I Hope There's Ground

Dear Yuri, 

I know you’re not gonna read this, and you don’t have to. I just needed to put this on somewhere that wasn’t a text message, because I’ve sent plenty of those and they’ve all just sat there left on delivered, and there’s just something about a letter that feels different. It feels like I can write anything I want to you and not expect a response, just like how we used to talk. Maybe because some part of me still hopes that you’ll be able to see this when I send this to you, but we both know that’s not happening. 

I’ve been listening to that song again, you know the one. I’ve had it on repeat for the past three days, which probably isn’t a good thing now that I think about it. But I just can’t seem to stop because every time it ends I feel like something is about to be over and I’m not ready for it to be over so I just let it start again. It takes me back to the car, and the city going past us, and your hair flying wild up in the sky as the wind blows while your head rests against the seat. And us not saying anything at all, and it being the best time of my life. You made me feel that way, without any words. Like we could just sit in the silence and enjoy how you were there and I was there and we were there together. 

I miss it, Yuri. I miss it in a way that’s embarrassing to admit, in the specific way that missing something beautiful you had and gave up is embarrassing. I let that go I let you go. I thought about it a lot I think about it a lot, how I just told you to leave without even bothering to explain myself. I thought you’d understand, or I guess that’s just what I was telling myself as I watched you go. I even had it all drawn out in my head, I was gonna tell you that I thought we needed space, and that it was the right thing, and that we both needed it, and you were going to agree and everything was going to be fine. I just didn’t know that my words were so empty. I spoke them out and they filled the air, but my chest still felt so heavy after you left. The things that were actually weighing me down, the ocean I was drowning in, I kept my mouth closed around those, just like always. Just like we always did. 

Bad luck to talk on these rides, remember? You said it once after we almost crashed and we laughed and let it become a rule, like it was the law of whatever we were. I think I was relieved when you said it, because it made the silence feel like it was right, because it made us feel like all we needed was each other and nothing else. It made us feel like we chose to keep quiet instead of what it really was. I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t think it was bad luck, Yuri. I think we were just both too scared. I think we just got lucky when we found each other and recognised something and spent all the time we had together not talking about anything, because saying it out loud would make it real and we didn’t want them to be real. Because we felt safe in the car, and the car let us run away. I think that’s how we got so close, because we found that in each other. 

I need to apologise. I need to say sorry, not via text the way I’ve been doing for the past few weeks, and that’s why I’m here. 

I’m sorry, Yuri. I’m sorry for not asking you for help. I’m sorry I told you all the lies about needing space instead of all the true words stuck in my heart. I’m sorry for letting us believe that it was bad luck instead of calling it what it really was. I’m sorry the last conversation we ever had was me performing a decision I didn’t even fully believe in, while you sat there and took it in the same way you took everything in, so composed it almost seemed like you were fine. I’m sorry, Yuri. I know you weren’t fine. I just let myself believe that you were because believing it was the easier alternative. 

I heard from Minju that you were doing alright. She said you were around, still showing up for school and looking like yourself. And I thought — I actually thought — okay, then. This is okay, this is good. Like your okayness was existing separately from mine, independently, and I hadn’t smudged it by letting you go, and that it would continue on regardless. I told myself that. And I kept telling myself all throughout September, and then October, up until 

Fuck I can’t do this.

Sorry, the bottom part’s wet now. It’ll probably dry up by the time I give this to you. 

It was up until Minju called. It was pretty hard to hear her clearly, she was crying with tears caught in her throat and choking with coughs and she could barely get her words out so I already knew something was wrong. It was during breakfast, I was eating cereal.

The day you died  The day you killed yourself, I was eating cereal.

I don’t know why that stupid detail keeps coming back to me, like it matters or something. I don’t think it Maybe it does. Maybe it’s the fact that everything before the phone call was intact and normal, the bowl, the spoon, the way the light came in through the window, and then 

I couldn’t bear to  I couldn’t go. I know people thought it was wrong, and maybe it was, but I just couldn’t face it. I just couldn’t make my body go and stand in a room where you were and also weren’t at the same time. 

So I drove. I drove for three days straight, way further than we ever went. I drove until I couldn’t anymore, and I swear every time I turned to the passenger seat, I saw your face  you were there looking 

I can’t  sorry give me a second. 

Okay. 

