>>From: Belacqua
>>To: Perdita
>>Subject: Re: freight trains
>>Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000

I slept through my classes this morning. In the middle of the night last night, I was thrashing around in bed unable to sleep. People kept calling and waking me up to make me feel like shit again. Now it's almost noon, and I think I finally feel rested. "Maybe some day we'll meet again/when our two roads hit the same dead end/and ohhh/I'm counting the days." That's a Jets to Brazil song. It kept running through my head at the airport and it's still running through my head. I don’t know if I can even verbalize exactly what I'm feeling right now. I'm so lonely to go back and see you again or have you come here and see me because I've never felt like I have this weekend. The world wasn't a cheerful swirling rainbow or anything, but I’ve never felt less alone.

I can't stand to be with someone so different from me like your roommate said. She doesn't have those ideas that make people different from her terrified or freaked out. She can be herself and be taken seriously as a normal person. If I'm myself to someone different, I'm a freak and a weirdo and they just can't understand. I can't get across to anyone how important it was for me to see you this weekend because we can sit freezing our asses off holding a cigarette and just understand. We can just let ourselves go, take off our masks, and be free to live in our world. That sounds so...I don't know, but you know what I mean.

I'm overrunning with so many emotions right now. I was so afraid to do anything when I first got there because I didn't want to make a bad impression or anything. I was more terrified that you wouldn't like me than I wouldn't like you. And I'm so relieved. I wish I could feel forever how I felt with your head on my shoulder or standing in the airport terminal. I just felt so content that I could have died right there and felt like I had died happy. I feel really lucky for ever having e-mailed you. Normal people aren't capable of understanding someone else the way I think we understand each other, and that really helps me not feel so useless. I'm so glad you exist, that you're you, that you understand. I wish we could suddenly feel better, but it’s enough for me right now to just feel normal with one person.

On the phone last night, I said that our promise was more of a lifeline than a morbid pact, and that's not totally true. That's what I said to a friend of mine to make him feel better. It does help keep me going because I won't break that promise for sure now, and I'm convinced that if I have to go, I want to go with you. Please let me know when it's time and try to wait for me to get there. I feel like I'm gushing and being repetitive, but this is so different from how I've ever felt that right now I think that's all I can do. I'm looking for extra classes so I can graduate as quickly as possible and get out of here, but it still seems so far away. I just can't wait to see you again. Thank you so much for helping me get through all of this shit right now. I couldn't have done it without you. I hope your day goes well, and I'm so glad your weekend did.

I love you.
Belacqua

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>From: Perdita
>To: Belacqua
>Subject: Re: freight trains
>Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000

Belacqua,

I think I just read and reread your e-mail about fifty times. It makes me want to cry. Thank you so much for saying all those things. I feel exactly the same way about the way the weekend went. When you first showed up, I was terrified. Apparently, you get quiet, but I get totally out of control because I feel this need to keep talking and I generally end up making an ass out of myself because I can't stop laughing. Whenever I'm overrun with emotions, the only thing my body can do is laugh. It's the most aggravating thing in the world, and I have absolutely no control over it.

You know, I feel like I know you like I know myself and it's both gratifying and torturous because I'm so glad to have found you, and yet I'm so angry that you have to put up with the hell which surrounds us both. At least I can take some comfort, though, in knowing we're way ahead of everyone else, even if it means an awful lot of suffering. And it's so good that we're not alone anymore.

Christ, I'm so fucking confused. It's in a good way and everything, but I was so resigned to living a lie for the rest of my days (however few they may be) and now all of a sudden there's someone who will listen to me and take me seriously and GET IT. It's astonishing and comforting, but it's also really confusing. That's not to say I'm complaining because I most certainly am not. I can't tell you what kind of a void it filled having you here. I'm so overwhelmed with the knowledge that you've seen the demon in my brain and it hasn't scared you away. I'm in absolute disbelief that you're as honest and compassionate and sincere as I had hoped. I've never encountered anyone I could trust because their world doesn't involve the same kind of trust as mine, but I know I can trust you. I can't tell you how many times I've been hurt or used by people for whatever reason, and it's cursed me with the ability to look at people and know they're going to hurt me. But I don't get that with you, and you're the only person I've ever found that in. I can look at you and I know you're a good, honest, caring person, and I know you feel things as intensely as I do, and it makes me want to jump up and down for joy and then lay down next to you so we can slit our wrists and say to hell with the fucked up world that can't accept us for who we are.

I believe you when you say you won't break our promise, and I hope you know how much that means to me. It's SO important to me. I'm so used to people backing out on me and running away like their head's on fire, so I KNOW how much it takes to say something like that and I'm so grateful to you for saying it at all. I won't break it, either, and I'd be devastated if it turned out to be less than a morbid pact.

This would be a good time for another poem:

You and I Are Different

You and I are different;
I know you know it, too --
not from one another
but the faces we see through.

You and I are different;
we share a sort of shield
to protect us from intruders
who fail to near us yield.

You and I are different;
in out eyes is pain,
no ordinary trifles
or a suffering feigned.

You and I are different;
our minds work overtime,
caring for our precedence,
our authority sublime.

We can tell the world
of misery and strife,
for together we are power;
together we are life.

We shall be ordained
universal pall-bearers;
we shall be the leaders
of another reign of terror.

But torture is for them,
not for we who understand
the freedom behind truth,
why constraint now rules the land.

So sacred is the day
when our feeble hands meet,
for alone they are nothing;
they bow to kiss fate’s feet.

And fate it is which keeps us
from ever drawing near,
combining all our forces,
eliminating fear.

You and I are different;
we stand for something more.
We are not mere flesh;
we have substance at the core.

You and I are different;
we share a sort of couth
to keep us from revealing
our legendary truth.

You and I are different;
I know you know it, too --
not from one another
but the faces we see through.

I wrote it in high school, though it was addressed to absolutely no one I knew then or have known since. I don't think I have to explain.

I love you.
Perdita