E,

I’ve written so many letters to you, most of them given to you by hand, some by mail. You’ve cried reading them. I’m known for making people cry with my letters, usually happy tears. I wonder if you kept any. Truly, from the bottom of my heart, I have absolutely no idea. You were a minimalist, but you could be sentimental when you wanted to be. You believed people could control their emotions, so maybe you decided to throw them out when you decided not to love me anymore. You are also heartless in many ways. The thing is, I knew you for years, I lived with you for months at a time, I gave you so much of me, and I still feel like I know nothing about you. I thought I did. But you’re a liar, such a liar to the point where I don’t know how much truth there was to anything you said to me. For 5 years. I think you loved me, at least a little, but I also know you hated me. I remember that time you saw a psychiatrist and we had a brief breakthrough. They said you had ‘low empathy’, and I’m sure they were right. It’s not a dig at you. I feel sorry for what you went through, and I feel sorry for what you struggle with. I even feel sorry for your refusal to deal with these things. I don’t know if I believe in good and bad people but if you do, then I would say that you are a bad person. You have done inexplicable, unfathomable, and I fear, irreparable damage to me. I have to go to therapy specifically for you. I have to go to therapy because you refused to. The worst part is that I don’t think you feel bad. You didn’t cry when we broke up. It was odd. I told you that you were a coward for doing it over the phone, and we both know I’m right about that. You were the most destructive force in my life and yet you couldn’t bear to watch me cry. Repenting in church can only go so far, and you know I say that as a Christian too. It's great that God forgives you, but I’m not God. I don’t forgive you, not that you ever asked. You’ve always been more focused on getting into heaven than being a good man. I don’t wish death upon you. First, on principle. Second, I don’t think it’s what you deserve. I think it’d be too easy. What I wish is for you to understand the pain that you’ve put me - and likely other women - through. I hope you’ll apologize, but more importantly, I hope you’ll stop hurting other people. And the bitter part of me, hopes most of all that you’ll live with that guilt for the rest of your life. That you won’t sleep as well as you used to, that you’ll sleep like I do - anxious, full of grief, lonely. I hope that one day, I will heal, and you will carry the burden for me.

Here is the part where I generally say ‘love always’ at the end of all my letters. That’d be a lie. So I’ll say this:

Sincerely,

You know who

the chair i sit in is some expensive brand that has fancy features like a shiatsu massage button or heated cushions. my head doesn't hurt. i have a lamp with multi-colored bulbs (they aren't sold out at target in this universe). the overhead light has a dimmer switch. there is a notebook in every size and a pen in every color, all organized somehow (even though it's my workplace). the desk has drawers that i can put the notebooks and pens (and batteries, nail clippers, even the communist manifesto) inside. every bottle cap or bandaid i leave out disappears. my cup of water is full. the printer works.

even as a shadow, even as a dream

but he comes back

as a nightmare, as a memory

we eat dinner at a restaurant, it's midday

and he orders dessert that doesn't exist

'a watermelon muffin'

it looks awful and artificial, no wonder

i don't have one

it's stale, the last one at the grocery store

somehow we're there too

food, being yelled at and underdressed

it's all the same

the waiter asks, 'what's the occasion?' as we're leaving

i say, 'five years together, one and a half no longer'

and he's mad at me in the car

for saying that, but i'm also mad

he wants to shower together in my filthy college apartment

we're on the way to and from there, like always

i ask him, 'did you sleep with her this morning or did you break up?'

because those are the only two options in that car, at that time

he calls her 'diabetes girl' when he admits he slept with her

it's less derogatory than anything he calls me

or other women, more odd than anything else

'diabetes girl' is still his girlfriend, i learn

i have a girlfriend too somehow

who i don't like very much

she reminds me of him because she's taller than me

and wants to sleep with me in my childhood bedroom

the walls are still lime green. i must be younger than i am back then.

i say, 'no thank you'

no one showers

i wake up sweating

I was born on a Thursday. The eighth Thursday of the 21st century. I've given you a riddle rather than stating my birthdate outright not to be difficult (though I often am, and always have been), but to prove its irrelevance to the story I'm about to tell you. I don't remember that day at all. If I had to guess I'd say it was cold, the streets were jam-packed with cars, and everyone felt varying degrees of misery. They probably complained about the weather, the traffic, the stolen election, or their baby on the way who refused to show herself until she was quite literally yanked into this world by the head with a pair of forceps. All that is to say, I have a strong propensity for tardiness. And, though it feels as if I'm becoming a new version of myself every time I blow out my birthday candles, it seems that, in the grand scheme of things, not much has changed. I take comfort in that familiarity. I may live in a new house, but at the end of every day, I rest my head on a pillow I've had since the fifth grade.

