Scarlett’s letter

Isabel Daniel and Anna Helldorfer || Spring 2021

Dear Betty Jeanne,

Sorry my response has been so delayed. I kept forgetting to buy stamps.

My life has been a whirlwind these last few months. My course load is heavy, but my writing professor says I have a true talent for screenwriting! I got an internship at a radio station, which has been helpful in learning about sound design—you would not believe the difference music makes in setting a scene. I almost fell in love and then fell out of love just as fast. Avery and Liz kept telling me I was insane, but you know I can’t resist blue eyes.

Right now most of my free time is spent writing a screenplay for a short film I’m making with Liz and Juliet. The film starts with a little girl and her imaginary friend playing together in a meadow—actually, it’s a lot like the one by your house. The two girls spend all their time in the park daydreaming about their futures, picking flowers and praying their wishes come true. I’m still working out the details of the middle, but it ends with her in another park, only this time she’s grown up. She’s walking through the Boston Commons when she sees a little girl blowing on a dandelion. Memories of being that little girl, wishing with her imaginary friend, wondering if she’ll ever get what she has now, wash over her. It’s been so long since she last thought of her old friend. She can’t even picture her face anymore. It’s bittersweet; she’s nostalgic for the innocence of childhood, but she would never choose to go back.

The last frame zooms in on the imaginary friend watching her friend from outside the park. She never grew up, never got the chance to have a future. She misses it. Everything.

It’s got me thinking about the nature of dreams, relationships, memory. Does it ever drive you crazy that there’s no way to ever love something with your entire being without it eventually hurting you? Nothing is permanent. The higher you float the further you inevitably fall, fantastic highs always crashing to bitter lows.

I think that’s what friendship is. Choosing to bare your heart to another person, to see their soul and know it by name, to embrace the joy of being recognized completely. Doing all of this knowing that it will only ever be temporary, knowing the loss of something so beautiful is a leech on the pulse of your life. And you never know when it’s going to be over until you look around one day and suddenly realize: your best days together are behind you. It slips away without you noticing; grains of sand blowing from your palm until your hands are turned up towards god, empty, like a prayer that can’t get through to heaven. You can still feel the shape of it, see it lingering in your dreams, but a memory will always feel more real than the taste of their name in your mouth.

We all carry ghosts of the people we used to know. We choose to be haunted because it’s easier than staring the graves of the people we once loved in the eye knowing we killed them. You have to let go of resurrection.

When will we learn to surrender?

Faithfully Yours,
Scarlett