An open letter to Venus

Dear Venus,

I know it's a little while ago now, and there's now so much water under the bridge that it probably doesn't even seem worth jumping off it anymore, but you may recall how we first encountered one another. It was on one of those dating/social networking websites, in our case one created so that people with disabilities could state them up front so anyone who had a problem with them could just go away in the first place. It has therefore been reasonable for me to assume that before you replied to my initial contact, you were basically aware of what my disability is about. Especially since you like reading so much.

It wouldn't have mattered all that much if you hadn't decided, three months later, to fall in love with me. I have to admit that I underestimated this at the time, but as we hadn't even met, I feel I have some excuse for that. You, in turn, failed to recognise that, much as I appreciated you, I hadn't quite fallen in love with you, and was never going to do so before we had spent some time face to face (put it down to experience). Hardly surprising, because you never recognised much about me at all.

Near the end you complained numerously and bitterly that there was too much uncomfortable silence, that I wasn't talking to you enough. In a moment I will repeat my answer to this, but in this context I feel that six months ago, when you first encountered my disability, and instead of seeing it for what it was, decided I had broken everything and it could never be fixed, you really should have said so. Allowing me to go to the trouble and expense of travelling halfway around the world to meet you, when you had already decided not to invest yourself in our relationship, doesn't reflect well on you. In your defence I must confess that I am quite impressed by your capacity to not invest yourself in something, yet at the same time have your heart broken by it.

But I didn't come here to complain. What I most want to do is raise a flag. There is some kind of disconnect between what you say you want to accomplish by living, and your current trajectory. You know this, because every time I've gone anywhere remotely near it you've either changed the subject or induced one of those uncomfortable silences you kept complaining about. I'm returning to it because I don't believe you have much time to get to work on closing this gap before it grows too wide for you to close. I'd give you five years, maximum.

Coincidentally enough, this dichotomy is best descibed by comparing your parents to each other. Your mother, whose example you want to follow in some way, working tirelessly for something important to her and society, versus your father, a bitter, drunken recluse who you profess to hate. Both of these people are inside you. The difference between you becoming one or the other is a word I just applied to your mother - working. Venus, you don't necessarily have to do it tirelessly, but you need to start working. Because if you don't start trying to change something in this world, it's going to keep changing you. And that's not going to be pretty.

One of the things you always liked to tell me about yourself was that you couldn't put all your friends in the same room because they were too diverse and wouldn't get along. That's probably true, but you shouldn't assume that means that you have friends from every walk of life. Let me explain.

If one was to divide society into those who have jobs and those who are on welfare, yes, you count all walks of life amongst your friends. Ditto into those who belong to your country's dominant racial group, and those who don't. Those who are dopeheads or former crackheads, and those who aren't. Those who have all their limbs, and those who don't (OK, maybe walks of life is a bit of a stretch). But there are other categorisations one could make that aren't apparent when looking across your friends. Those who aim for perfection, and those who don't. Those who strive to get the best out of themselves, to approach their capacity, and those who don't. Those who do something to heal the imperfections they see in the world, and those who don't. Those who try to create things of intrinsic beauty and/or practical value, and those who don't.

You won't find amongst your friends the kind of people who kept you alive and reconstructed your body after you crashed your car. Or the kind of people who developed your car in the first place, or that beautifully-machined work of aluminium and titanium that allows you stand and walk. Or who will practise a skill, or a piece of music, over and over again until they can perform it to their satisfaction (without even having to drink first). Or work - there's that word again - at being a consistent parent (sorry, but not everything is the teenager's fault). I could go on, but my message here is that you need to stop looking at these kinds of people like they're from outer space, and start incorporating something of them into yourself. Because, as I am sure your mother reminds you when she tells you to get your brain back to university, you are unlikely to change the world one directory assistance phone call at a time.

I know I should be sending this to you instead of publishing it on some anonymous blog that you will never read, but you can put that down to this uncomfortable silence dynamic we have going. My silence might be uncomfortable for you, but it works beautifully for me. You stopped listening to me a long time ago, and only hear what I have to say so you can show me your reaction to it. So if you don't mind, or even if you do, I'll confine myself to speaking where I'll be spared the indignity - and indignation - of your response.

I know also that I wished you the best of luck in my last words to you. A poor choice of words, I will admit. Take luck out of the equation, Venus. Do something, and do it soon.