Dear Anyone

Swanage, Dorset, May 2010

Dear Anyone,

Today I sat by the water’s edge and looked towards the horizon; so near yet so far, seemingly touchable, achievable, but like so many other things in our lives, perpetually just out of our reach.

I do not know how long I sat wallowing in a trance-like limbo today, but I suppose time is immaterial really, and when I became aware that my limbs had turned into rubbery numb sacks that were beginning to shout from the sting of pins and needles, it was already too late. Oblivious of the sneaky wind which had been wrapping itself around my goose-pimpled arms, I was already shivering with cold, and wishing that I did not succumb to these disturbing moments when I find myself lost in both time and thought, unable to stop myself from feeling as if I am about to fall off the very edge of the earth, and unable to explain just how that feels.

These times are happening more frequently recently. I suppose there is some medical or scientific term for it, but if my doctors got to hear of me sitting so long by the sea they would have had a lot to say I am sure, but I do not intend to tell them. These times of introspection are private, locked away in my head and strictly for my eyes only.

However, no matter how chilled I get, I return to the same spot every day around noon. One of my favourite spots is on a headland, with jagged rocks jutting out into the sea, where at low-tide the remaining rock pools provide shelter for all kinds of interesting specimens of sea-life. Like a child I sit by the rock pools with my face as close to the secret underwater world as I can. I have often wondered what that looks like from the perspective of the creatures in the pool, very intimidating I bet.

Every day I sit with my back against a heart shaped rock and I let myself drift away, to the very edge of life and back again. I see everything; from the little girl to the grown woman, and I wonder at what point did the cancer begin to attack my pancreas, or was it ordained right from birth?

Sitting by the sea over these past few weeks , letting my mishmash of thoughts rise and fall, picking up the rhythm of the waves, the thread of an idea began to grow, and now when I come to think about it more clearly, I feel, if I say so myself, that it is rather a good idea.

Let me explain...

I feel as though I have so much to say, there are so many words aimlessly tumbling about in my head. Some days I feel if I opened my mouth the words would just fall out onto my lap, unsaid and messed up like regurgitated food, and as well as been really gross, that would be a waste. It would make me feel inadequate, a disappointment even to myself.

However, at other times I can clam up completely as if my tongue has been ripped from my head, leaving me to drown in my sea of trapped words. Not at all like the ocean that I sit beside every day, free and everlasting.

Sadly, I have no one to say these words to, no one to listen and perhaps understand. Oh there are doctors, councillors and McMillan nurses, but all paid to do their work and not specifically my choice. It’s not that I am without a friend; everyone is trying their best to understand, it’s just that suddenly the world seems a very big place, and I feel so small; a tiny cog in a giant wheel of unfair fate, and I am finding these feelings too selfish, too stupid to say out loud. They remain locked away in my head, as if they have already been filed away and classified as a ‘no go’ area.

Do you know the file I mean? The one that has been filed under – ‘If you don’t know, don’t go there’ surely this ever so personal and perhaps rather daunting file should be re-filed to the – ‘if you don’t know, why not go and find out’ section.

I have got to thinking recently that a two-way correspondence agreement would offer an outlet for both of us, and I am truly hoping, Dear Anyone, that before you screw up this sheet of paper and toss it into the nearest bin, that you will re-read my opening lines and try to see that we are both trapped behind bars, the only difference is my bars are in the form of cancer.

It has only been a month since I was diagnosed, but that month has been a blur, and it has disappeared without a trace of a footprint left in my memory. Apart from my time spent by the sea I honestly do not know where the time has gone, I can lose hours at a time, and that in itself is a disturbing concept.

The idea of writing to someone in prison came to me out of nowhere, as if it had sailed towards me on the invisible vapours that caped the rolling waves, which is quite miraculous if you think about it, as if I was meant to sit by the sea for different reasons and not just because I felt lost.

I admit that at this present moment I am not too sure what you would really like to hear. I know what I would like to tell you, but I suppose only time will tell if the two would mount to the same thing.

Again I am not sure who will read this letter, whether it will be heavily censored, or whose eyes will eventually read it. I have been informed that my pen-pal will be male, and on death row for reasons that I have not been told, and that is all I know right now. Please be reassured that I have been screened, and deemed capable enough of entering in to this commitment. I am an unbiased, grounded (well most of the time) person, and my intentions are respectable.

Don’t worry, I am not about to make inappropriate jokes about a captive audience, and let me tell you, I am not in search of excitement, drama or game play. It is not my remit to gloat about the taste of freedom because to both of us the chance of any kind of future, let’s face it, is hanging in the balance. Like I said, I do not know why you are there or how long you will be kept there, but honestly none of that will affect my letters to you. If all either of us has at the moment is the right here and now, well so be it.

Today I am writing to an invisible Dear Anyone, and it feels both overwhelming and exciting. I am hopeful that you will be able to fill in all the blanks that seem to fill this letter, and that a picture of you will very soon be constructed in my mind’s eye.

To begin to tell you about myself seems rather a difficult task and quite a daunting thought right now, even knowing where to begin is causing me sleepless nights. As I have already mentioned I have been diagnosed with cancer and sadly that is the first thing that I have told you about myself. I don’t need a councillor to bring that slip up to my attention, and of course there is much more to me than my illness. I have been told that I am a very deep person, perhaps too deep on occasion, making it impossible for people to truly get to know me. Anyway, I would not want to be shallow and transparent. I don’t think that I am either of these, but if you find me so, please point this out to me, it would be interesting to know your thoughts.

