Yahoo Mail let me know that I was running out of space again, so I went through and cleared out the trash folder. I was still pretty short so I also went to the drafts folder to clear it out. There was a series of unsent letters from a couple of years ago in there.

Most of them aren't really worth savings. The utterings of a sad and frustrated fellow addressed to the object of his frustration. There is one item, though, on the tail end of an email that I did sent that I want to keep. I remember writing it so clearly.

I was in Austin. I always seemed to be in Austin - or Waco - when the big things with Audrey hit. I've joked in the past that our time together was defined by the times she wasn't there. When she was alone in her room unable to get herself out of bed. Or when she was out with someone else. Or somewhere, anywhere, but with me.

It worked both ways I guess. It was a night where I cancelled that Michael re-entered the picture. It was when I was in Austin that she told me that I didn't need to call her anymore. I was in Waco when she reconnected with Vince.

Oh, and I was in Austin when, after nearly six weeks of a stone wall, she first indicated - in an innocuous PS to an otherwise depressing email - that things might not be as over for her as she'd thought when she told me to stop calling. There was a party going on in the living room when I read the email. Meanwhile, I was in holed away in Brian's room when I felt a rush of relief, vindication, and anger.
Then I was in the living room, trying to enjoy myself at the party, when I couldn't get the innocuous PS out of my mind. I was on Brian's computer again when I wrote and saved the response. I was in the living room when I pondered whether or not to send it. I was in Brian's room again when I decided not to address it and sent the rest of the response in tact.

It's an interesting combination of traits I'm not sure that I like about myself: judgmental, inflexible, arrogant, and defensive. It sums up where I was just about as well as it sums up where she was.

I wouldn't have posted on this at all except that I want the words saved somewhere that I might see them again. I haven't looked through the Audrey archives in some time and they really only include letters that I did send. It's an odd sort of time capsul - one including the things that I did not say.

"I wish I could say that I don't know what to make of this, but I do. It took nearly six weeks of silence to get here. Now I again have a chance at what I want the most. All I have to do is not really want it.

I offered you my world, and you turned it down. I could tell you right now that I love you, I have always loved you, and would do anything to this day to be with you. If I did, that would probably ruin any chance I'd have with you. If I told you that I am fiercely angry with you and that I don't know what kind of future we could have, it would at least be issuing some sort of challenge. What's it worth to you if you don't have to fight for it? The truth about how I feel, unsurprisingly, is much more complicated than either of these scenarios.

You know, I think about you and what happened. I told you as things were falling apart that I felt like I had been lied to. You didn't quite understand what precisely you had "lied about"... I think the biggest deception was that you presented yourself as someone who wanted to be happy. Happiness seems to appear boring to you. Where's the challenge in that?

My biggest failure throughout the entire ordeal was my inability to recognize that."

-R. Alex Whitlock, March 7, 2001