by CC Michele

Created on: June 06, 2009   Last Updated: June 27, 2011

Jerry,

No matter how much I try to fill my hours, rushing endlessly toward one bleak goal after another, I can't seem to move fast enough to escape you. I have a good life now, I really do. I started college, joined a fraternity, and have a job I truly enjoy. One healthy, relatively happy kid; a house and Fred. But my soul still screams for you.

Let me tell you how life's been since you met Celia. That summer, I did many things I should not have. I made friends with people I'd never met through letters to the jail, hoping that one of them would mention you. I danced with strangers, went in cars with guys I barely knew, threw myself at guys you knew in hopes of making you jealous. I spent the night at your house and cried over a picture of you and Celia in your upstairs bedroom; I couldn't bear to go down into the basement after I'd seen how you'd torn up all of our things. Every night I prayed to a God I didn't believe in to forgive you, to protect you, and to make you as happy as possible, with or without me, as I clung to that little tiger you gave me, tears soaking my pillow each night.

Fall came, and with it, my junior year began. Remember what a geek I was? You'd think being surrounded with poetry and Spanish homework would have helped; it didn't. I wrote to my grandfather begging him to send me to a private all-girls' school. I figured maybe if I didn't have to see your ghost everywhere I'd have a chance at regaining some sense of normalcy. He, of course, refused, believing as any good educator does that the benefits of a co-ed public education far outweigh the costs. And for most people, they did. But not for me. I tried, but I just couldn't make myself care about symbolism in The Scarlet Letter.

Instead, I moved out, first to gram's, and then to Fred's apartment. And instead of going to school, I sat, day after day, in a smoke-filled apartment, watching stoned morons place bets about who could punch the nicest guy there first, and then I cleaned him up so he wouldn't bleed all over the kitchen. I watched the stripper upstairs hit on my boyfriend as she tattooed my arm, her toddlers eating diaper rash ointment in the corner. I watched my best friend drift away again, and when she showed up at school with blue hair, I didn't even know it was a wig. I didn't care. I didn't care when she later called me on New Year's Eve to tell me that she thought maybe she was a lesbian and she was convinced she was in love with me. As she poured her heart out for three

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