to win is not to send you this letter at all.

Maybe there’s nothing I can ‘do’ for us to have a great friendship.

But there’s someone I can ‘be’. Maybe I can be…okay. Maybe I can be alive. And trust that you are great, and you’ll keep being great. Maybe I can be the kind of person who gets himself out of the way.

I wish I could hand-write you this letter. But you were careful and no matter how many times we walked the park together, you never walked with me right up to where you live. Maybe that’s best. That way, there are fewer bad endings to go through, just like Felicia says in the game.

I wanted us to have an extraordinary friendship. I imagined that looked like us doing the things we put on our list — treating you to sushi, sailing together, camping on an island, listening to the music you wanted me to hear when you could look into my eyes, watching me eat your cooking, studying Japanese and Korean, challenging each other, and becoming fluent together, watching Red Line…adventuring the world…and one day, either falling in love with each other or helping each other fall in love with someone else.

Being together forever, whatever it was like — That’s the ending I imagined.

I think all I want to know is that you really will be great without me.

But who has to tell me that for me to believe it? If I say it to myself, is it true?

You are great. You always have been. It’s why I loved you in the first place. Before I ever wrote to you, you lived through hardship, and got fire inside you. Became imposing. You’re going to make your dreams come true yourself- I mean, look at your test. You did awesome. You’ll be a world-class chef, and you’ll have an extraordinary family, if that’s what you want. Just because I won’t be there doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

And, if I really look at it…I’m gonna get there too. Even if I can’t share it with you, because you’re not here.

I’m not enlightened right now. Thinking that we will never do those things together hurts so much and I want to cry. I want to send you this letter and for you to say it was all a misunderstanding and we get that lunch like we planned and smile across the table at each other with our mouths full of Unagi and the feeling of being home after a long journey, and in your eyes I see you looking at our future, and you’re finally home.

But…

If there’s no Game Over screen…when do I say goodbye?

Goodbye, [name omitted].