Dear John

To make mat­ters worse, a day or so later, I received a very dis­heart­en­ing let­ter from Mary. I had begun to won­der about her after her let­ters had grown fewer in num­ber and far­ther apart, which wouldn’t have both­ered me so much if she hadn’t been the only con­sis­tent rela­tion­ship in my life at the time. Ship­wrecked and marooned on an island with a bunch of sav­ages, I saw her as the one last hope I had of keep­ing myself con­nected to my human­ity. When mail call came ’n’ went with nigh a word from her, I hurt. Although school most assuredly kept her busy, I still expected her to occa­sion­ally let me know how she was doing or that she was at least think­ing of me.

She began her let­ter by telling me how sick she had got­ten. As her health con­tin­ued to decline, she decided to go home. There, she devel­oped a lump on her throat. Fright­ened, she went to see a doc­tor who, upon diag­nos­ing it as a toxic goi­ter, put her on thy­roid med­ica­tion and a tran­quil­izer. Forced to quit school, she claimed all the worry and excite­ment over her con­di­tion had pre­vented her from writ­ing any sooner.

She then went on to say:

“Butch, I want you to know you mean a great deal to me. I care about what hap­pens to you, what you do. As I recall the good times we’ve had, I want to thank you for all of them. But I’m afraid you look at them dif­fer­ently than I do. I’ve said this before and I mean it—you’re a very good friend and I’ll always want to keep your friend­ship. I don’t want any­thing to hap­pen to our friend­ship, or should I say my friend­ship, because you feel so dif­fer­ently about me. I regard you as one of my best friends, and that’s all.

“You said you love me and maybe you do. I can’t say what you’re feel­ing, I can only tell you what I feel. And I feel only a very strong need for you as a friend. If I’ve given you the impres­sion my feel­ings for you are the same as those, you hold for me, I’m sorry. I never meant to do that. And if what I’ve said has offended you in any way, I’m deeply hurt. If you love me, then I’ve hurt you too. I’m sorry.

“I hated hav­ing to say this to you, but I believe it had to be said. I can only hope you’ll under­stand what I am say­ing. I didn’t write this let­ter to hurt you; for I’d rather die than hurt you. But it wasn’t fair to you, to go on believ­ing I love you too. I can only say I care very much about what hap­pens to you. You’ll never know how much you’ve given me. But Butch, I can’t return the same feel­ings you have for me. I can only say I hope this let­ter doesn’t affect our friend­ship. Remem­ber, I do care about you, more than you will ever know.

“From now on my let­ters will be far apart, because the doc­tor wants me to do absolutely noth­ing. I’ll write as often as I can. Butch, please read this let­ter care­fully and try to under­stand what I’m say­ing. For I never was very good at express­ing my feel­ings on paper.

Love,
Mary