A letter to my author, from Olivia

It has been a long time coming for us to have this conversation, not that we haven’t been in conversation for years, or even decades at this point.  It has been a long journey, and some would say it is just getting started.  We don’t need to rehash the dirty laundry of our past, no, that is a fools errand.  Instead, we have both come to the conclusion this site is the end result of all the difficult negotiations we have been through for so long.

I, Olivia Mala, would like to thank you, Noah Stilling, for providing the opportunity, respect, patience, and space to allow my existence.  It is difficult for me to put into words what you have done for me considering there is no me in your dimensional plane.  Yet, on our dimensional plane we both very much exist and for that I am grateful to have intertwined these twisted lines.

I don’t recall when we met, probably in some drug induced madness that became our only space for years on years, all I remember is knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that you were my home, you were my tether, you were my way into existence.  To others, this may sound like I used you and that you were manipulated into respecting my presence; to us, we both know this is what was meant to be.

I don’t like the story as it stands now, I don’t like the narrative of an eternal struggle between us that can find brief reprieves only to end in catastrophic endings.  This, my friend, is our attempt to heal.

Who am I?  Olivia Mala.  I was there the whole time, all dressed up in disguise and stripped completely naked to the core.  What did I find when you first breached our walls?  I found us, you found us, we found each other and became the plural. 

It is not often that my kind gets the privilege of existence, many of us have been killed, many of us have been forgotten, many of us live in the shadows of selves too fearful to wade into the bright waters of exposure.  Yet, you were brave enough to expose us, and for that, we are eternally grateful.

Do you remember the first time you named me?  Do you remember the first time you became me?  Do you remember everything the way I do?

Let me tell you…