(Click, hum, buzz. An older, more put together girl pulls back from the camera to sit down on a log. Nature frames her comfortably, her body wooden.)
Dearest Eve.
I want to start off by saying that when I took your camera I didn’t originally do it to invade your privacy like this. I only found myself there, in your backpack, because I couldn’t figure out how to talk to you any other way.
Tomorrow, I’m going to hand this back to you, and we’re going to start talking to each other again.
Truth be told, I think about leaving every day. I’m not sure how long I can keep doing this alone. The only reason I haven’t left already is because I know you don’t have much to miss at all.
I stayed up last night keeping an eye on you so I could make sure you slept well but I don’t think it helped, you seemed to think I was some sort of unwelcome apparition.
How long have I only been an apparition to you?
About a week before all this, I saw you out on the porch, up so early the sun hadn’t risen.
Usually it was before Mom got up, but right as I was leaving for work. I knew this wasn’t the first time.
You were waiting for me to be there with you but I only really managed to do it that night. I had been up all night screaming about nothing with her; it had become so increasingly normal to me, yet seemed to cut you particularly deep last night for some reason. It was your little world out there I suppose, I had been worried not to disturb it.
I sat down gingerly, and for a bit we just existed in silence, sharing an orange and tossing the peels on the floor.
I glanced over at you and pictured the words that spun in your head. It always felt like I was an observer to your pain despite us sharing in it.
Especially when in a house so small with you, there was an obvious pent up anger that filled up every part of your body.
I was staring out the screen door but couldn’t see past it those days. I don't know what clicked, but suddenly you were talking more than I ever got the chance to hear you speak.
The heat from your breath had fogged over your glasses, the soft mid morning slowly giving me the details of your face.
I realized… How long had it been since I looked at someone. For a while I was content just listening to you describe the details of a game you’d been playing that I truthfully, didn’t care at all about. I could tell it wasn’t what you were just chewing on, I was just glad that you had other things besides that bloody, ragged pain in you.
I participated as well, first briefly to respond in affirmative… Then, more, about the movies I’d been watching and the long string of bad dates I’d been on in the past few months.
I told you I had decided not to love anymore, that I didn't love the way anyone else did. They actually got invested in the relationship.
I didn’t care at all, so it was better they got it from someone who deserved them. All this tangled in my chest held me hostage. All I saw were these vestigial, rotten marks on my skin. I stopped talking to anyone who I knew cared about me. Eventually, I had no reason to make plans with anybody at all.
I'm repeating myself now to say... I know you've accepted a lot of yourself to be forever miserable. I know you don't know why you just sit there and take it, even when you didn't from mom.
I couldn’t see the sky out from where we sat on the porch so I stood up, but as I did I realized I was no longer able to sit back down. The floorboard sagged under my feet for a moment as we both paused.
I asked you to please continue, but I don’t know why. I don’t know if I could talk directly to you about all of this.
It was a few years before I began to open up to you about the dream I had hoped for us, but especially for you.
Why did I take so long, why am I such a complete and utter coward? Which is why I had to ask you to kill her.
It was startling to realize what I was capable of forcing into you that I couldn’t do it myself. When I introduced this violence into your mind, let you in on it, I knew it would ruin you.
I’m just sorry we can’t have mornings like that anymore. I don’t miss that time in my life where I was trapped in such constant misery, but I miss being alone with you.
I’m not a monster, we have our whole lives ahead of us now… it’s only fair. I’m sure you would agree.
And before… when we didn’t talk. I just couldn’t be around someone who only knew me in that context.
I penned this whole thing to… do what I never could face to face. Talk for even one second about where I am, presently.
It’s important to me now that I am not eradicated from these moments. If you need to, record a response when you can.
Thank you.
Video 17.