Exploration is the Best Approach

Dear G,

It's strange how distances can separate two people, but yet they're able to find a way to stay in contact and in tuned with each other lives. And, yet, I cannot brag of this quality for our friendship. Distance is not the factor in producing this minor riff between us, but rather Time has used its bludgeoning fists to beat our relationship into this awkward "you say one thing and I respond a million years later or I say one thing and you say one thing" sort of pathetic interplay of words and greetings.

I wish I could speak freely to you like I do with everyone else. I wish I could sprout my beliefs and opinions and feelings like I wanted for years. But I can't; I can't change or rid the disappointed expectations I once had and still hold for you, and I can't prevent the creeping feeling that you have disappointed expectations of me. So, I use this as a pseudo-letter--not my first--to you, and, perhaps, one day I will find the courage to actually send a real one.

Random 1: I watched P.S. I love you today; I, like a baby, teared and it wasn't that sad. I just have this intense depressing feeling when I see or hear about death and unfortunate events--am not sappy, just feminine attributes that my estrogen likes to remind me of from time to time.

Random 2: Tonight was one of those nights where I'm really susceptible to people's comments and actions. You know, when you begin to realize how human you are to other people's opinions. So a friend of mine complimented someone else, which is nothing to complain over, but it struck a cord within me. He thought he offended me afterward, which he did but I would never admit it, and promptly and insincerely apologized because he couldn't understand what I was feeling at the moment.

Random 3: Weeks ago, my friend said suddenly, "I know what kind of person you are. You never allow yourself to be vulnerable". I guffawed and denied it, "No! I open up to close friends all the time!" "Not vulnerable with friends. I mean you would never be vulnerable with boys". I stared at her and lashed back grudgingly, "Well...okay...yeah".

Connect Random 1 & 2 & 3: I'm sure you have been questioned or asked yourself at least once, "Do you believe there's someone out there in the world for you?" I can't say I know how to respond. I mean I hope so, but I can't imagine myself to actually find someone I want to date, marry, and have children with. It would take someone particularly strange to be able to handle my thinking process, and emotional and mental mood swings. I guess I'll know who it is when I can be with him for more than a few months and not get tired of him. I feel like I lose interest in things really quickly, not just boys, but friends, topics, you name it--yeah, I'm a terrible person.
I can't see myself giving up a part of myself, my independent and, ultimately, happy self, for a boy, who I will discard eventually. I don't mean to come off like a bitch, but it's just one of my many flaws.

Anyways, I want to end with this, as so you will not get the wrong impression of me AGAIN. I'm quite taken with it for obvious reasons, and if anyone could really understood its meaning, it would have to be you.

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.
by John Donne

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise, 5
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ; 10
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove 15
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss. 20

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so 25
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam, 30
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just, 35
And makes me end where I begun.

Yours Truly,
Pauline