"Dear John" Letter to NYC Build It Back Program [Letter to Editor]

January 17, 2014

Dear John To Build it Back

Dear Editor:

I was inspired to write this to Build It Back after the Community Board meeting:

Dear John,

Honey, I am leaving you. It has been a whirlwind since last spring when I first heard your name. I was so enamored and so hopeful from the very first day that you agreed to meet me in July of 2013, when I was gripped with such confusion and pain. You agreed to meet me. Me! You set the time and date, told me what you expected of me, and I was so grateful, so happy. I told myself I’d do anything for you. To please you, I’d give the world. Everything you asked of me and more. Twice, three times, I tried to prove my worth and need to you. My hope was that you would make everything better, and right again.

We would have been perfect together. You, so strong and rich, and full of promise. The promise that I needed and wanted so much. I was swept off my feet with your words. I would give you everything, and I was so sure that one day we would be happy together in my bed, under my roof. I believed in you more than anything else that came my way in this difficult and emotional year. I constructed a vision of us together, recovering, healing, and beautiful together. Shining angels, together, beautifully!

Then one day, things began to change. I knew something was wrong when your story changed, telling me to wait, just a little longer. How could you say when you could finally commit? It is not up to me, love, you said. It is not up to me. It’s not my fault, you said, you just needed a little more time to figure things out. How unfair of me it was to ask you when, I know.

When, I pleaded! I believed you when you said I was your Priority One. You said everything would work out and that things would be OK. After giving all of myself yet again to you, and still believing that you really cared for me, you told me that everything was in order. Yet tonight in Bayswater I found that my dreams may not come true. You told me that we’d be together, maybe sometime in the first quarter of the New Year, maybe. I pressed you, only to hear that my love was in review. Maybe I was actually your Priority Two. Maybe I would find out the truth in April, maybe May, maybe June.

That’s when I knew. That’s when I knew that you had no idea what I meant to you, and what you meant to me. I came to realize that I could be free of you. I knew that I would no longer be able to wait for your promises, and that I would leave you to make my own life. My own home. My disappointments are melting away, and I find myself here, in this place.

I am on my own again, as I have always chosen to be. I am in control of my own future, my own happy life. This is where I belong, where nothing is free. Nothing is free.

Just as I have always have been, taking care of myself, finally freed from waiting on you. I am free to make my home what it was before I ever heard of you. In my new home, at the beach.

Free at last and free again.

JEREMY JONES