I'm not quite sure why I'm writing this letter, and I'm not quite sure what I'm hoping to accomplish. Maybe it's the wine, or the Joni Mitchell, or the 8th grade diary I found at the bottom of a moldy trunk. The cliched entries proving that I've learned nothing in the past seven years; that pain at thirteen is the same as pain at twenty...only without the complications of drug store pregnancy tests and failing out of college.

In any event, I've got nowhere to send this letter...and the irony is that if I did, it wouldn't exist. Maybe years from now I'll find it next to the tattered diary in that moldy trunk...pull it out, show it to you. "Look, this is when I'd given up hope," I'll say, thankful that I was wrong. Then again, maybe I'll take it to the grave, nestled inside a different kind of pine box...proving with some sort of masochistic self righteousness that I was right, and perfection doesn't exist.

No wait, that's not fair--I don't need perfection. I just want someone to love. As Joni Mitchell says, I want someone I can drink a case of and still be on my feet. I'm not asking for anything grand like reciprocity, for all that has ever gotten me has been a broken heart and the aforementioned pregnancy test. What I miss is the sheer joy of thinking that someone is worth loving. I want to think somebody's amazing--and what's more, I want to be right. Someone who makes me glad to be alive, makes me thank God that they exist.

Perhaps I'm cocky as hell to imply no one I've met is worth loving...perhaps anyone I would deem worthy would find me simple and shallow. Who knows...All I can say is, if you're reading this on anything other than a page in my diary or a podium at my funeral...thank you for proving me wrong.

Love,

The girl with the stars in her eyes...