Into the Light

25. Left to My Own Devices - letter 3

29/10/1213 Uman

Rashim, baby,

got your letter today - a million thanks! You can bet I'd be sleeping with it under my pillow from now on, if I wasn't sure that I'll crush it into dust that way. So I won't be doing that but instead preserve it carefully, so that I can read it through many times still.

Things are beginning to look up at last. As I've told you already, I was definitely too optimistic, hoping that I'd get everything under control in only one month... but now I have a date for my departure, and I'll stick to that plan unless the entire city caves in on me! I'll be heading back on 22/11, and a month from there you can expect me back. Yeah, I know, it'll be well over four months then, instead of about three as I originally promised, but that's the way it is. I've done my best!

I've said this before, but I have to say it again: that even though I knew I'd miss you a lot, I still couldn't possibly imagine how insanely much I really miss you, baby. I keep dreaming about you, about us doing things together - walking on the beach, jogging, playing billiards (had a particularly naughty dream the other night, but I won't start telling you what happened... I'll have to demonstrate some time!), training together, or just being lazy together.

I also picture you next to me when I train - and I've been doing that every day! Honest! Haven't skipped a single day, although I must admit that a few times I've been sorely tempted. But in a way I feel almost like we're together then, and I don't want to miss any opportunity to be with you, if only in spirit. Really, when I'm doing the routines I just close my eyes and I almost feel you right there, like I could almost touch you if I just reached out a bit. It's a marvelous feeling.

I can read between the lines that you're worried for me. And I'm happy because I can assure you that there's no reason for that. I can honestly say that I can't really understand any more the way I lived before. It all seems like some long, bad dream now, like something from another world or something. When I go about in town, I see places I know and I remember so many things, many feelings and events, but I'm sort of looking at them from the outside, in a more detached way. Like I was looking at somebody else. I've done quite a lot of thinking now that I'm here, but not because I'd have to try hard so as not to slip back to the old habits. Oh no.

Now I can see what a huge fucked-up mess I've been, and what a damn close shave it was. Makes me feel cold inside to realize that Chaim truly saved my life then, that it would probably have been a matter of months, if not weeks, before I'd have been a goner. Either an accident, or an overdose, or maybe my system would've simply given up on me. I wasn't treating it too well - too much stuff and booze, too little food and rest. Simple as that.

I hope all this isn't making you feel too bad, but as I said, there's been so much time to think. And I haven't really told you very much about myself, have I? I've been trying to understand my life so far, and the turn it has taken, the whys and wherefores, and I want to explain you some things. Sorry if this bores you, but this feels like such a good opportunity to try and make sense of the mess that's me.

You know that I haven't got any brothers or sisters. My closest relatives are my father's cousins whom I've never even met. My father was over fifty when I was born, my mother was twenty. He was crazy about her, she couldn't care less. I don't know if it's hereditary and whether or not it explains anything, but the truth is that she was addicted to various drugs, had been already before she got married and continued to be until her death. She wasn't even thirty. My father was obsessed by her, never got over her death, and guess what it meant to him that I looked almost exactly like her? Yes - he couldn't bear to look at me. So I saw very little of him, either.

I don't know what and where I'd be if I hadn't got to know Chaim around then. I latched on him, and luckily he didn't mind that. He even liked me, and said so. I worshipped him. I guess I could say that he was my first addiction - because he cared for me and showed it.

I don't want to think too much about all that happened then. We started to go out more, meet people, and I got totally drunk on the fact that I was rich (I'd never really understood it before, not until my father died) and that I could do whatever caught my fancy. That's seldom a good thing, and at least for me it was an extremely bad thing. That's when I broke up with Chaim. He's always been more level-headed than me, more practical (which is not to say that he wouldn't have his crazy whims!), and he tried to talk sense to me. And I told him that I wouldn't take such talk from anyone, and said quite a few other things as well. Our relations got pretty chilly for a good while after that.

That's roughly when he really started to drift away from the society, and when I started getting really stupid. I had been addicted to Chaim, and after that I started developing other addictions. Our separation hurt, so I needed to get rid of that first. Of course all those things were not addictions, at least that's what I would have said if you'd asked me back then; they were things I enjoyed, things I liked doing. But the naked truth is that I was all the time addicted to something, and by then it was mainly three things: drinking, drugs, sex. And when my body tried to tell me it couldn't go on in the same way, I used some other drugs to push myself. Including the infamous stuff that has left those after-effects from which you too have had to suffer. Gods, I'm ashamed of myself.

Chaim fished me up from the pool of filth where I was drowning, but you are the one who has truly saved me, Rashim. You're the one who has healed me. I don't know what and how you have done it, but you have - simply by being yourself. I'm not addicted to you. I love you. And that's why I miss you, not in such a way that I'd need something else, a replacement, to take my thoughts and the longing away. Okay, so maybe daily training and the routines are a little like that, but even those don't make me think of something else. They let me think of you, to be with you at least in some ethereal way.

I don't know if I seem to be getting somewhere with this or not, at least now that I read it through it just looks like a hell of a lot of rambling. I'm not sure if it makes sense to anybody but me, but that doesn't matter. I hope you understand what I'm trying to say, because I am trying to tell you something here. I think.

It's getting pretty late, I observe, and I should definitely be going to bed. I have only one appointment tomorrow, but that'll most likely take the whole day, and I'll have to be awake and alert throughout it. So I'll finish now, and just tell you to take good care of yourself. I love you, Rashim, and I'd give almost anything if I could crawl into the same bed with you tonight. The big pillow just isn't the same - it's far too soft, it has bulges in all the wrong places, it doesn't even smell right, and so far it hasn't tried to attack me a single time even though I come from the bathroom naked...

Kisses to you, baby. I miss you.

Yours, and nobody else's,

Toni

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