The Writer’s Corner features poetry, essays, short stories, satire and various fiction and non-fiction from SCAD Atlanta students. To submit your own work for the Writer’s Corner, email features@scadconnector.com.
‘My Break Up Letter With Booze’ by Jesse Baron
To Whom It May Concern,
I’m writing to tell you that I miss you. It’s only been a few weeks and I already miss your flavor, that sweet essence of you that has captivated me my entire adult life. It’s a difficult reality to admit that I do know how to exist without you. You were my safety net. But even though the idea of not having you near scares me I am more embarrassed by the thought that I haven’t spent this much time away from you since high school.
The night we met was so amazing. You empowered me. I watched you from across the party. You were with mutual friends. Your shape was beautiful and foreign. I approached with caution. There was a worry that you’d somehow find me wanting. But that first night together you changed something in me. A veil was removed. I had the ability to say and do whatever I wanted. You constantly whispered in my ear that I was strong. I was sexy. I was a man. I believed you.
We barely spoke until I started working with you. We were wild together. Staying out until 8 in the morning some days. Stumbling down subway station steps. Sleeping well past our stop on the Q train.
Do you remember the Tuesday night you convinced me to go out in New Orleans? We had just moved into the apartment on Broad Street. Bored with no furniture,
no stove, we drove to The Quarter together. We made people nervous by the end of the night. I woke up without you in the bed of a pickup truck on I-10. The people I was with, six Marines, said I was the coolest person they’d ever met after we cross the Mississippi border. In the morning one of them drove me home. I was mad at you for abandoning me. But in no time you were forgiven. You were the variable, not the solution.
There were entire days we spent together. In Vietnam, we spent almost the whole summer together; then again this past summer in Chicago. I thought then that you straightened my spine; that you brought new clarity to things. I thought you gave me a certain charm to others; that they found me sexy when I was with you. That they even liked me at all when I was with you.
But our codependency wore on me like the clothes of a drowning victim. Every morning I would wake up feeling wrung out, exposed. I was growing to resent the pull you had on me. Then as, with all of my relationships, I started to resent you. Sitting in my living room chair. I would be immobile for hours. Just the two of us. You didn’t judge that I was now, like my father, a man in a chair. It formed itself in my body. We were a unit, the three of us.
I can’t hold my tongue any longer when we are together. That veil was lost years ago. Anyone who sees me now must suffer the vitriol that comes out of my mouth. Words only intended to hurt. I am the George to your Martha. We cannot keep this up.
It is time for me to take my leave of you. This is entirely my fault. Again you are the variable, not the solution. But I abused our relationship to the point that I am abusing myself.
I wish I could say that I was strong enough to never see you again. Deep down in my chest somewhere there is part of me that feels like our separation is temporary and that worries me. We both deserve more; partners that will love and protect us from our worst selves.
I love you. You are my longest relationship. But I do feel that now is the time for me to make it on my own. If I don’t take the leap now I will drown with you on my back, remaining dry and worry-free.
Thank you for the confidence, for allowing me to feel beautiful. I am forever grateful. But I need to be the solution, not a variable.
Sincerely,
Jesse Baron
