First Letter from Aiden

This is the letter that Aiden left me. There are too many typos to include (sic) on every one; I typed it perfectly verbatim.

Dear Skylar,

Sitting at my desk I had a chance to reread the letter you had written me. Following our conversation and with a bit more time to reflect I truely felt I needed to give you a more complete response. I'm not going to try and say the right things, not going to try to make myself look good or any such nonsense. I am going to write this as a stream of consiousnes so please forgive me for they typos, but I want to be open. There is just no easy way to write a letter like this, or if there was I certainly do not know it. You never deserved to be hurt by me, or anyone else. At no point did I ever intend to string you along, "play you" or toy with your emotions. As I have said to you on numerous occasions it had been a VERY long time since I had developed an real close friends. With you I found myself developing a profound and powerful connection. I opened myself to you in ways that were very foreign to me. I am very angry with myself for damaging though I hope not destroying the friendship and trust that you shared with me. I care for and value my friends and they deserve far better than you have recieved from me.

You succeed in making my heart sing, you got me to open up and share my feelings. You know I had not always been miserable with Lily. My relationship with her got off to a good start but over the course of almost 9 years we had grown apart, were barely speaking, and as she herself said she considered us housemates and barely even friends. You came into my life as a shining light. Your smile lit up my day and my universe. Even my mother had commented on how much more cheerful I had become. I blamed it on enjoying my new job but she saw right through that. My mother knew that my new friend Blue had awakened something inside of me that had lain dormant for a long time. When I said in front of Kevin and Lily that everything romantic between y ou and I was finished we both new that was lip service to appease both of them. The day that I told Lily of our involvement I was ready to walk out the door and away from her. In the following days something changed between Lily and I. I realized I owed my son better. I needed to try with everything I ahd to try and work through things with Lily for his benefit. Somewhere in that decision things changed with Lily and the channels of communication opened and with it I found a possibility to make things work. Lily recently wrote a Myspace post in which she talked of feeling betrayed by me for my actions. One of the pieces she brings up in it is the fact that my father left his first wife and spent the rest of his life trying to repair the damaged relationships with his children. That part truely resonated with me. My son does and will always come first in my life. I bear complete and total responsibility in all my actions to him. I owe it to him to try and make things work with his mother. I have no idea what will happen between Lily and I in the future, but I need to be able to tell my son I did EVERYTHING I could to make it work with his mother.

Do you know why I told you that if things did not work out with Lily I wanted us to work on our friendship first and not allow ourselves to be swept directly into a romantic relationship? I cherish my friendship with you. I have deep admiration for the person that you are and the person I know you are yet to become. I am not good at this... I am at a loss as to what to do now. I know that I need to respect whatever decisions you m ake regarding any future interactions with me. And while it will pain me deeply if you need to hate me I will understand it and I deserve it. I never meant to hurt you, but now that I have I must do what I can to make it right.

I'm getting kicked out of the office now so I am going to have to call this complete, though it is far from it.

I thought it important to get some of the thoughts slipping through my head down for you or for me to read. I'm going to tuck this on your windshield.
I hope I am not making things more difficult for you. I've already caused you far too much heartache. I am going to try to make things work with my family.
You are an amazing person who I have great respect for and will always have a very special place in my heart. Again, I want to help heal the hurt I have caused you and will do what I can in my power to do so.

Humbly and with great respect

Aiden G

I sent him a reply on Facebook that night.

Thank you for your letter, and for listening to me and being so patient with me today. I'm not angry anymore...I was, very much so, but it was mostly due to believing the newest in the string of rumors. I could say I should have known better, but I don't know what to believe anymore.

Anyway, I'm not angry, and I don't hate you. I know I said I did, and it's the way I felt at the time. But the bottom has fallen out of my energy to go on being angry - it really takes a lot to maintain that level of hate and madness. I'm not the sort that holds grudges.

I'm left with being hurt, but I'm not looking for an apology; you've already said that, and it's my fault as much as yours that we are where we are now. I don't know what to do now any more than you do, and I don't know how to figure it out. If it's possible, I'd like to salvage a friendship...but at the very least, it's going to take some work, and at the most, I'm afraid it will be quite a while before it's possible. I don't know where in that spectrum we'll actually land.

All I know is right now I want to curl up in a ball and cry and magically get a new life. You have probably noticed about me that it's rare I will ever say anything like that, to anyone. It's a sign that some part of me deep down somewhere still wants to trust you. All I can say now is to repeat myself again: I don't know where to go from here, what to do. I have truly no idea.

Oh, and one question: when you said earlier that you were "spinning," what exactly did you mean? I didn't get the chance to ask.

Two days after this, we met up again and he gave me another letter. That one contained an unexpected, though not entirely surprising revelation. Coming soon to a blog near you!