I’ve been writing this letter like you’re going to read it. I noticed that just now, looking back at the top of the page with your name up there, Yuri, like you’re on the other end of this and I’m going to receive your response in a few days. Like this is just a letter between two people who lost touch and one of them is reaching out. I think I needed to write like that for a while. I think I needed to start there, in the version where you’re just not returning my texts because you’ve gone quiet like you always do, and you were going to come back eventually like you always did. I needed to live in that version for a few paragraphs. 

But I know I can’t stay in it. 

You’re not going to read this, I know that. I need to come to accept it, so I’m writing it down and I’m telling myself that. I know that in the way I know things I haven’t figured how to carry yet, this big awful factual thing that sits in the middle of every day and doesn’t fucking move. You’re gone, Yuri. You left. And I don’t mean the way you left after I told you to, not in the way you’d disappear by yourself sometime, I mean you’re gone  I mean you’re no longer here. I keep trying to find somewhere to put that and I can't find anywhere it fits. 

I’ve been thinking about what I’m supposed to do with the things I didn’t say. The true things, the words I kept locked deep down, the words that got stuck in my throat the day I told you to leave. The words I kept closed around my mouth for two years because it felt safer not to say, because I dressed my fear up as superstition and called it bad luck and drove around in comfortable silence with you and told myself that that was enough. I had chances, and even though it eats a part of me away every time I admit it, I still need to be honest with myself about it. And I could’ve asked about you too. I had chances to go into that gap, that gap that was always between us and what we didn’t say. I think that gap was the silence on the rides. And I loved that gap. I knew it was there, and I was perfectly content with it staying as it is, and I never once went looking inside it because I was afraid of what I’d find. I was afraid of what it would ask of me. So I left it alone and told myself that was respect, that I was giving you space, that I was understanding you. When really all I had to do was open up, and I was just afraid. 

Your pain was older than me, that much I know. It had roots in places I was never invited to, that had nothing to do with me, way before you got into our car. I know that I wasn’t the cause, and I’m trying to hold onto that. My therapist keeps telling me that and I keep nodding and I think eventually the nodding and the believing are going to meet somewhere in the middle, but right now there’s still that gap between them, which is almost funny, the two of us and our gaps. 

I think of a version of ourselves where we’re braver. Where someone had taught us, or we managed to figure out ourselves, that opening up wasn’t the end of the world. That we could share an understanding instead of silence, that you can hand someone your worst and most frightened self and they’d still be there. I think we could’ve been something in that version, we could’ve stood up straight in it. I think I would’ve told you how I was really feeling, and you would’ve listened, and I would’ve asked you how you were really feeling under that mask of yours you always wore, and I would’ve listened, and maybe we could’ve

But that’s not the version we were in. And I’m learning, slowly, at my own slow speed, that I have to stop punishing myself with the versions we weren’t in. 

You told me once, and I remember because you spoke with such conviction like you truly believed in it, that you thought most people were just floating. Just drifting around and bumping into things and calling it living. I didn’t push back, but I realise now that I should’ve. That I should’ve said, floating is fine for a little while, but you gotta ground up eventually, and that everyone needs ground, and that you deserved ground more than anyone I’d ever known. You deserved something solid and real underneath you, more than just the silence we were floating in. I just didn’t know how to be that, because I was barely standing myself. 

I’m trying to stand now, and I’m proud that I’m trying. I think if we came clean and told each other everything, you’d be proud of me now too. I’m in therapy, and I'm not drowning anymore. I’m saying the true things out loud for the first time in my life, and it’s the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been and I think it might be the most important thing I’ll ever do. I’m doing it late, I know I’m doing it late, but I’m doing it, and some part of me is doing it for you, or because of you, or in the direction of you… I haven’t figured out the right preposition yet, give me some time on that, Yuri. I’ll know by the next time I visit. 

I know you knew this, even though neither of us said it out loud, but I cared for you. I care for you, still. In both tenses. And I will, forever. 

I hope it’s quiet wherever you are. The good kind, not the kind we hid in. I hope you’re floating. I hope there’s ground. 

I loved you, Yuri. I loved the clouds and the way you stared at them as they drifted. I loved watching the city blur past us as we drove to nowhere. I loved the way your hair flew wild up in the sky as the wind blew while your head rested against the seat. I loved you, the whole real impossible you, the fact that we found each other, and I should’ve said it so many more times than I did, I should’ve said it instead of keeping it somewhere safe inside where it couldn’t do either of us any good.

I'm saying it now. I loved you, I love you. Both tenses, all the way down. 

— M