Chasing the Dream

Melly Anne Dawson was smart and sometimes she even thought she was the smartest person in the world, and she always made the dumbest choices. One day, she found herself sober enough to write a letter – a letter she might never send, but a letter she needed to write.

Dear Grandmother,

I don’t know if I will have the strength to articulate what I want to say to you in person. You always tell me I don’t call, dad always tells me how I should call more, because you and grandpa are old – and with old age comes the constant fear of death. Would it be so bad? Death, I mean. Sometimes I wonder if pure bliss is the last moment of your life – I imagine it to be poetic. I imagine a lot of words running through my mind, like the final realization of my existence, my meaning. Death is not scary, living is. I am so afraid of living that it baffles me of where these feelings come from, and something tells me you might be the only one who will understand. What is this constant feeling inside of me that is so unhappy? Why am I so unhappy? I am so truly blessed, what is it that makes me fear the night and dread the morning? There is a feeling in my chest as if there was a balloon in there that has been filled with too much helium and its outsides are stretching so thin that they will burst at any moment, I wonder what would happen to me if the balloon burst. I wish you were here, how come I’ve never felt the need for your presence before? You should have been here from the start, because I fear you are the only one who knows me, and has known me even before I had known myself. There is nothing in this world; there is no one in this world – that will be able to really make me happy, until I make myself happy. I know that now, I also know that no matter how much I go shopping or how many of my friends I call – I won’t be able to fill that void in me – the one that’s always been empty. You know that feeling where you’re in a room full of people, but there’s really no one around? I feel like that all the time, and now I understand you did too. I’m sorry I wasn’t old enough to be your friend, but I hope it’s not too late.  

With eternal love,

MAD