Unsent Public Letter:

It’s high time I came clean with you. I should have realized that you would never have inferred that there had been a sentimental weakness underlying my attempts to keep this conversation going. You were unpresumptuous and analytical enough to dismiss our correspondence as an irreconcilable intellectual feud, and it was only natural for you to defend your own position against what you had presumed to be an ignorant viewpoint. Might I instead suggest that it was a more open but less disciplined one? I do not truly believe that, but it is nice to think that.

The truth is that I was among your many aesthetic admirers. Naturally, I avoided making this known so as not to fall into the trap of logocentrism, thereby yielding to your reductionistic, positivistic viewpoint. On a more fundamental level, I avoid making overt, conventional expressions of erotic affection so as not to be made an object of knowledge, hence probably causing confusion for an aspiring naturalist.

What it was that kept me coming back I cannot say for certain. Perhaps I couldn’t bring myself to think that you had been the selfish, narcissistic sort of person whom I first imagined myself to encounter. Eastern European women seldom appeal to me, (though the obverse tends to be true, inexplicably,) probably because I am myself of Eastern European birth. I must have suspected that I was addicted to the abuse with which I perceived you to treat me, though over time I forgave you for that. Peculiarly enough, even my attempts to disguise my identity quickly came unfurled. My only comfort was in knowing that you had bothered to remember me. That tipped me off that there was more to you than met the eye. Perhaps your inquisitive nature was motivated by a transcendental aim.

This aim I sought to unriddle. Multiple times I contacted you, in many guises, trying to present you as I saw you, in an attempt to make peace with you and with how you see yourself. Yet repeatedly you distanced yourself from me. I knew not why. Yet it is clear to me now: you still regard me as a rival of some sort. Instead of confessing to the emotional impact that your words had upon me, I continued to fight with you. It was not that I did not understand you. I just had not made this understanding understood.

Recently I saw you commend one of your followers for confessing to what he called a “crush”. I was taken aback not by his childish honesty but your equally childlike appreciation of it. It became apparent to me that you see the world in very simple, even naïve terms, and had I fit more neatly into your taxonomy of personality then I would have won your favour. This I cannot do. I’m not whatever you might think I am, at least not exclusively, nor will I be. Yet in exposing a more vulnerable side to myself I hope to reconcile.

P.S.: It’s funny, too. I look at pictures of you and I find myself thinking, “She is so gorgeous. How does she get around?” That might appear ironic to you; the conventional response is rather “how does she NOT get around?” But I acknowledge that in calling you “gorgeous” I only make a radically subjective claim which does not live up to your Science. I feel a desire which I know that even I cannot fulfill, and if even so strong a longing cannot be fulfilled, then how can yours, when you seem so serene and free of physical attachments?

It is good that I’ve had time to find my path over the last two years. My envy has abated, and my confidence directs me now. I hope that you will receive these words in the Spirit in which they were intended. Keep doing what you do, and keep smiling. I know not to accuse you of any further ignorance or evil. You are not a fearful person, unlike many.