Work Text:
Jonathan Joestar,
I was once told that if I couldn’t say everything that was in my heart in the span of a single page that I shouldn’t bother. If I had to ramble on for pages and pages, then it meant I didn’t understand my own sentiments precisely enough to articulate them. But that’s the strange thing about feelings. They are never so neat or well-formed that you can capture their totality in a handful of words. They never even have the courtesy of taking on a consistent shape, constantly shifting from one bewildering guise to the next so that the moment you think you have them pinned down at last, you find that the thing grasped in your hand bears no resemblance to what you thought you had seized in the first place. It’s maddening, but perhaps it is better that things not be so definitive. What fun would there be in that? If we had all the answers, we’d lose the thrill of the chase. But the thrill of the chase is not always thrilling. It’s tiring as well and very often disappointing, which is why I feel I need to sit awhile and just write. Not pages and pages. Just the first page. Just enough to give you a glimpse inside.
I can offer you my undying loyalty, but beyond that there’s little else of me that I think you would want. My past would disgust you, as it does me, and while you might forgive me for it, as I have no doubt you would, being the sort of man you are, that is not the same as forgetting. And I can never forget, not even if I reinvented myself a thousand times. I will spend every last breath I have working to redeem my character so that if eyes like yours ever happen to fall upon me again, perhaps they will linger long enough to see past my faults. That is not to say that you could not or do not see beyond the surface, beyond my misdeeds and my flaws. I simply say that though your gaze acknowledged my intrinsic worth, in the same moment it passed over me, and very rightly so given the other options you had. I have no right to feel slighted if I was never a contender, and the admired owes nothing to his admirer.
I will forever be indebted to you and, by extension, to those you love, but that is not so bad a position to be in. The love that goes unrequited and unconsummated, perhaps even unnoticed, is preferable to indifference. I was indifferent, once upon a time, but I hope to never be so again. You awoke what was best in me, and I will never regret that.
Well…I won’t break my promise. I’m nearly to the end of the page, and I did say I would stop before things ran on too long. Looking back, I think I’ve done a poor job expressing what I’d wanted to say, so perhaps it’s true that I don’t understand my own heart as well as I thought. Or maybe it simply means that the love I feel for you is a more complicated matter than I expected it to be and that pouring out my heart was too great or too foolish an undertaking in a mere letter. It could be the case as well that I’ve realized how utterly selfish it is to declare my affections to you. You are happily married with a beautiful life ahead of you. What right do I have to infringe on that and what point is there in doing so?
Perhaps I will not post this letter after all…even now I cannot fathom what possessed me to write what I have. It is better consigned to the fire. You need never know I was so weak as all this and not even a full 12 hours after your ship left port….
So I’ll ask your pardon from afar and satisfy myself with the absolution I know you’d offer without even needing to hear my transgression. Because, in my heart of hearts, I think you would know…that you do know and that you don’t blame me for loving you nearly as much as I blame myself.
Yours Truly,
Robert E. Speedwagon