Dear you,

I'm going to disappoint you. But you knew that already. I would write, dear adorable blue boy from the diner, but I don’t want to disappoint you with any more, bad news than I have already given you. From the beginning of the first word you knew that I was going to fail you in whatever I did. Maybe that is how you felt when you first saw me and said to yourself that you loved me too. At this moment my face is thin and my smile is wide, but it shouldn’t be. I smell of whiskey, sex and vomit, what a luxurious mixture. I know you told me to never make this mistake again, but I have. Over, and over again, night after night, I get drunk with a new lover. It’s a wonder that you have stuck around this long with me, listening to me tell you of my latest flame and my newest story of the night. The next mornings are always repulsive to you when I walk into the diner and you ask me if I want the usual for the millionth time, and I say yes. Tea with honey, an iced water, and one pancake for a smile, to make it look as though I am going to actually eat something that day. You watch me sip at my tea and gulp down the water, leaving my pancake untouched except for the syrup that I take the time to drizzle on it slowly. I know that you will never forgive me for doing this to you, but we were never meant to be anything anyway. I remember how you would look at me and smile from across the room with this warm, disenchanting look that shattered the slow world in my mind. You made time pass faster than before and I loved it, because everything in my life moved slowly. No matter how much alcohol I drank, or how many of the prescription pills I took. Life was boring for me, and the minuets seemed like hours. I know that I can’t make you not hate me for what I have done to myself, but without you here I couldn’t keep myself interested in anything. The booze began to taste like water and novacaine, numbing my small mouth when the other boys would kiss me. I felt nothing for them, but I still kissed them, still pretended to love them, still fucked them. Maybe I was afraid to feel something other than nothing again, because I knew that if I felt anything, there was this unlikely chance that I would hurt you. You were so perfect for me and I hurt you over and over again over a cup of tea and honey at an ugly blue and green booth in your tiny diner. You laughed at all of my jokes, even when they were stupid. I know that it sounds endlessly cliché and morbidly ordinary and overdone, but I didn’t see what was right in front of me the whole time. We are all so blind to the things that make us happy and that is why we are so unhappy with what happens to us. I wish that you were still here so that you could pick me up out of this bathtub and take away the razor blades that I plot my murder with. Maybe if Uncle Sam hadn’t called you away from here, you could save me. But you were sent away to battle against the small minded. You will save so many of those people from becoming Nazi lampshades and help so many children out of those unhappy camping grounds. I know that you will. You will not disappoint, you never do. So while I would sign this letter normally, “With Love!”, I’ll sign it, “With Sorrow”, and you will read this letter too late for you to help me and I will have disappointed you again. For that I am sorry, but I cannot hold myself above water without you here holding on to my lemon scented hands.

With Sorrow-

Mardi Opheim