>>From: Belacqua
>>To: Perdita
>>Subject: Re: the very last thread
>>Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000

In high school, I didn't date at all. I never felt like someone could possibly sit next to me for longer than fifteen or twenty minutes and have any idea what I feel. And I have this inflated, grandiose notion of love (hell, I'm a fucking artist) and for a long, long, long time, I never believed it actually existed because no one else felt things half as intensely as I did. I didn't believe human beings were capable of the intensity of emotion that love is. I decided to let my guard down once, to see, and also because if I didn't have some human contact, I was going to wither into a pitiful pile of dust. But I found out quickly that she had no idea what love meant. When she said it, she meant "I feel good," and I tried not to say it to her because I never felt the power I thought I should feel all over me. But when I saw how badly it hurt her that I didn't say it, I figured, what's a little three-word lie every now and then, and then I started dodging it by not actually saying "love" and saying some sort of gibberish alternative instead so I never felt so guilty. I had performed my experiment and the human race had fallen miles short because one person cannot experience love, and if I'm the only one who feels this way, then love cannot exist. Dating would have been horrible torture so I just shut myself off from everyone else and watched and hated them as they tossed my sacred word back and forth, believed they were happy, and then threw it away. Then I thought maybe I was just incapable of what love was really supposed to be, that I was wrong and couldn't experience what this “love” really was. But if you can't feel love, what are you? You aren't a person. I felt like a machine marching around through these clouds of emotions that I couldn't make any sense of because they didn't seem powerful enough. I read Samuel Beckett said one time that he felt he was totally incapable of any human emotion. Incidentally, Samuel Beckett never wanted to get married, though he carried on a few relationships with women for his entire life. He did finally marry but only so that the rights to his works would be passed on to his lifelong companion when he died.

It's now three hours after I began typing this e-mail. Some friends of mine came up to invite me over, and I wasn't going to go, but they had beer, and I've wanted a fucking drink so bad that I couldn't resist. Six beers later, I'm sitting here right at that annoying threshold between buzzed and drunk that I can't ever pass unless I'm drinking liquor. The first thing they said to me was that I looked so much better from the last time they saw me which was when I killed half a fifth of whiskey and was lying on their bed face down mumbling about how miserable I was and how I wished I would just die. That's part of why I don't like to drink socially; I'm a terrible fucking buzzkill. I'm nursing my last beer of the night and I feel okay. I have to reread what I've typed so far so I can get back on track...right...but then I wondered if maybe I was the only person who was really human and everyone else was just some watered-down copy of what a person was supposed to feel because it wasn't that I didn't feel, it was just that I felt in a way that no one else could understand. I felt so strongly that even simple emotions would take me over and I was super-sensitive to everything. I felt like a bundle of raw emotional nerves, and maybe that made me superhuman. Who knows? All I know is that I felt so alone in my over-stimulated misery because these feelings that were commonplace to everyone else were these unbelievably strong and overwhelming emotions that would shatter me into a million pieces. Right now, I'm so overcome by my feelings and emotions towards you that it’s almost crippling, but it doesn't hurt like it usually does because I know that I'm not feeling like this in a void. What I'm feeling is reciprocated, so maybe love can exist, not in the sense that you meet someone and want to mix genes and settle down in suburbia to raise a family and all that shit, but in the sense that I feel completely connected to another human being in the universe and we can try to shield each other a little from the shit that the rest of the world rains down on us. When I'm feeling rotten, I don't even have to tell you and you know. You can put your head on my shoulder and I can put my face in your hair and for a few minutes, the world can stop. I feel like I'm gushing and being melodramatic, but I know you know what I mean. I'm not having a Jerry McGuire moment or anything like that; I'm communicating some untapped part of my soul that no other human being has been able to even breathe the dust off of before. I don't have any suburban or family dreams or anything stupid like that, all I want is to be able to sit in silence and never stop talking, to not rely on words to convey things that words can never hope to convey, to be understood, and to die beside someone who understands.

God, I miss you like crazy, Perdita. I wish I could just turn over and have you there and know that I'm not lost all by myself. I'm so exposed right now because I've been drinking and letting my guard down. It's both frightening and exhilarating. For the first time, I'm not afraid that I'll say something that will scare someone and make them leave me. I don't have to be the guarded and withdrawn Belacqua who is forced to live in his own head. I think I've squeezed out my head for all the words I have in it right now. I'm exhausted and relieved. This is so new, so strange. I feel like thanking you all over again. In any case, I have an appointment very early tomorrow, and I haven't been able to wake up at all lately, so I think I'm going to drink a half gallon of water so I don't feel like shit tomorrow and try to go to bed while I feel somewhat okay. The world is still an unfriendly and horrible place, but I'm not stumbling around blind and alone. God, I wish I could say these things and not sound so contrived. I hope to hear from you soon and I will definitely keep in touch over the short Thanksgiving break. I hope you have a good night and your day starts off well tomorrow.

I love you.
Belacqua

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>From: Perdita
>To: Belacqua
>Subject: Re: the very last thread
>Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000

Belacqua,

I got the stuffed puppy you got me for my birthday in the mail yesterday. He is SO cute. I'm all packed up and ready to go home for the next four days, and for the first time since high school, I'm not bringing Elmo along for the trip. I sat in my room this morning for awhile trying to decide whether to bring Puppy or Elmo, and I finally decided when I picked them up separately and hugged them and felt so much less alone with the puppy because he reminds me of you. I'm so glad to have something that tells me I'm not alone. Thank you so much.

Christ, the days seem so long right now. Today I got an e-mail from a friend I haven't heard from in months because she was all worried about my journal entry from yesterday. You know, I'm in the middle of a big, black tunnel right now, but I'm not alone and scared and I'm not trying to get out of it. In fact, I'm reveling in it because I feel like you and I are living on such an exultant plane of understanding. It's like we're miles above the rest of the world, looking down from somewhere on a cloud, laughing at the crowds of emotionless humans who think they're actually living their lives, and relishing the misery that accompanies the knowledge we have of life. It's not happiness, but it is love, and the rest of the world will never understand it. I hope you know that I would do anything for you, and there's nothing I want more than to die with you.

A big part of me is in absolute disbelief that you could possibly feel the same way about me that I feel about you. I mean, I have so many thoughts and ideas in my head that had to hide untouched for way too long before they could come out, and even then, they always seemed to scare people away. A girl who wants to open fire on a crowd of people or who studies Columbine because she loves to see blood isn't taken very seriously, as you may imagine. But I feel these things SO MUCH and I can't just ignore them, and I've been so frustrated for a very long time that people weren't letting me into THEIR hidden thoughts. The truly horrifying thing was, though, that most people don't HAVE these thoughts. I thought maybe they were just hiding them like me or ignoring them somehow, but they don't have them at all. It's so fulfilling for me to be able to SEE that part of you. You say no human being has ever breathed the dust off that part of your soul, and I've been here forever trying to FIND that part of a soul in someone.

I'm sure I'll see you again soon, but it can't some soon enough. And I can't wait to hear from you.

I love you.
Perdita