Doomed
Monday 23rd, March
Dear Eileen,
How peculiar your way of referring to death. As if death in itself was the unique boundary of life, the sole state in which life is life no longer. You could reference the quietude of a heart, the coldness of a body, the emptiness of a gaze, yet that only reminds me of the heaviness in my chest, the blackness of my dreams, the numbness of my mind. Aren’t these too manifestations of lifelessness? I lack a doctor’s expertise, but I feel confident when I say I have barely ever been alive.
I wonder if you will be capable of understanding. I wonder whether you have ever felt your existence being restrained, held back by the indifference of those who see you and hear you, as if they did not, as if you were not real. Do I have a name if no one remembers it? Do I have a body if no one feels its presence? Do I exist if no one cares? And now, held captive between these four walls, I sometimes find myself waiting for the shadows to consume what is left of me.
Life is not limited solely by death. I am not dead yet I struggle to feel alive. My life is bound by indifference from all sides. I suppose you could name that the death of one’s soul. And I dare say, by that logic, I may be as dead as your brother.
Regards,
Gillian
***
Wednesday 1st, April
Gillian,
If it is pity you seek, you won’t find a glimpse of it in me. Your disgrace does not deserve it. Never before had I heard an excuse as pathetic as claiming to be dead after a murder accusation. Did you believe yourself dead while killing my brother too?
Your philosophical contemplations will serve no use in court. I do not care how invisible you feel, for you are tangible enough to kill. It astounds me how you enjoy dressing up with victimhood, powdering your cheeks with suffering, painting your lips with a balm of excuses, and yet not a tear of its reality seems to fall close to your heart. All the anguish you impose, all the love you rip away, and yet you believe your pain to be the most meaningful. Does it not occur to you to question the fairness of this distribution?
Although, I suppose unfairness is an incurable weakness of yours, since you have not once hesitated in maintaining our exchanges. Your letters keep arriving with my mail, thirsty for replies. Your persistence is enviable, despite knowing my responses will bring nothing more than despise. Or nothing less, you might think.
You relish it, is that right? Oh, how it thrills you to be hated, to be seen even if also wished death upon! How much you must hate yourself then, and how insulting that is. Even your hatred is unnaturally narcissistic, for it is only yourself that you feel for, yet everyone else is made to suffer along with you.
Hence, I have decided to renounce this ridiculous quest to earn an apology from you, as you thrive with my attention and the word “sorry” itself seems to repel your very nature. So, from now onwards, I will grant you the freedom of my indifference.
Do not trouble yourself trying to reach me again.
Eileen
***
Wednesday 8th, April
Dear Eileen,
I regret to inform you that the way you despise me is far from indifferent. I know how indifference feels, and yours is too hot of a feeling to match it. You are closer even to love, and how poetic this idea is! Blasphemy along kisses, violence along caresses, toxic obsession along sweet memories… I would say love and hate are not as distant as we are made to believe.
After all, is Iago’s rage for Othello so far from Romeo’s love for Juliet? Passion brought doom to all, whichever its form. Passion and its paradoxical nature, for how it feels so alive that it burns. But, given a choice, I would also prefer to burn before rotting with the dampness of neutrality; passion’s warmth in my finger tips, its brightness in my eyes. It makes me visible. It reminds me of the definition of my features, of where my chin ends and my neck begins, where my freckles fade into my shoulders, where my fingers cease to extend into the darkness around me.
I understand how exhausting it must be to hate, how self-consuming as it burns inside you. I understand. I understand. But that indifference you desire weighs you down with damp suffocation. It grows mould that feeds from your body, from your very existence. I struggle to believe anyone would find pleasure in it. But feel free to attempt it if you wish to. Best of luck.
Regards,
Gillian
***
Thursday 30th, April
Dearest Eileen,
You have truly been ignoring my letters. Have you been burning all the envelopes arriving at your house that dare wear my name on them? Have you been saving them in a neat drawer as part of a police file? Or perhaps, are they rotting in your mailbox to punish them too for my poor behaviour?