Thus far, I've stuck to the facts. All the facts add up to a mundane conclusion, which is that I am a 24 year old woman who lives a very average, terribly boring life. But the past couple of years (or maybe the past couple of decades) have been anything but boring. That's not to say they've been "good" per se, but that they've been revelatory and I feel both further from and closer to myself than I ever have before.

It would be awfully poetic if I said that I felt like I've died and been reborn, but it would be reductive and cliche, and a flat-out line in both fact and in feeling. The facts are as follows: I am autistic and I am a lesbian, and I did not come to realize either of these things until the age of 23. Thus, it still feels weird to say (or, in this case, write) either of those things openly.

Both revelations came to me separately. One in a psychologist's office and the other in a "friend's" bed. They both should have been far more obvious than they were to me, and looking back, I both grieve and I laugh. I grieve the person I pretended to be, the person I really thought I was for so long, and I laugh at the real woman inside who was able to trick herself into believing in the facade she created.

I've spoken quite a bit about my previous relationship (sometimes more cryptically than others). It is the subject of at least 50% of my poetry, which is due to the fact that I mostly write out of anger and longing. During the time I was in that relationship, I didn't write much at all because I was in a perpetual state of sadness that lasted until I lost all sense of self and didn't have a place to hold all of those feelings anymore, and I became numb for the most part. He told me I was nothing, and because I constantly walked on eggshells and tried to do anything to make him love me, I let myself waste away.

I broke up with him over the phone. Twice.

I often tell people that the best thing my ex ever did was cheat on me because it gave me a reason to leave him. While I cannot say that I am a happy person in general, I am happier than I have been in awhile. I have never been a happy-go-lucky sort of girl. I always see the glass half-empty, and because I am stubborn, I firmly believe that you cannot change your perspective on those types of things. I will never be an optimist, but I am okay with that.

I am okay with just *being* at all.

I am learning about what it means to be gay and what it means to have autism, and though these facts are new to my conscious mind, with every discovery comes a sense of familiarity. I am meeting with an old friend and I am growing into that old friend.

It all comes down to this: I am writing this on a Thursday. Everyone is complaining about the weather, about the incoming hurricane that they say is "the first of its kind". If I had a nickel for every time something was supposedly "the first of its kind", I would be rich. Contrary to the "breaking news" in my life and on TV, it seems like any other Thursday to me.

