The Keeper

Born at the Wrong Time

Dear Dean

I don't know if I deserve better. I certainly want better. There isn't much choice if you limit yourself to the boys around here. I want to be with someone more mature.

Someone like you.

Don't you want to be happy too? Your wife doesn't make you happy. It sounds like she doesn't care about you anymore, even if she once did. How can you be with someone for the rest of your life if you don't care about each other? You deserve better, too.

You write as if your situation is fixed in stone, but it's not. You have the power to change your life, but you don't. If your wife loved you and you loved her, then it would be something worth saving. But she doesn't love you, only the idea of you. And you are with her because you feel responsible for something that happened a long time ago, that she was responsible for, too. You are both holding on to something that's over, right? You're concerned that I don't waste my artistic talent, my opportunities to be with someone, my life... And yet you're wasting yours! Maybe it's time for you to stop living vicariously through me and start living.

If I'd met you later in my life, I know things would be different. I wouldn't be your pupil, just someone who you have a lot in common with. You think I'm a generation away from you, but I was born in the wrong time. Modern music doesn't interest me – I'd rather listen to Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor than Prince, Madonna and New Kids on the Block. I don't care about fashion. I don't care about anything teenagers fixate on. I don't want to hang out and smoke and drink down at the park or the recreation centre. I'd rather go for a walk in the countryside, or bike to the beach. Like I know you would.

Would you do that with me?

Love

Martha xxx