A Love Letter

Dearest C,

This is candid. And I will bring up things probably best left settled, but I have a theory things between the you and I of it - Will never be settled. Please, stop now then. Stop reading.

I realize this is probably horrible timing. When is it ever any good when someone we loved pops in for a reminder of what burned us? Opened us up? Because we think we’ve healed the burns. Closed the wounds. Only to find a single reminder of why we so hastily tried to sew them shut.

I have been thinking about you. Wondering what you’re doing. This is mostly brought on by finding letters and mementos of us when I moved a few weeks ago. And I read these things. And I thought about my wounds - not just losing you, but how I keep losing people over you. Allow me a quote:

"There is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people." - Chuck Klosterman (Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Maybe that is what is going on for me. Maybe I keep attempting to replicate what we had. I don’t know what I’m doing writing to you like this. I’ve been going back and forth about it for weeks now. Because the last time we wrote a message 4 years ago when you found me on facebook I tried to be casual, but that is impossible. Maybe it will always be impossible. So I guess this is a last ditch effort to find closure. To let go of that impossible dream that happened to us when we were kids. Or to be able to keep you in my life in whatever context you deem possible whatever, the outcome, the purpose is to not be afraid. I encourage you to do the same. I urge you to defy the want to be myopic. To defy the want to keep things closed. To keep them nice and neat. Because things like this business of love – well, they never are nice and neat, are they?

Looking back as an adult, reading the things you wrote. I can put more together now than I ever could then. You changed my life. Flat out. Turned it upside down. You think you won that night you put my fingers in your mouth. You think I let you in. You only won a small battle. There was a whole other war raging in me. I loved you. That much I knew. But what to do after that only came last night. How to love you only occurred to me now.

10 years after we met. I know now what I felt then.

9 years after we broke up. I know now what to do with what i felt then.

Years ago, I shoved those letters in a box and forgot about them. Forgot about the 100% percent truth of what you felt for me. And I felt for you all over again reading them. But then again. We were only kids. All the mistakes I made. How much I didn’t want to be in love. That was not your fault. After that night. That first battle. I let you in more when I kissed you in the park on the way back from the fountain. Never wanting anything else. And on our way to the blue man group. And sitting in that theater. With you beside me. All seems so ancient yet so forcefully ubiquitous in my mind.

You unknowingly set the template for the rest of my love life. And I cannot be mad at you for that. When we parted in Chicago. Me on the train. I could not believe what I felt for you. And still cannot. But after that minute, after I felt only the luggage between knees and the rattle of only the train doubt set in. And plagued me. I didn’t want to be in love. So madly in love. But I also I had to have picked an impossible love. A girl. A british girl. 4,000 miles away. But then. I didn’t pick it. You didn’t pick it. We just snapped into it. There was a snap. The moment we met. We snapped. And you just happened to be a girl. A british girl. But i was the one 4000 miles away - emotioanlly.

Maybe I’m just fantasizing about a lost love. Or maybe I’m right. That you also check up on me from time to time. Not in a “we are just waiting around until the world brings us together again” kinda way, but in kindred. In the same way part of knows you have a part of me. And I - a piece of you.

With that. I miss you everyday. I miss my piece. In ways that I wish I could describe. And file. Close up nice and neat. With doubt comes hesitancy. That is where I stood when I saw you again. In your purple turtle neck sweater. After I had just stepped off a plane. But 10 years later the piece of the puzzle that I was missing also snapped into place:

I am a passionate person. About politics. Art. Philosophy. Theatre. Music. Fish and chips. All diciplines (and items) that can be experienced and carried out without the input of another. All items that require little interaction or an open dyad in commentary with others. I can do these things passionately without another person. But when it comes to the act of expressing that passion. I realize now that I have never really done that with honesty and true vulnerability. Especially when it counted.

And that is why after a decade of going back and forth, and more latterly these last few weeks, I’ve decided to give that expression to you. The whole passionate truth of it. And tell you most sincerely, that though I urge you to try and fight the reasons that make you want to run from this e-mail and any thought of me, I will understand. Honestly. If I never hear from you again, I will understand. But if you could just … please let me know that that is what you decided in whatever way you can.

I noticed that your profile picture looks as though you are in a film. This was going to happen. Knew it would happen for you. I am so very happy for you.

Also, one last thing. One other thing I have been debating on whether to tell you or not, but I’m not sure where you are living now…if it’s still Bath or not, but I will be in London, Bristol, and Stafford coming up in august. And you can do with that information whatever you like.

Alright, I’m exhausted from the openness. And kinda think I’m being a bit of a tosser. How about a little levity? My stupid science jokes. Likely to ensure you’ll never speak to me again. Cause yes. I really am this lame.



What did Sir Isaac Newton say to the apple?

“Why so down?”



What is it called when a fossil begins a courtship with another fossil?

Carbon-dating



And one sociology pun for good measure:

I asked the Eskimo for a kiss. He told me he was not that Innuit.



I hope you are happy and healthy. Very much the both.

I Dee Lo.

Forever,
J