Oh my dear

Dear [friend],

I keep blaming you for the intense rotten smell lingering my body: the smell being my own. Everytime you contact me I feel as though you are unconsciously trying to prove your superiority and your intelligence through words. You only contact me when you need help and the help you ask for is, as you should already know, not within my many fields of study. You unconsciously stab me in the mental heart I've built over the years every time you ask for help. Our conversations are interesting too. It's like a competition of who has the worse life.

I only ask for help when I know someone can help. When I asked you for help, I was happy that you did not look away. However, you somehow made my asking for help into a guilt trip.

It is people like you that make me not want to ask for help. People like you make me feel bad about myself for blaming you for my distress. I feel rotten for writing this too, but this post is necessary. Years from now, I will be reading this to myself and will be laughing at my own misery. The misery I thought was caused by you and the misery I may be also causing other people [the same way you did to me]. Of course, you may be feeling guilt too but I just don't know about it [although the tone and speed of your voice at the end of our chats give me a hint]. I know you are suffering somehow so the thought of my suffering often cancels out with yours in my mind.

If only I left to live in a far far away place after that last day of high school. Maybe our relationship would have been more positive. Maybe we both would have been happier that way. That or I may be acting selfish right now because I want to feel happy.

For now, I will keep smiling those smiles I often use with you. The smiles that I continue to wonder if they are real or not. I will keep trying to be friendly and understanding. When I feel like crying again, it will be in a public area [like always] because people's ignorace of my small existance and issues give me courage to be more fake and feel less.

Thank you for being in my life. I assure you that your presence in it has given me many ideas of what to do with it. I will now call you by phone because I am aware of your calling for help 6 hours ago.

Love, J. A. Cheung