To Whom It May Concern:
I’ve tried to know you as best I could. I’ve tried to figure you out. But I also tried to be that friend that could always be there for you, to talk to. Someone you know you can count on. But I know now this simply cannot be reciprocated, or even appreciated. You have shown me as much—have told me as much—and I cannot continue like this anymore. You have severely abused me, I feel. Have taken me for granted. Close to last year now, almost precisely your birthday, you decided things needed to change. You were upset with the status quo. You were upset with yourself. You yearned for a change. You had to have it. Things could not continue any longer, you willed the change you wanted to see. This was not the path you would have chosen had you known what you would have been feeling right then. How could you live knowing that this may be all that is in store for you? Knowing this life will have only its small, fleeting pleasures, knowing you would be miserable, in short? With only a gaggle of individuals pining for your favor, fearing your open contempt, too unwilling to say what they really think. Too afraid to voice their doubt. That was not a life worth living, you decided. The merits of friendship are not relegated to just good memories, compliments and a sense of self-fulfillment. It is a frequency of its own, relaying between shrill laughter and inaudible, desperate gloom.
You decided right in wanting change. Change in you means change in the world around you. You chose right. But you also chose to keep this knowledge from those who would misunderstand the gesture most. You needed time on your own. To think. To do. To be. But did you ever stop and think of trying honesty?
You betrayed me. And treason, as on the national level, is just as fundamental to an individual as well. Treason, in other words, requires a staunch stomping. Treason, in so many words, is the ultimate betrayal of trust. And I trusted you. And you are guilty of treason. The sad thing, the pathetic thing, is that you know you are guilty. You make no secret of your wickedness. In fact, you display it as a warning to those who you have deemed “unworthy” or too weak to be in your presence, to befriend you. Whose fault then is it when one can recognize, can overlook this wickedness in you? If people are the sum of their actions, what of you then? What of me then? If I can overlook your oddities, your quirks, your flaws, and concentrate then on the good times, what of me then? Do I forsake my own law of what is friendship? What if I can remember all the times you were good, or at least my own notion of what “good” is? Caring, vigilant, and wise. Foresight was a talent of yours, being able to accurately predict outcomes, knowing what had to be said.
In this we completely matched. It was in this we found our harmony. God knows we disagreed when we disagreed. But believe me when I say I didn’t disagree when I did. I absolutely saw your point. It was not wrong. But it was not right either. At the end of the day, it is all yourself that matters, what you know, what you think, by your level of contentedness or security. But when there is room to do good, real good, like guiding one through a lesson, the self takes a backseat. It is out of moral duty this must be done. It is out of compassion, and knowing a human life saved is worth ten unsaved and rather unsavory lives, you would have acted too. Benjamin Franklin said that to teach your children to hold their own passions and prejudices to a reasoning will is to have done much to end misery and ills from our society. If we cannot do great things, we must then do small good things when we can.
I do not believe myself foolish in subscribing to notions of humanism. Simply because I know our humanity is the one thing that binds us all together, that links us all on the tiny boat we call Earth. There is enough food to hand out 2.2 pounds, or 1 kg, of food to every individual on this planet. And can we not feasibly use the same technologies of war for peace? Shoot a 12-cent banana at some poor sod in Nigeria rather than a $12 million missile to a crowded apartment bloc where suspected terrorists are residing.
But I kid myself. Missiles cost much, much more than $12 million if you desired a block leveled. I did what I did out of mercy. Despite the rightness of which I know I vindicated against you, I still feel…. Something. I am in the middle of ascertaining what as of yet.
Sympathy? No, you lost that upon your act of treason. Compassion? Then I must ask myself what form did compassion take in my compulsion to shove you. None. I am a monster, as they say. But a hidden one. I acted on behalf of the Greater Good. Where the ends justify the means.
You could not hold onto and follow through with what had to be done. With what had to be said. You subscribed to selfishness, one that hid no hypocrisy, but rather paraded it.
I had to act. There was no other way. Could you name one? I smiled. Genuinely, authentically, really smiled when I met you that day, at the base of the mountain. It would be our first hike together. According to you, it would also be our last. Very last for you.
Hiking does much to clear the mind. It presents obstacles easily noticeable, easily made vulnerable to our kind’s adaptable intellect and capabilities. How we scaled those so obscure trails! How we finished off that rock wall! It was almost worthy of one worthy.
Panting, gasping for our breaths, we turned and marveled at the accomplishment we had made there that day. Today. As far as the eye can see, we watched ants go about their lives in suburban homes and businesses. We observed eagles dancing in the air, almost in unison, almost at our behest. We stared in wonder at the expanse of ocean laying just atop the tree lines that seemed helpless to our hands reaching out just in front of us.
I knew it was then I had to act. I said nothing.
I write this letter now, not intending to mail it. Who would I mail it to? I write it to help myself clear my mind. It is akin to hiking in this way, but hiking right now would only cloud my mind, and do nothing.
I aim to make sense of this. I preach of treason done, injustice and whatnot. But was ridding myself of you such justice as to undo whatever injustice done? I voice my doubt. Perhaps this memory will serve me in the future, for that is all you are, a memory. Soon, you will be a memory of a memory. And then nothing more. Or perhaps your smile, your frown, your cries, your laughter will drive me to insanity? I am not above it.