Dear John

Dear John,

I don't know how to begin. I don't know what to say. Chances are I'll crumple this up and throw it away before I'm finished with page one. But one thing I know I have to say. Thank you. Thank you with all my heart. Oh, and one other thing. I love you.

You have heard me say time and time again that I am so lucky to be with you. That I don't deserve you. You always laughed it off with the usual, "Oh, no, it's the other way around," but I always said I meant it. I really don't deserve you. You are a great man, a brave man, the best man I have ever met. You are affectionate without being lustful, angry without being resentful, vulnerable without having self-pity, and brave without being a show-off. What am I? I'm a liar, plain and simple. Everything... yeah– pretty much everything I have ever told you has been a lie. Everything of importance, that is. Except that I love you. I don't know why you should believe me, but it's true. It bloody well is. So, when I say I don't deserve you, I am telling the truth again. Well, now maybe you believe me.

I thought that if I never told you, if I never told anyone, I'd be able to make a clean break of it, that I'd be able to put it all behind me and move on. Trust me, you don't want to know what my life was before two years ago. It was something no one should have to live, something no one should have to witness. I don't want to tell you more, I'll just make a royal hash of it – I gave you the memory stick. You have it now, and God knows if you've read it or not by now. I don't want to know what you think. I know what you think, you think 'what a total (insert one of your favorite expletives here), she just basically lied to me about everything. Every bloody thing. She is not who I thought she was. She is not the woman I fell in love with." It is a shell. Whoever you fell in love with, Mary Morstan, as she is called – she's not real. I'm crying a little, because I wish she was. She was nice. She was the best thing that ever happened to you. I wish she was real.

I am blanking out again, but I know I've got to finish this, there's so much I should be saying to you that I somehow can't get out when we're face to face, because I know you're looking at me and seeing me for what I really am now. A liar. So, imagine my voice, because that's one thing I haven't changed (at least not completely, it is my real voice after all) as I say this stuff, because, John, I think I should say that whatever you choose to do – I understand. I deserve the ignominy that this casts upon me. It has ruined everything basically, for me, for you, for Sherlock. Gosh, but I can't believe he did what he did. He just exchanged my freedom for his own.

But thank you. I was so happy for you. So happy with you. A normal life at last. We have so much in common, except as much as you say you wish for a normal life and go to all the trouble of doing stuff everybody does like keep a job, date a girl, go to pub, Sherlock is right. You crave the extraordinary. You yearn for a life of action. After Reichenbach, you tried to seek a new normalcy. Turns out, so did I. I was busy for the the first 18 months of those two years, stuff I can't go into. But then I got out, and tried the normal people thing. I needed it. Gosh, but I needed it. Meeting you and getting to be with you made it just perfect. I mean, seriously, we were steady together, we were good for each other, you know we were, we even got married. I can't remember being happier in my life, not ever. And then I turned out pregnant with your baby. That was the final seal, nothing could drive us apart now. That's why I was crying. I'd done it. I'd made a clean break from my past, and had a new life, a new family, a new purpose.

So then, it had to get ruined. It's like a movie, just when things are getting too good, you know to beware, because things are about to get even badder than before. Sorry, worse than before, but I've always said "badder" in this really evil tone of voice ever since I was a kid, so I know it's improper, but I like it better. Just don't tell Sherlock. Like he'd ever read this anyway. Like you've even persevered this far. If you have, then bless you. I'd have torn it up and tossed it in the bin long before paragraph six.

It was going to ruin me. And by ruining me, it was going to ruin you, and I couldn't let that happen. It was just like him, to use me, to get to you, to get to Sherlock. He's like a living puppeteer, holding all of our strings. In the past I knew how to solve problems like this. It was easy – pull the trigger. It was just a step back into the water, and then I'd run for land, grabbing my towel on the way. I didn't expect the current to be that strong, or for Sherlock to be there when he was. And you. So I did what I had to. And you know the rest. I don't want to even think about it, it makes me sick. Your face. Your face, that way, because of me.

Gosh, I can't even think of what kind of existence this baby is going to have. When before I saw it as the perfect seal of approval to our new life, now it's the sore thumb, sticking out and causing a huge amount of trouble when it would be so easy just to separate. I hate to think of it. But I also hate to think of what I did, and what I did to you. Yeah, I'm admitting I'm to blame. But I couldn't let you know. You'd stop loving me. So I took things into my own hands, and I bungled it. Way to go, Mary. Whoever you are.

My mind is going haywire. I know I've got to finish this so I can get it to you, but I honestly can't think of what I should say. You don't want an explanation, you can ask Sherlock. You don't want excuses, there aren't any. Not any good ones, at least. I suppose this is just one huge apology, but that seems rather pathetic, doesn't it, after what I did. I just wanted to love you, to be allowed to love you, and make you happy. My past was a nightmare a had to wake up from, and you were my starlight. That sounds so stupid, but I felt like we needed each other. I kind of think we still do, but that is just me, being a romantic, and being a woman. Women are scientifically proven to be more forgiving than men. Where that falls through is in the area of forgiving yourself. I know I still haven't and this isn't just about the recent stuff. It's everything. I hated myself. So I became someone new.

And someone new again, in marrying you. So, if you could, don't throw this away. My writing's awful, it puts my intellect to shame if this were any indication of it. But give it to the baby when it's born, whether you have it, or I do. Tell it that I loved you so much, but went about things all the wrong way. Tell it that you made the best decision, whatever that turns out to be. But most of all, tell it that love and life and all that are tricky things, and maybe taking a lesson from Sherlock would not go amiss as far as all that goes. Gosh, what a stupid letter.

I love you, John. I love you more than anything, anyone in the world. I never supposed I'd be lucky enough to meet anyone I really liked, nor anyone who really liked me. It was a stroke of incredible luck for our paths to cross, whatever you say. But even the wishing on the clock at 11:11 every night won't fix things now.

Don't lose touch. I'm assuming the worst now, that you'll leave me, that you won't love me anymore. But I can't ask the other thing of you – to forgive me. To just wink at the past and sweep it under the rug. What a lump that would make, and what a terrible thing for the furniture.

If you never believe a single thing I say after this, listen now. You are the best man in the world, and I don't deserve you. I am so lucky to keep in my heart the memories of our time together, and will store them away as yet another identity of mine. The best one by far.

I love you. I love you, I love you, John. You don't have to believe me, but it's true. You know they say people only do some things out of desperation. Well, I was desperate. Still doesn't mean you have to forgive me. Just don't keep up this intolerable tension forever.

Whatever you decide, I agree. I still persist in this fantasy that we have the same heart between us, and the same mind. You'll laugh at that now, but I always liked your laugh, that funny sound you make when you do it through your nose with your lips still closed.

Anyway, rambling now. Sending this off, not even editing it. Because these are my thoughts, and my thoughts are what I wanted to get to you anyway, and just could not do it when you are there to look me in the eye.

MARY