Dear ______,
I wish I had known you back then. I wish we could have been friends. Not the kind of “friends” who build a friendship on a collection of shot glasses, empty beer bottles, cigarettes, and forgotten Friday nights. I’d want to be the kind of friend who took the time to understand you even if you didn’t understand yourself half the time; the kind of friend who would listen, really listen, even if I didn’t agree with what you were saying; the kind of friend you could trust with your thoughts, your fears; the kind of friend who could bring out the best and the worst in you; the kind of friend you could argue with then laugh with in the same hour, then do it all over again; the kind of friend you didn’t have to impress with clever or witty conversation, or any sort of conversation; the kind of friend you could talk with nonstop but also sit beside in comfortable silence; the kind of friend that made you feel a little more alive and a lot more safe; the kind of friend who knew the deepest, darkest parts of your heart but was not afraid to go deeper still; the kind of friend who would fight alongside you and fight for you; the kind of friend who felt like home, like the family you always wanted but didn’t have.
I wish I could have been there when everything started to unravel, when everything started to crumble and it felt like you were being buried alive. I wish I could have been there when you locked yourself in a closet and cried so hard that your head and your heart felt like they were going to explode. You didn’t even know you had a heart until it started to bleed. You wondered how your heart could ache but not feel. You wondered if you would ever be able to sleep (unassisted) again. You wondered what you had done to be eternally damned “the walking dead.” I wish I could have been there when you started to remember, when everything started to make sense but then absolutely nothing made sense. I wish I could have been there when you started to demand the truth. The truth wasn’t kind, the truth took no prisoners. The truth set you “free” but the world seemed like a life-sized version of the same cage. You wanted to see everything in color, in the unforgiving light; strange how color so vivid could also be so flat, so bleak. I wish I could have been there when you couldn’t forgive yourself, when every look, every whisper seemed to be taunting you, when every finger seemed to be pointing at you. I would have silenced every look, every word; I would have chopped off every accusatory finger and hurled it back at the demons they belonged to. I wish I had been there when you tried to scream into the night but couldn’t because the screams and the shouts had been buried six feet under. I would have screamed with you, I would have screamed for you until I lost my voice and lost all consciousness, if it could have given you back your voice, if it could have given you back your childhood, if it could have given you back everything that was stolen.
I wish I could have been there with you through it all – every moment that seemed too long, every day that seemed so dark, every season that the sun escaped and hid from, every year that came and went but somehow stayed the same. I wish I could have held you when you felt the least lovable. I wish I could have been there to weep on your behalf when you were too numb to blink. I wish I could have held your hand when you felt the most alone. I wish I could have been by your side when you needed a friend. I wish I could undo everything that should never have happened, rewind time as easily as throwing back a piece of unwanted fruit, swap puzzle pieces in and out until they formed something cohesive, something beautiful.
But, I couldn’t be there. I couldn’t be that friend. And even now, I want so desperately to be that friend. Everything in me wishes that I could reach out and touch you. Everything in me wishes I could reach into your heart and resuscitate it. I wish I could open up your heart to trust again. I wish I could set you free to hope, to dream, to believe, to be. I wish I could make you understand, you don’t have to be perfect or right or good, you don’t have to be polished or put together – you only need to be you. I wish I could give you back the light in your eyes; I see it flicker when you laugh, when there is no caution, when there are no inhibitions. I wish I could peel away every layer of dullness and numbness that mummifies you so that you could see the softness, the tenderness underneath. I wish I could tear down the walls of cynicism and hardness that imprison the child inside. But, I can’t. I can’t make you see what I see. I can’t make you believe what I know to be true. I can’t make you feel again. I can’t turn back the hands of time. I can’t make it all better. I can’t be who I wish I could’ve been – who I wish I could be – for you. I can’t be what you need. Because I am not He.
Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
And the light around me will be night,”
Even the darkness is not dark to You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You.
– Psalm 139:7-12