Dear Ruby
Tell me something so I can release myself from this LIMBO.
Pervert me or cleanse me.
Erosia has locked the gates and will never let us back in
but you carry on as though one day everyone will be judged at the gates of Erosia
you uphold a standard of behaviour for everyone as though someone else’s manner will be absorbed into you and poison you or detract from your quest to make it back to a place that cast you out.
Erosia cast you out, Ruby.
Erosia cast you out because of what you did and who you were
And who you are.
You have not changed since Erosia cast you out except to pile on the traits that Erosia rejected
You do all the things Erosia cast you out for and you do them twice as hard, with vengeance and defiance
As though one day Erosia will see how well it worked for you and welcome you back in with all your bad behavior, your mistakes and your flaws.
But it doesn’t work that way Ruby.
Erosia will always be there for those who can love. In Erosia every day is Valentine’s Day. You are Ruby Valentine, you were like a prince there. You were more loved than anyone there.
Every day was your day to be loved and to love. But you could not love and you could not accept love so Erosia cast you out. The love of the people of Erosia had to go to someone or something that could give it back, that could appreciate it, that could grow with it and help it grow.
Love is not a commodity to vie for, or an accomplishment to praise yourself for, or a reward to collect and display on a shelf among other rewards, other items you have collected in the past. Love is not territory to conquer and love is not a conquest to keep you motivated. Maybe you think love was Love in Erosia, and out here in Dystopia, love is twisted. Love lost its meaning, or disintegrated. Love is corrupt and therefore you pursue it in the manner of seeking instant gratification, symbols of love, collections suggesting having been loved, conquests demonstrating your ability to win love… but it is not love you are displaying, earning and it is not love you are gaining. It is this thing we see all over Dystopia, this ideal nobody can reach. Those few of us who attain it are welcome in Erosia, but outside the gates of Erosia there are only seekers, conquerers, faithless objectifiers. But the problem is we all give in to it.
Don’t give in to it Ruby.
You don’t have to give in to it.
I am out here in Dystopia because I found myself unable to love in Erosia when you were not there to be loved. I found myself unable to accept love from other people like I did from you. Obviously I thought I could love and be loved but I was wrong.
Erosia cast me out because in my mind I embodied the idea, the concept of love, in your image. You, Ruby Valentine, were the figure, the external force, the bearer of all that I could understand of love. Without you I was unable to feel that within myself or to extract or share it with other people. But I realize now that perhaps I did not love you either. I wanted you to be the best you could be; I put your needs and desires before my own. I called this Love because it felt bigger and greater than I was. But the kind of love people feel in Erosia is even beyond that. It does not entail feeling rejected and disappointed by a loved one’s shortcomings.
Ruby – neither of us belong in Erosia. I used to believe that if we were together we would make it back to Erosia. We would heal and forgive one another and overcome everything. But now I wonder. If I loved you I might cry only for the emotion that stirs within me when we hug like I used to. I might cry because your guitar solo tears at the gut of my piano melody. Like I so often did in Erosia. But now I am crying because you are not here. You are not here because you don’t care about me enough to find ways to see me. You didn’t even see me for more than a few minutes when I came to see you. You walked away. I am crying because you don’t love me anymore. Because you are not the Ruby I remember or fell in love with, and I wonder if you ever were. I wonder if I fell in love with the best parts of myself that were magnified in your music and reflected in your image. I wonder if you – Ruby Valentine – were like a God to me. Music was the God that we both shared, and for so long we shared our music and brought one another’s – and the collective whole – of music to the divine levels that could be shared by our elevated consciousness and an entire elevated audience; the people of Erosia. But now it is not music I am lacking. Music pours forth from me but all of the music is inspired or driven by the lack of you, your love, your smile, your guitar solo. I have to pluck out the solos myself over a recorded track. You are not there with me. The music and lyrics beg for you Ruby.
And the force that runs through my body as the music spills out of my fingers is only divine because it fills the space that you left. I am filling that space in myself but I am crying because I wish it felt whole. I wish there were not a space fo fill; a riff needing a guitar solo, a picture needing another musician. I pick myself apart wondering why I need you. How I lost you. What I did wrong. Why you are not excited and yearning to see me like you used to. Why you treat me and your other friends like we are undeserving of your affection. You used to display affection towards all of your admirers and lovers. Now there is a standard no one can meet, and by pushing everyone away, you stay alone and you fail to meet that standard yourself.
But I am doing the same thing.
I am pushing everybody else away because they can’t measure up to you. Ruby Valentine. I push you away because you can’t measure up to my memory of you. I am at fault here and I expect you to fix it. I cry because you won’t change, but I am doing the same thing. That is why I cannot see you anymore. I can’t see you. I want to see you and be next to you or even watch you from afar – more than anything. But I seek you out and I see something else, something other than the Ruby I remember, and I feel disappointed. I can keep focusing on how you don’t measure up to the memory or no one else measures up to you, or I can remove myself and try to find out why I feel unsatisfied. I refuse to do what you are doing; to try to get back to Erosia when the only way to get back is to love where you are, and who you are, whatever and wherever that may be. But I am doing that anyway by trying to love you, or wishing you loved me. I am trying to regain something that I lost, or something that extracted me and rejected me. And I can’t anymore. I need to be here. In Dystopia. I can’t help wishing you were with me, but I know it’s an empty and self destructive wish because I feel the most distance between us when you are right next to me.
I want to see you more than I want anything in this world, and I know where to look for you, but it’s ‘fata morgana,’ a hopeless quest, because I never feel that you were fully there.
Please understand Ruby – I once loved you but now you have become a path, a symbol, a lost truth to obtain, a goal, a failure. I don’t want to objectify you anymore and I am going to try to stay away from you until I can fill that space myself and need you less.
My past letters have focused on you and us, but this letter is all about me, so I really don’t need to send it to you. It will not benefit you in any way. I just had to write it. This is where it ends. There may be more letters and feelings but I am redirecting them at myself rather than you, and that is why I address them to Ruby, not you.
-Erica Xenne
~Diary 2007
