Dear M,
In forty minutes, I will get on a plane at Dulles airport. I’m leaving you. There is no kind way to say that, I’m sorry. My bags are already on their way to my parents’ house, and the rent is paid for next month. Also, I’m taking the cat.
The thing is, I can’t be your muse anymore. Actually, I probably could stay and resurface in your sketches and characters for years. I could go to your reading next month and pretend every one of your characters aren’t carbon copies of each other, and of me. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to be source material for your career.
You were eating me alive. Everything I said, every outfit I wore, every blink and smile – you were eating it all with a fork. I don’t want to be consumed like that, mostly because you barely left any for me. Remember when we watched Vita and Virginia and you said you had never identified with a character more than you did with Virginia? Well, you make me feel like Vita, asking what it is you expect to find with all your tunneling into me. In the movie she says she’s an empty shell inside, and I don’t trust you to know the difference if you ever finally get there. I think you mistake my subtlety for ignorance, and my excitement for stupidity.
A month from now I’m sure you’ll say I “just couldn’t handle how much you cared” for me or some bullshit. But honestly, I don’t think I ever liked you that much. You have the loudest, most obnoxious voice in the world (every time we went out I swear you were screaming at the servers), and the audacity to think you are the first person to have every thought you type into those locked documents on your desktop. I promise you are not the first person to think that “life is a reality to be experienced” – that’s literally from Dune. No one wants to steal your mediocre self-insert picaresque fanfiction anyways. Regardless, I wanted to tell you why I’m going. You have manic-pixied me into a corner, and this is my way of tunneling out. Goodbye.
Best,
G
Sent from my iPhone