Life Begins (21 page)

As I look at the coming months, I
am excited for Christmas. It will be our first together. We will
have to celebrate it a little bit early since I usually have to go
elsewhere to celebrate with my parents.

I am especially looking forward to
my birthday in January. As you know, I will be turning 18. That
makes both of us consenting adults. I hope you will take this
opportunity to fuck my brains out. I hereby grant you all
permission to do so whenever the mood strikes you.

In February, we will be
celebrating our one year anniversary. It doesn't seem possible. The
time has flown by. Thank you for giving me the most wonderful,
beautiful year ever.

The rest of the school year will
be spent with us getting ready for graduation. There will also be a
few dances to go to. If you have not had sex with me yet, I hope
that you will at least take advantage of me at our senior prom.
Renting a hotel room would be the perfect ending to a most
wonderfully, perfect date. That's not saying that you can't have
sex with me before prom. If you still have problems with the
morality of it, I would hope that your morals would loosen up by
the magic that is prom.

I do not know how much time we
will have left after prom. I would guess that we would at least
spend the summer together. After that, you are going to college. I
will not be following you. We have different paths that we need to
follow. I will not have you dragging me along as dead
weight.

I am sure that I will be crying
when I tell you this in person. I am crying now. And once I am
finished writing it, I don't plan on going back and looking at it.
I know that I have broken your heart many times over our years
together, but this is the hardest thing that I have ever had to
do.

Don't take this being hard on me
as a sign that I will change my mind. This needs to happen. We
can't stay a couple. It's not that I don't love you, or that I
wouldn't always love to have you by my side. I can't be what you
need me to be in life. I can't change what I was born
as.

When we were growing up, your
father told us magical stories about our lives. He made you believe
that your purpose in life was to save me. Jack, my dearest darling,
you have saved me. You just weren't able to save me for
yourself.

I owe my very life to you, for
which I am thankful. I may not have been born into the greatest
family, but I was blessed having grown up with you and your family.
Your father was one of the most important people in my life. In
many ways, he was more of a father to me than my own father was.
Thank you for sharing him with me.

As somebody who knew your father
and knows you, I want you to know that he would be very proud of
you. I know that you will doubt this, but you shouldn't. There have
been so many times during our years together that I have seen your
father in you. You have his generous heart, warm, caring
personality, and tremendous capacity for putting others before
yourself. And as great of a man as your father was, I think that
you have taken the lessons that he taught you and became even
greater than your teacher at them. That is saying something, Jack
Allen Gynapsy. You have no idea how special you are.

I know that you have guilt over
your father's death. Don't. It wasn't your fault. You have to let
some things go. Know that your father loved you and wanted you live
your life to the fullest. Don't be held back by the past. Don't
take on the guilt of others. If there is one lesson that you have
learned from your father, it was how to forgive others. You have
forgiven me more times that I would care to remember. Forgive
yourself. You owe yourself and your father that.

And forgive yourself for our
breakup. I know that it technically hasn't happened yet, but it
will. You have to go on with your life. Know that I treasured every
moment I ever spent with you. You were better to me than I
deserved. Do not beat yourself up over our breakup. There was
nothing that you could have done differently. You were
perfect.

I know that you think your purpose
in life was to save me. Don't think that because you weren't able
to save me for yourself that you didn't save me. You have taught me
that human beings are capable of caring for each other. You have
taught me that I can be better than what I was born into. You have
taught me that I deserve more than a man who abuses me.

How do I thank somebody like you,
Jack? You have made me realize that my self-worth doesn't come from
my looks, my possessions, or who I am dating. I would have never
learned these things if it had not been for you. You have done more
for me than I ever deserved.

You taught me the meaning of love
and that I was worthy of being loved. I know that I wasn't the
greatest student when you were trying to teach me these things, but
your love for me gave you more patience for me than I
deserved.

By leaving you, I don't want you
to think that I am rejecting you, or that I don't appreciate
everything that you have done for me. You looked at your father's
life and wondered if he ever regretted getting married instead of
pursuing his career. I will not have you regretting me. Since I
know that you won't be able to leave me, I'm leaving you. This is
for the best, Jack. Deep inside you know this, too.

Oh, God, this is funny. When I was
in kindergarten, I rejected you because I didn't want a
relationship with you. When we were teenagers, I rejected you
because you offered your body to me as a sacrifice, when all I
really wanted from you was the relationship you had always been
offering me. Now that you have made me the happiest I have ever
been and happier than I ever thought I would be, I have to give you
up because you need something more out of life than what I can
give. Be proud of yourself, Jack. You have taken one of the most
selfish people in the world and taught them to love
sacrificially.

Know that I love you. Know that I
have always loved you and that I will always love you. Don't ever
doubt that.

Know also that as I am leaving
you, I will be taking with me everything that you have taught me.
Know that I will be taking all of the love you have ever given to
me with me. I know that I can't expect to find another love like
you. I was blessed beyond all reason with the time that I was given
with you. No matter who I marry, I will always have a special place
in my heart for you. That man and my children will benefit from the
love that you have shared with me.

When Melinda sold you out to me,
she warned me that if I ever left you, your heart would shrink. She
thought you would turn into some sort of Grinch. Don't let that
happen, Jack. It may not comfort you now, but you know the secret
to life. I don't know if you know that you know this or not, but
your whole belief system is based on some foolish notion that love
makes the world go round. It was never a question of how much you
love, or how much you are loved in return. You somehow know that
love is not some fixed quantity. For some strange reason, the more
you share it with other people, the more you have to
share.

