Undelivered Letters: Amy

Dear Amy,

We never really got to talk much, which is really unfortunate but I also think it might have been for the best. We were both going through our own personalized hell during this time and we might not have been able to focus or deal with these things properly if we had. Well, more so me than you. I was obsessed. It’s funny because I didn’t know you. I hadn’t talked to you like at all until much later, yet for some reason I still managed to build up this whole idea of who you are as a person based on the way you acted when I saw you, and how I made you be in my head. I had ran through and found myself lost in so many different situations that after a certain point I lost the ability to differentiate this person I had made up with your looks and the actual you. This sounds crazy, I know. I was someone who lived comfortably in self-created scenarios. It made it easier to deal with my lack of actual real-life experiences due to my anxieties and fears. So, I apologize. I had the biggest crush on you, you were on my mind way more than was probably healthy but it wasn’t you. I suppose that’s why given the outcome of our friendship/relationship I was able to just go “Hey, I’m glad this happened.” I lost that fantasy of being with Amy, the popular pretty high school girl, and I got an actual opportunity to learn who the real you was. Even if it was just a little bit.

It’s kind of upsetting that whenever I tell my story of how I survived high school I talk about the impact that you had, but it’s more so just the goal of talking to you, of telling you I liked you and just finally coming out of my shell. You were a metaphor. I don’t know if that’s flattering or insulting. Either way I’d like to thank you for not only the part in my life that you didn’t actively take part in, and the part of my life that you really did. Though we didn’t get to be friends in the end I did get to make some wonderful memories and a lesson of the harmful effects of idealizing someone to the point of perfection. And not only that, but I actually did get to know the real you later on. You allowed me in to a little bit of your life and allowed me to get to know the real you. You showed me how my presence and my actions actually did have an impact on your life, albeit not the greatest one, but that’s what I was most afraid of. That I will have finished high school not making any real change, that I would have just come and gone. I didn’t want to be easily forgotten and I didn’t want to be so behind with all these major life moments that I felt had to be started at the very least before I finished high school. There were probably only 3 maybe 4 times we actually talked and you have been just very nice and caring throughout. Oh also! You introduced me to The Perks of Being a Wallflower so thank you for that. It’s still one of my favorites.

Sincerely,

T.