Messages in a Bottle

[fishfry]

Cast aloft into the waves, a simple bottle holds a letter to no one.

Dear Stranger,


Is it foolish of me to write a letter to no one? Maybe this is pointless, or maybe a part of me wants someone to find this letter. To read it. Stranger, would you read my letters and would you care about me, if only for a little?

Would you read my words and sympathize with me? Would I be real to you, just for the time that you're reading my thoughts? Can I trust you with my innermost thoughts, if only for a little while? It feels like I have few people to give them to, these days.

I'm going to trust you with them, even if the ocean will probably take this as offering. That's a fitting graveyard for my heart, I think. Maybe one day, a siren will find this, and my heartache will be their treasure.

How do you know you're doing the right thing? I want to believe that I'm making the best choices, but in the moment, how do you tell? Is the right thing the hard thing to do? Is it the selfish thing to do? The selfless? Does the fact that this hurts mean I'm making the right choice? Does the fact I'm hurting others mean it's the wrong one?

I don't know what I'm doing. I don't think I've ever known. And I can't tell anyone. They all need me. There's someone who need me, needs me more than anyone ever has in my life. I care about them deeply.

Enough to do horrible things. To have done such cruelties that I couldn't have imagined them before.

How do you justify breaking a heart? How do you justify breaking a home? How can I justify taking my home and turning it into a prison? How do I live with making my arms chains? How can I be forgiven for making my love a weight?

How do I live with the choices that I've made? I know, I know to the depths of my heart that making different choices would have been worse. I would have abandoned someone who needed me so deeply. And I cannot allow that to happen.

But why does it hurt so much? Why is it so confusing?

Maybe I'm just not made to be strong. Not in this way. Maybe I'll break trying to do so. Is that better than not trying? Isn't it worse to try to protect myself at the expense of others?

Even in my letters to no one I do nothing but ask for questions. You can't answer me. And I can't ask anyone else.

But at least I can get my thoughts in order. You'll keep my secrets, won't you?

Not yours, but perhaps you might pretend I was, for a little while,