Inevitably, I must wonder, although I could guess already, is it effective? Are you cured of the curse that is passion? You might wish to call it freedom, as much as I dread calling free what is drowning. But I suppose freedom is a concept of our own creation. An inconsistent lie. Regardless, does this questionable freedom run through your veins?
Best regards,
Gillian
***
Tuesday 12th, May
My dear Eileen,
Hereby I wrote an extract from one of E. A. Poe’s poems that haunts my mind in this desolate place:
“On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
The anguish of the words claws at my insides with the fear of eternal hell. “Nevermore” is too absolute for a mere concept, as if a word should state a truth able to stand for all time. If you want me to be honest, I fear the idea of “Nevermore”, specifically, I fear to never cease to exist in a condition of lifelessness.
Do you feel the anguish too? I thought you would, since you are suffering as well and all pain is to be feared.
Best wishes,
Gillian
***
Monday 1st, June
My dear Eileen,
Has indifference ended you yet?
Best wishes,
Gillian
***
Monday 22nd, June
My dearest Eileen,
I am forgetting the bitter taste of your words. Reading old letters has begun to seem pantomimic, an act with no true meaning to sustain it but habit. I feel like a boat drifting in the sea in hopes of distinguishing a shape of life in the distance. I am like someone waiting for a guard to announce that there is mail for them and feeling the papers smack against the stone floor. I am merely waiting, as hope fades, for a wave to engulf me and hide my body from the world.
You asked long ago whether I regret my crime, and I never answered, because it is not a simple response. I do not regret angering your brother, the same way I do not regret infuriating you, and I do not regret ending his life, but I do grieve the lost opportunity to keep you by my side.
Receiving this title of “murderer” does not make one more visible. On the contrary, as much as it makes us be talked about, it also makes our presence intentionally unseen. The public despises me from afar and avoids me up close; the guards’ half lidded eyes do not even come close to acknowledging me personally; the lawyer keeps my sheets in a folder and that is the extent of my existence for him. And you — who does not fear — intentionally blind yourself to me too now.
However, when your brother threw his drunken fist at me, I did not question my morals before throwing him from the port into the cold night sea. The lawyer called it self-defence. I ignore what the judge would name it. But whichever the label, my muscles did not react out of hatred, or at least, not out of externalised hatred. He was unplanned collateral damage.
This time, though, the damage brought you to me. You used to hate me for my crime, but eventually, you grew to hate me for who I am. I existed in your eyes, your mind, your memory, your dreams. I existed! By wishing my death you confirmed I was alive.
Yet after your pledge of indifference my taste of life has expired. Everything returned to its shallow normality and hope regained its characteristic uselessness. No purpose hides in hoping, no purpose in writing what won’t be read, no purpose in craving what won’t be received.
Thus, farewell, Eileen. I wish you the most apathetic of lives.
Regards,
Gillian
***
Monday 29th, June
Gillian,
Your letters have stopped. Has your boat sunk into the depths of your solitude? It is hard to empathise when you are the source of all wrongfulness. James was a carefree boy as clumsy as he was cheerful, with a sense of fairness only matched by his sympathy. He was the only one I had. I do not expect you to understand how I miss him, because you do not seem to recognise the meaning of a life. But such disconnection from reality does not excuse a crime.
I have your letters safely kept, awaiting the trial. I have read them several times only to remind myself of your distasteful self-conceit. How you moan for your own misery and how you kill for it too. And yet I now find myself writing back to you…
Fear suffocates me at the thought that you might have renounced everything. It is an isolating fear. Do not misinterpret my words. No hint of affection taints my heart, but merely a need for a revenge I cannot achieve if you die before. So, keep your broken boat afloat.
But refrain yourself from glorifying our exchanges. I am not willing to help you live nor win this trial. As much as I might be doomed to hate you as the last purpose of my life, feel assured that you will feel hated — burnt — more than alive.
Eileen
***
Monday 6th, July
Dear Eileen,
It is a pleasure to be doomed by your attention.