AN OPEN LETTTER to an ANONYMOUS ADMIRER

I am used to being reviled. 

You know this.

I've never been given the autonomy to defend myself. I am made a spectacle detached from my audience.

You know this.

All my life, the assumptions of these people are hefted onto me like a great and resentful weight.

The assumption of evil. The assumption of ready-to-use flesh. I am a villain and an object. My humanity is never pulled into consideration.

I figured, in our companionship, you would be different.

We were friends. I laughed with you. I confided in you.

And I hurt you. I acknowledge it. And I am sorry. I never wasn't sorry.

But you weren't so different from them, were you?

You built an effigy of me, kept sequestered in your mind to project unto.

Projecting evil. Projecting ready-to-use flesh. 

To you, I was cruel when I wasn't an object of desire.

And I stopped being useful when I didn't reflect your vision.

A discarded plaything that would not play anymore.

This is nothing. I've lived it my whole life, haven't I?

But beyond discarding me, you sought to destroy me.

In a time where I was vulnerable, you tried to take shears to the ropes that held me up.

If you couldn't have me, then I should have nobody.

You altered your effigy to reflect something monstrous and showed it to everyone - friends, and strangers who will come to know me only as this... Something that didn't look like me anymore but had my name.

I don't know what else needs be said. I wish it could have been different. We could have been friends.

But I am tired of being reviled.