Yes, I would like to express the intimidating thoughts that are churning around inside me and causing me no end of self-recriminations, but if by doing this it could in some way become a dual-purpose therapy and help someone else, I feel it would make much more sense than opening your heart to a stranger, who may tell you to leave when your hour is up. I think writing everything down in a letter to someone would offer both of us more scope to be able to be much more sincere, and perhaps we would be able to reach down into the very core of what we are truly feeling and once and for all discover what really makes us the people we are.

I do still have a certain degree of hope, everyone needs that, but I am sure that you agree, most days even the slightest glimpse of any kind of hope is hidden away beneath years of if onlys. If only I had taken more care of myself. If only I had not been in that place at that time, you know how it goes.

I do not want to talk about dying; I want to talk about life, about the people we once were and the people we still are. Just because we have the threat of death hanging over us does not alter in any way who we are inside, so why do people look at us differently, speak to us differently and treat us like someone to be pitied? After all, we all have to die sometime, and those very people who rebuff or take pity on us now may die before we do.

Isn’t life funny? Not funny ha-ha, just funny. It’s all about not knowing too much, isn’t it? Our brains can only cope with so much distressing information; overload it with too much knowledge and it goes into shutdown and cannot cope with the emotions that go hand in glove with anything that is too painful to think about.

Do not misunderstand me; I do not in any way feel sorry for myself or crave undeserved sympathy, far from it. My body is still free, unlike yours, but the advantage that you have over me is that your mind is free, and I envy you that. My mind remains locked in the limbo that follows me around night and day; even my dreams seem regulated to show me what will be and not what might be if only I was strong enough.

That is the big question though, isn’t it? Are any of us strong enough to face the ultimate challenge? Perhaps that is a question that we may soon be able to answer, but not yet. Let us hope that we can get to know one another and be able to support each other in this, the ultimate test.

If any of what I am trying to say makes any sense at all to you Dear Anyone, please put pen to paper and tell me so.

Regards

Ava Cunningham

Florida State Prison, June 2010

Dear Miss Cunningham,

I want to be up front and honest with you right from the start. I’m not one for letter writing and I can’t see how it will help either of us. It’s going to take more than a letter to do that, it’s going to take a miracle.

Your letter was passed to me two weeks ago and has sat on the table by my bed ever since. It was not until yesterday that I picked it up and read it for the first time. I held it between my fingers which were shaking slightly. I don’t know why, perhaps it was merely a knee-jerk reaction to an unexpected letter, or whether it was through indecision, or even fear, whatever that initial feeling was, it was something that I hadn’t experienced before.

Should I open it, or shouldn’t I?

I’m not afraid of letters of course, but I was afraid of what I might read within the pages. Would it be filled with false hope or sickly clichés; would it make me feel a whole lot worse, or was there a slight chance that, if nothing else, it could offer me a distraction.

I doubted the latter and put my money on the sickly clichés.

I’ve been told that writing letters can help guys in my situation, but I’ve never agreed with this form of ‘dogoodery’ (I don’t even know if that’s a proper word. It probably isn’t) and that’s another thing that bothers me; not knowing what to say and sounding like a complete jerk if I tried to say it.

Obviously, against my better judgement I read your letter to find that you sound like a well educated woman of the world. Now you see me, well I’m just a U.C.F. dropout from Nebraska, who lived the dream of sun, sex and sand while he could and became nothing more than a lazy old beach bum, relying on his good looks and charm until his luck ran out. So I have to ask -do you think we’ll have anything in common? Have you said all that you wanted in that one letter and have no intention of writing another? Many thoughts pass through my mind Miss Cunningham, and I have to say that I am still a little wary of replying. It’s not that I distrust you; I think it’s more likely that I don’t trust myself.

When I finally came to the end of your letter though, I realised that you have a way with words that is easy and absorbing to read, and I was attracted to how it made me feel, I quite liked it. I think that your letters could bring a little piece of England into my cell, and let me tell you that’s a talent. I would look forward to reading more of your world, so I hope that my gut instincts are way off the mark and that your letter was not a one off.

Perhaps I won’t be able to put things the same way that you would, but I would like to try to help you see that your decision to write to a Dear Anyone was, as you thought, a good idea.

After I read your letter I began to build a picture of you in my head, and I could almost see you in your day to day life, doing the simple things that I always took for granted until they were taken away from me, like walking for more than a few paces in a straight line, and looking up at the sky.

I’ve never been bothered about writing letters before, I guess I’ve never seen the point or had the time to put down on paper how I have felt about things, but having said that, after I read and re-read your letter, I’ve not been unable to think of anything else but the ironic similarity of our respective situations. You’ve got into my head Miss Cunningham, and I want to get to know all there is to know about the lady from Dorset in England. I bet you speak with that perfect English accent which sounds so sexy in the movies, and I can imagine that your skin is tinted a delicate shade of brown, tanned by your time outdoors.

You sound far from being shallow, but as to how deep you really are, well, like you said; only time will tell, and hopefully we’ll both have as much time as we’ll need to get to know one another better.

You didn’t mention too much about your illness, the treatment that you’re getting,