Dear Samantha,
I’m writing you this letter because I can’t take another phone call. I’m bad at them. I get all choked up and words don’t form and it isn’t because I’m nervous, it’s because I’m non-expressive. I didn’t know people could be non-expressive until you’d call me to talk and I couldn’t determine anything you were saying, and soon enough I was gasping for air. Then you’d hang up on me, and I’d feel real shitty, and I’d take a shower, hoping something would happen when I was away from my phone for a few minutes, damn well knowing that nothing was any different than it was before. Letters are easy because people can write things in them that they would never have the guts to say in person. Like all of this? Never. I could never. And I probably never will. Because I miss you, Samantha, but I’m way the hell over here, and you’re over there, alone, never compromising, or calling me a liar, or being anything other than excellent, alone, lamenting on Lapham Lane. Letters are easy because they don’t make sense. Someone can’t be expected to convey all it is they want to say within the confines of this, when they aren’t there. Letters should be a fictional thing, for fictional stories, sent to fictional people. Letters shouldn’t be real, and that’s why they’re easy. None of this stuff that I’m saying should be able to transcend the planes of a place that isn’t within my own head. That’s how it is, I guess. I sit here and spew my head onto this, and I don’t know if you’ll read it, or what you’ll do to this, if you’ll burn it, or drown it, or rip it up into shreds, or whatever people do to letters they don’t want to read. But the good news is…this letter shouldn’t exist, because letters like this shouldn’t exist. So it’s indestructible. If that makes sense. This program out here might not have been worth it after all. I feel a bit like a character in Citizen Kane, all the way, so far gone, never hoping or striving for anything more exhaustively than I am for you to listen and hear me the way you used to. I miss that. Like the time we sat on the floor of your one-bedroom apartment watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, having endless debates about the significance of the star child. Or when we visited the lights downtown, around Christmas, just the night before they were ready to take them down. Nobody else was there, and it was so cold. Probably the coldest I’ve ever experienced anything before. I miss all of that. But that’s not what I want this to turn into. I’m writing you this letter to tell you that I don’t know where else I’m going to end up after this program is over. I know I promised to come back to Lapham Lane when I was through, but Jesus, there’s so much potential I’m discovering that I don’t know what all of the possibilities even are anymore. I could do something so great with the rest of my life, and I don’t know if I want to let that go. I don’t want to be selfish, but sometimes you have to accept that some things only happen once, and it’s been killing me. I haven’t been sleeping at night, I haven’t left my office for anything other than a cup of coffee, and my friends reach out to me, but I just ignore them, shut them out, and stay to myself, drowning in a stream of Smiths songs and bad late-night television. I’m probably overreacting to something, I always do, but you know me, Samantha, and I can’t just let something go. I can’t just do that. It’s funny, I went into a store yesterday to get a new shirt for a meeting I had coming up, and when I was leaving, the clerk told me to have a great day. I guess that’s the first time it’s ever dawned on me that people all around you only want the best for you, even store clerks, who want you to have good days, every day, every time you see them. You don’t know who they are. I don’t know who they are. Maybe we’re all just strangers in paradise. I don’t know. I miss you, Samantha, and I’ll write again soon.
-Robert

Letters. Always letters. Never anything but letters. Never a voice, never a skype call, never a simple hello. Always with the letters. Letters don’t need to be so complicated. Robert likes to stretch them out into a Shakespearian love affair, but they can be simple. He likes to call them easy. I think I can agree with that. Letters can be the easiest thing.

I’m growing tired of these things, all of the paper and contradictions, the swelling of heart-felt let-downs and empty promises. I think I’ll write back to him, finally, and not call again. Letters can be easy. Letters can be painful. Letters can go smoothly. Letters are a fool’s way of communicating the things they are too scared to admit to themselves and others.

Letters can be easy.

Dear Robert,
Let’s go on pretending.
-Samantha.