A Letter

By Gianny Guzman

My dear,

It seems to me that so much has slipped my mind. But this is what I remember. This is my side of our truth.

We were young. The kind of young that flings you into life with blind eyes and bare hearts. The kind of young that made us claw our skins in desperation, too impatient to wait for the time of our metamorphosis. The kind of young that you can’t blame because they didn’t know any better, but we still bear the tattoo of guilt on our shoulders.

Oh how foolish I think we were. But we just didn’t know.

At the time we stood on a shore watching waves of our hopes, dreams, and promises, the tides too high for us to even try.

What we went through made me feel so small. It broke me down into grains of sand. But I couldn’t stay small, it’s just not what the world had in store for me. It wasn’t in my parents’ plan. With all the pressure of the world coming down on me from every angle of my life and the fire that fueled my soul, I became glass.

And you were broken down and small too but had no one to give you the pressure and your fire flickered far too much. So I lent you my fire and with the pressure of our friendship, we both became glass people.

People who are seen through because they haven’t forged who they are. People who, instead, rely on the reflection of those around them to feel for a moment that they are more than they are.

If only we saw ourselves. If only you knew I could see you and you could see me.

But let’s be honest my dear. I was never going to be enough for you. And I could spend my whole life yelling at you about how you made me want to stay glass. I could blame you for every crack in that friendship made of glass.

I’m sure you blame me for sticking by you through it all. You never understood my unyielding loyalty. Not until I left you in the end.

We can spend our whole lives passing the torch of blame and guilt back and forth in an endless loop. But there comes a time where we must simply grow up.

Glass can break, that will never change. But I will burden the blame for what I did and it may be heavy but it will strengthen me. And I will learn. I want to learn from it all.

We aren’t meant to be a part of the others’ life, we are the ones who turn each other into the grains of sand found at the shore of abandoned hopes.

It’s time my dear. As I say this final goodbye, I can remember now we had our beautiful times where we reflected the light into shimmers of laughter and smiles. But I’ll be the first to say that I loved you, but without you by my side I found who I am. I am not glass. I am more than what we were.  In the end, I would not change anything at all.