(This whole thing has been a thought project I've embarked on after having finished rereading The Great Gatsby. It all came about from the question on what I thought Gatsby needed to do to be happy. Hopefully, this doesn't spoil the movie for anyone. It culminated as Gatsby writing a farewell letter to Daisy).
To Daisy,
Perhaps the best way to do this is by way of an apology. We've known each other for a while, and anyone who has known us would ask what I have to apologize for. Ironically, you most of all would rebuke me for any sort of an apology because, in your eyes, I do no wrong. How I miss being seen like that. But perhaps your are not the sparkling and wondering eyes that I remember. Perhaps you believe that an apology is long overdue, but if that is the case then I am compelled to apologize about my apology, because I do not mean it for your sake.
I'm being selfish; I mean to apologize for my own sake and not neccessarily yours.
Perhaps your eyes have finally looked away from me, maybe out of bitterness. Or pain. Apathy. Vengeance. Desperation Maybe you've found something better than me; you are married now after all. Pride, idolatry, and lust have a way of making our eyes cloudy so we begin to believe that the world that once appeared vivid and wonderous has actually been murky and dim all along. Twilight begins to decend and we soon forget the sun. How I hope that your vision is no longer cloudy, as mine so often is, but I've had accept that your eyes are no longer my concern.
This is not to say that I am no longer concerned about you, as I think that, given our past, denying what I felt about you would only be a lie or a cheap way of lashing out, the equivalent of a child covering his eyes in order to make the thing in front of him not exist. What we shared was, in its own way, timeless. Your perspective has been one that has had an infinite influence on me, and, in many regards, it is simply not prudent to look at the world through any lens but the one you crafted for me.
You made songs more meaningful, colors more vivid, and turned every day into an epic tale worthy for the stage of the gods. You filled my days with wonder, and anyone who has ever tried to describe what I am attempting to knows that words fall short of the reality, but they are the best we have.
It would be too much to avoid being concerned about the world that you opened up to me, so, for a while, I tried not to be concerned about you. Yet I realized that this attempted apathy was just me trying to hate you, and I refuse to be a hateful person. No one deserves to be hated, and no man was made to endure the kind of toil it takes to hate someone. But still, you've made your choices in life, I've made mine, and as much as I wish it were different, it was self-deception pretending that these choices did not place a barrier between us. I tried to overcome them, I failed to overcome them, and I realize that it is better that I did fail, even if I find myself being unable to care about the worlds you first showed me.
So if I am unable to stop being concerned about you, then I have to not concern myself with you.
Perhaps it seems strange to you that I am apologizing for something that has already naturally happened. After all, the choices that we have both made have placed an easy barrier between us that I could have just accepted. Any communication between us takes a very conscious choice; one of us must make the effort to see the other or we simply won't. But by the nature of our relationship, at least the way that I invested in it, distance has never really been much of a distance, and time moved according to my own rhythm. No, I am not apologizing for distancing myself from you, as that is the natural thing that should have happened in the first place.
You see, there was a time when I felt myself looking down two paths, knowing there was no way to walk both. Be it a blessing or a curse, I knew that I would forever have visions and dreams forever fueling undying ambitions. On meeting, you choice was thus: either I could keep a mind that romps with God, or I could tie my visions to you. Sublime yet perishable you. I suppose most people would consider me romantic for having chosen the latter, and maybe it wasn't a wrong decision to make. I don't see clearly enough to know if it was a bad decision, but I regret having made it.
Because when I say that I had wed my visions forever to you, I did not mean it as an idle sentiment or some passing fancy. I loved you through the war; continents and poverty could not keep me from my visions of you. I cheated and stole my way to prosperity, out of a love for you. I've seen your most secret sins and even stayed take the blame, all for love. I endured what no lover should have to endure and shook the hand of the man who married you because through ALL of that I still believed you loved me. I believed that your vision was wed to me as mine was to you. You told me it was. I believed you married Tom because of security, because I selfishly had asked you to wait for me and you could do so no longer. I could excuse all of that, but was blind to the obvious truth is that you married out of love. You love him, and I cannot endure that.
I have pulled the wool over my own eyes long enough. All this time, it a ghost that's been haunting me; a living vision of an undying love comprised of no real substance other than deadened passions from a past that is best left buried.
For now we come to the crux of the matter. As I explained before, I do not apologize for refusing to see you any longer, nor am I apologizing for what I've attempted to do to get you back. If anything, you owe me an apology for letting your boredom get the better of you and stringing me along for your own enjoyment, regardless of how unconsciously you've done it. No, I am apologizing for having wed my visions to you in the first place, as that is a position you never should have been in.
You see, all of this has brought to light that I had chained myself to the living dead. I've asked myself over and over what could have prevented this. I thought that if we had gotten married or if your feelings had been more like mine, maybe what we had might not have been lost. You've always been a sentimental person, but you are a sentimentalist without action. You have all the right feelings, but you lack the wherewithal to give your sentiments a tangible shape. That being said, your sentiments have always been the best part of you.
But that isn't the point. The point is that even if you had mirrored me completely, my obsession with you was the problem. I strove to be the person that you wanted me to be, and became less of a man as a result. I became who I thought you wanted instead of who I should have been.
The moment Jay Gatsby became Daisy's man, James Gatz, my true name, was forever dead.
And so, even though I fear it might be too late, I hope to divorce my mind from you and let it romp with God once again. You might say that I have become a cynic who simply hates the notions of all marriages know, but the truth is quite the opposite. If anything, my faith in marriage has grown stronger, as now I no longer look to tie my visions to anything but God and wish for nothing more than a partner who will romp with me in His Eden. I believe that is what I needed to do all along, and I am sorry for having put you in a roll that you were not meant to fill.
But as I said before, maybe you do not care that I am sorry about this. This apology is, after all, for me and my attempt to divorce my mind from you while keeping the good that you've shown me. It is looking to be a difficult path, but I've never been one to not do what is right simply because it is also difficult. My only hope is that you find the peace that I am finally beginning to experience again.
I have missed being with God.
With Hope,
James Gatz.