i think i told you i wanted to break up

or to kill myself

same thing

you parked the car

and got out while i stayed inside

seatbelt buckled

you yelled and i’m cried

i don’t need to remember to know

it snowed on the way to pittsburgh

i thought it was pretty

i don’t need to remember to know

i always think snow is pretty

i’m remembering myself

sometimes, these days

i’m not sure if i said anything

or if we’d agreed to silence

i don’t need to remember to know

you hated every word from my mouth

i think we were late to the concert

i don’t need to remember to know

you were mad at me in the hotel room

i wore a nice leather jacket

and stuffed pills into the pockets

left my purse on the sidewalk

you didn’t tell me anything was wrong with me

only that you hated talking to me

i don’t think we went to the candy store

even though i wanted to

but i don’t need to remember to know

you would’ve yelled and i would’ve cried

you would’ve paid and i would’ve gotten chocolate

all over my hands and the leather seats in my car

you would’ve gotten mad and driven faster

all i have is the picture from the toll booth

i got in the mail

we didn't take many photos by the end

when i stopped looking like myself

i swore i'd be pretty again or like myself again

we talked a lot about forever and commitment

and love so

i thought about our engagement

but never our wedding

i thought about your funeral

i would cry and plan a eulogy

in my head, i never told you that

i’d wear my pajamas to the church

because i was always wearing pajamas or

nothing at all

i was never happy enough to wear anything else

i couldn’t pick out clothes from my closet

or look at myself in the mirror

when i wasn’t there at all

it was easy to plan ways to cry over you

i don’t need to remember to know

how to feel so sad

and nothing else

to feel sadness in place of self

you yelled and i cried

because i was someone else

but i wasn’t anyone else

i wasn’t myself

or at least i didn’t want to be

i think i told you i wanted to break up

or kill myself

same thing

or stay together forever

or kill myself

same thing

the only thing i miss

is how you held me after

you told me you wished i was someone else

you told me something was wrong with me

i know

something was wrong with me

and i’m sorry

i don’t remember saying i’m sorry

i don’t need to remember to know

i’m always sorry, i’m still sorry

for breaking up and staying together

or killing myself

same thing

i was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. blue and silent. (always). when doctors ask my mom when my anxiety began, she says it was in that moment. she swears my instinct is claustrophobia. i knew what dying felt like before i had the chance to cry. before i had a name or footprints on a page. i was born late and huge, an extra ten days and almost 9 pounds. i'm tall, much taller than my mom, almost eye-level with my dad, i'm out growing them. and yet, i'm still attached. i cried yesterday, started to panic because my mom left. i couldn't go with her to new orleans, i have to stay 'home'. i told her, 'it's funny how often you leave, considering you're the one who forced me to move down here, and now i'm the one who has to stay.' she said, 'you can leave, you don't have to stay.' but i need her. she's suffocating me here, but i need her.

all four years of high school live in a jose cuervo tequila box. i don't drink, and even when i did, i didn't drink tequila. before i typed out my poetry, i used to write it in the margins of my schoolwork. i have graduated and the box has moved states, and i still have not gone through the contents of it. not because i worry so much about my essays being cringe-worthy or seeing B minuses on the tops of the tests, but because i struggle to read my own handwriting - you know how some kids wrote in secret codes so that their parents couldn't read their notes? not me. i worry that my my words - whatever i thought was important enough to put in the jose cuervo tequila box - will disappear forever if i can't decode them. they say that your writing lives on long after you die, but what if no one can read it? not even the writer. when the words die, i die. 15 year-old me finally dies (the way she wanted to at the time). i spent a lot of time in college mourning lost words that were never mine to lose. it's been thousands of years and we still can't read Linear A, we have only fragments of Sappho, we don't know the way Catullus' manuscript was originally ordered because it was lost for centuries - we don't even have what we found anymore, just copies. i type what words i can remember, what things i think i wanted to say. Just copies.

Dear mom,

First and foremost, I want to tell you that I love you. (Here is where you say “I love you more”). I love you more.

You have told me many times that I am the reason you were born. Quoting a movie, apparently, though I can’t find it when I look it up, so maybe you’re misquoting (which is even better - in that case, it is your own).

“She is the reason I was born.” - you?

I don’t know why I was born. It might be the same reason. You were born to be my mom and I was born to be your daughter. Did you know that women are born with all of their eggs? So, in a way, I was with you your whole life. Sometimes, I get sad because I cannot go back in time and hug you. I know you had sad times when you were a kid and I want to comfort you then but I was not born until you were 31. I like the idea that I was always with you.

I don’t think that I am your only purpose. While I do think that I am most of all your daughter (and dad’s daughter, and Eddie’s sister, etc.), there are other things about me. The same goes for you. You are a mother, a wife, a sister, an aunt (and you are good at all of those things), but also: you’re a great cook, you’re better than everyone at Boggle, you’re the most generous and kind person I have ever met, you are smart (especially at computer stuff that I don’t understand), you are fashionable (you don’t need my help even though you think you do). Most importantly, all animals love you (sometimes, I worry you will pick up a wild animal and bring it home and it would let you).

Sometimes you say mean things to yourself, particularly about your appearance, which not only makes me sad, but also has never made sense. For my whole life, I’ve wanted to look like you. I’ve only ever heard people say that you’re beautiful.

I know I say I want to die a lot (and, when I’m having panic attacks, I do feel that way. Thank you for taking me to endless doctors appointments for the last decade by the way), but I am grateful for my life. Remember when I said “I don’t believe things will ever get better”? You said “I’ll believe for you”. That was when I was in high school and I think about it all the time. I have actually told that to other people as well when they feel the same way. Things did get better, and then they got worse, but I hope they will get better again.

Thank you for giving me Eddie, too. And Mia. And Chilly (via Eddie).

Ex anima (I learned that from college. It means “from the heart/soul”),

GAEGBG

p. s. (this stands for postscript. i learned that in college),

i challenge you to a full game of rummy 500