Dearest Helena,

It feels so silly. You know how I enjoy writing - probably one of the few last things I truly, whole-heartedly enjoy. And yet it eludes me. Maybe I am a poet, as you once suggested - although you meant it as a compliment, a gentle flattery which I could only acknowledge after distilling it into something slightly more accurate; a poet needs to be selfish, in love with his own thoughts. Assertive, passionate and confident. True poets reside beyond the metric and the rhymes, secluded in the faraway place of which their eyes are but remote vestibule windows. In that, perhaps, I could have been a poet. But no, my dear, I know better – I am just a literate schmuck.

"Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion", they say. I wish I didn't have to come to terms with this by myself, but it seems that I am resilient to the hammer of popular wisdom - the only lessons I've truly learnt are those I taught myself, so it's little wonder that I am such a slow learner. It just... suddenly dawned on me. My life turned into a pool of fluid angry things when I started realizing how I had been lied to and allowed to think that I was better than I actually was. In retrospect, I can't even see all the flaws among the empty spaces, but only enough of them to understand what happened - and it is so difficult.

It makes me want to tear everything down and begin from scratch. But I cannot be furious. Who am I going to be mad at? Who am I going to hurt in order to make things better? It is clearly nobody's fault, or perhaps it is mine. It wasn't until recently that I understood how life occasionally throws you an equation without any shadow of a solution, and how all you can do then is put your paper down and write "My apologies, but due to the impossible nature of this particular problem, I am forced to leave it unsolved". ... How do we live with that?

It is also true that I didn't make it as a musician; I know you will fret and fight with your every breath to convince me otherwise, but we have already had this discussion and quite frankly - I do not wish to spend the next few pages reviewing the concept of "biased judgment" only to appease your ravenous kindness. Please let us leave it at that, since I have a letter to finish. At any rate, I also fell short of becoming a scientist. I'm constantly going through this thing in my head, something one of my friends once told me... no, look, this is taking too long. I do not want to write about myself any longer. I am severely dejected of it. I wish I could find nice short words to say this, so it wouldn't look like I'm trying to drown myself in self-pity. I am not. It is about nothing but the simple grasp of having not succeeded in any particular field of life, and I'm desperate, Helena. I need an answer.

That is why I'm giving up writing. I'm going now. That answer is clearly elsewhere. Should I find it, I'll write you again. Otherwise I'm afraid this is - as they say - a "late goodbye". I must end this letter with an apology to you. I have not been a good friend - actually I often feel that I should have been a better friend to a lot of people; maybe if I had been less silent, maybe if I had been more selfless. But this is too gloomy, and I'm neither happy nor miserable. The things I regret, I do so with a vague sense of academic interest. They can only be observed - and never changed, after all. So this is it. Once last time, forgive me for repaying your unconditional support so poorly - even though you are probably a ghost of my imagination, it must have been difficult. An apology is the least I owe you. You've always listened, after all, and I couldn't have written this to anyone else.

Farewell for now,
Yours kindly,