This Answer Is So Lovely And Long Thank You Mr Gatsby - Tumblr Posts

11 months ago

when did you stop loving daisy?

(did you ever?)

POST: LONG ISLAND, NY. AUG 1922

This is an impossible question to answer. You must understand how much of myself I put into her and thus how much of myself I lost the day I realized it wasn't going to happen. Can you imagine that? Building the whole of your world and your vision of yourself on the opinion of the one person on Earth you thought you truly understood, the very first person in your life to want nothing more than to bring you peace—just for that same person to change and withdraw as you, in an effort to retain their attention, concentrated and refined yourself into exactly what you thought they needed?

For once in my life I had someone I could understand, until I didn't. And for a moment I thought for sure that without her I had nothing, that I was nothing and I would die nothing, but—

—well, that's simply not the case. Now, here, anyway. In another life maybe I pursued her until my body gave out and I rotted away to reveal I'd been hollow all along. I still feel that way sometimes, on foggy nights when the green light at the end of her dock cuts through my room.

Only now I don't face it alone. And thank god for that.

I'll always have a fondness for Daisy. I don't think I could fully extract her from myself if I tried, as many times as I've reinvented myself. I don't think that's a bad thing. She's good, you see, old sport. She really is. I don't blame her for my giving up, and you shouldn't either.

I would write more, but I have more letters to answer, a past to put away, a present to appreciate, and I'm already being called to tomorrow.

Sincerely and emphatically,

Jay Gatsby


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