I know that you may not find
comfort in me sharing the love you have shared with me with another
man, but it was never your love to begin with, Jack. The love you
shared with me was the love that your father shared with you, which
was the love that was shared with him from somebody else. In the
end, the love you shared with me was really the love that that
being you called God shared with humans. It was never originally
your love, Jack.

Do you see now that you have saved
me, Jack? I'm not going to say that I'm going to be a religious
fanatic or anything. I doubt that I will even go to church, but you
at least won't have to worry about my soul. You have saved me in
more ways than you could ever know.

I hope this comforts you. I know
that you will go through a rough spell after I am gone. I know you,
Jack. I know how I can hurt you. Don't stop believing in love.
Don't stop sharing your love. If you horde it as a miser, you will
only end up missing the joy of whatever woman comes into your life.
I know that it is hard to believe, but I'm sure that some woman out
there will love you in a way that I never could. I hope that you
are open to finding that woman. And if I ever find out that she has
mistreated you in any way, I will kick her fucking ass so hard.
Nobody is allowed to hurt you, except me. I've gotten quite good at
it the past eighteen years.

Okay. I'm going to end this now. I
could write to you forever knowing that this will be the last thing
that you will have to remember me by. Just don't change, Jack. I
know that you are a dreamer. Just because I am leaving you, don't
think that you have to stop dreaming. It's been your dreams that
have made me see that something beautiful can still exist in this
world. You are the only person who could see a child being born
from the disaster that was my parents' marriage as the most amazing
event to have ever occurred. Don't let that part of you die, Jack.
If you can't do this for yourself, do it for me.

I love you, Jack Allen Gynapsy. I
always have. I'm sorry I never told you, except here at the
end.

With love forever and
always,

Christine Parnelle
Robinson

Chapter Seven ½

Pandora’s Box

I figured that since Christine has decided to
write her own section that I couldn’t read that I would do the
same. There has been some stuff that I wanted to say. I just
haven’t taken the time. It was too hard with Christine right there.
I didn’t want her think less of me. Sometimes it is best to not
reveal something, even if it is what you feel. Guys and girls have
to play games to keep the real game going. Even with our
Constitution, I’m not about to reveal to Christine what you are
about to read.

Much has been said about my shoebox of
memories. I can’t deny having such a shoebox. I have admitted to as
much throughout the book. I have never actually told anybody the
contents of that box. If you want to know about my life, you have
to understand everything that is in this box.

I know that you already know about the napkin
I kept from the chocolate milk rejection in kindergarten. You also
know about the hospital bracelet that I dug out of the trash after
Christine had fallen out of the tree house. I think everybody
thinks that I have kept this stuff because it allows me to look at
the bad and the good of my relationship with Christine. That’s not
really the reason. I mean, it is part of it, but there is more to
it than that.

Memories fade. I can’t ever preserve them like
I can a physical object. I need to collect parts of the past that I
know are important in my story with Christine. When my memory
starts to go, I need to have these physical reminders of what once
was so that I can try to bring the story back to a version that is
close to what really happened. What I have collected are not single
memories, but objects that bring up thoughts and feelings of my
life with Christine that photographs and videos just can’t
capture.

I mean, look at the hospital bracelet from
when she broke her arm. I didn’t want it just because it showed
that she wanted me with her after she had rejected me in
kindergarten. That is only part of it. The rest of it has to do
with how I remember how I was worried about her after she had
fallen and was in great pain. There was nothing that I could do. I
saw the one person I loved more than anything else in this world
suffering. And I was helpless. I don’t ever want to go through that
feeling again.

I know that there will come a day when either
Christine or I will have to die. Our bodies can not last forever. I
know that death, pain, and illness are part of life. This bracelet
helps to remind me how precious life is. There is pain and a
feeling of being helpless associated with this bracelet. Christine
doesn’t know that.

She also doesn’t know that I associate other
good things with this bracelet. I can’t look at it and not think
about the tree house and how we played there as children. Since I
can’t put an object like the tree house in a box, I have to put
things that remind me of it in there. The bracelet reminds me of
her fall and how after that, I always followed her up the tree
house. I figured that if she fell again that I could break her fall
this time. I would rather break one of my bones than to see her go
through pain again.

And to be completely honest, I have to say
that my memories of the tree house and the bracelet are not
entirely virtuous and noble. It also reminds me of how I would look
up her dress as she was going up the tree house. Before you judge
me for that, you must remember that I am a man. Even if I love a
woman, I am still going want to do perverted things with her. The
perversion of men has kept the human race from becoming extinct.
I’m not going to apologize for finding the woman I love attractive.
It’s perfectly normal that I should want to have sex with her or
get turned on by her, even while I am trying to make sure that she
doesn’t get hurt. Guys may not be able to achieve great depths of
emotions, but we are able to think about sex while doing everything
else. That has to count for something.

Do you know that sometimes when I am fighting
with Christine that I get distracted? She can be really mad at me
for something that I didn’t say or do, or something that I did say
or did. I’m trying to pay attention to her so that I don’t do
whatever I did wrong again. Sometimes it’s hard. We can be having a
terrible fight. She can then bend over to pick up something to
throw at me. As she is doing this, I get a nice view of cleavage.
The next thing I know, I am over by her, holding her and kissing
her. I know that I should be thinking about what she is saying.
It’s just that sometimes, even in the middle of a fight, you still
see the person that you love. The fight no longer becomes
important.