The Letter

This letter was written by one of my most beautiful friends to her lost love. She shared it with me after reading my blog and seeing what I've been going through...Anyway, I felt compelled to share it with you because it touches me so much every time I read it.

Roughly eight years ago, I was in love. This was gigantic; the big, big love. At first we pretended to be neighborly- we ate together, shared books, watched scary movies, but we both knew from the first time we locked eyes that there was something unspoken between us. We went through many phases, gave our relationship many names, but it was always the same, we created our own universe, we were bound to each other. "Midnight tea, in your ancient stone-walled room, our pact was sealed". He was my teacher, my guide, my protector and my first real lover.

I will refer to this boy (now a man, but will always be a boy to me) henceforth as Anders (to protect the guilty as well as the innocent and all that) and it is just too cumbersome to refer to him as “the aforementioned boy”. “Anders” in Danish means brave, manly, strong- he is all of those things and also reminds me of another melancholy Dane. He is known by many names but this is the one I choose for him.

That first night I met him at midnight in his basement apartment, I was delirious. It was one of those wild, paganistic, totally uninhibited nights. I felt brave and ripe and hungry and passionate and I just wanted to be a human conduit for all of our energy. I wanted to fill the night with it, light it up and see it reflected in that impossibly beautiful face. I felt like I'd burst with it. I cannot think of any other time in my life that I've felt like that, at least, not so acutely.

And the smiling, dear god, never has a grin meant more to me. All night Anders and I kept smiling at each other, and every time my heart would stop. I just couldn't believe that he was smiling at me. That smile was like a warm light on me, making me more real and more beautiful than I've ever been. I felt completely alive in that smile, and I wanted it aimed at me forever.

I know it's obvious at this point, but have I mentioned how insanely beautiful Anders is? All baby-smooth skin and long, lean lines and clever hands and black hair and huge, huge eyes that would break your heart. Eyes the color of stolen guns. Chameleon eyes that changed with the light, with his moods; one minute Caribbean blue, the next as green as the rolling hills of Ireland, then suddenly as gray as Scotland rain. Eyes you can get lost traveling and unraveling the world in. You always knew where you stood with those eyes, because, as unfathomable as their depths were, and as unfathomable as he was, sometimes, those eyes hid nothing; no guile in them at all. You could almost see his brain working behind them, his soul. Anything that came out of that gaze was real and you knew it. Such remarkable eyes. And that night, I was the only thing in them, and, I felt it. I felt it in the core of my being. It made me dizzy.

Anyway, the magic didn't stop there. That night was only a blessing before our years-long voyage, a taste of all the magic that lay before us. We found each other in every song on the radio, in every dreamy movie flickering across every screen, in every beautiful book ever written. The world around us, which was still in good standing with me at the time as an enchanted place, became an impossible fairyland, a garden of delights, a velvet-draped backdrop for us to act out our epic romance. I lost myself, I definitely lost myself in it like I never have before or since. This was that wild-eyed love where you want to burn on the stake like Joan of Arc, you want to murder the people that have done wrong to the one you love, you want to give up everything you own, throw everything away, just to demonstrate how in love you really are. It was hard to believe it was happening. I felt crazy with it; desperate. I'd often cry at the drop of a hat simply because I was so in love I didn't feel like I could hold it all inside me.

I always thought it was possible to cry simply because you are happy. I still do. However, I remember reading a disturbing scientific study saying that it was simply not the case. Scientists believe that crying when you're happy actually symbolizes a deeper, underlying sadness or fear, instead of simple happiness. Crying at a wedding means that you fear that you might not find love, crying after seeing a loved one emerge unharmed from a burning building or similar disaster isn't joy at seeing them, but release from all the terrible things you imagined happened to them, and crying in love means an impending sense of doom, fear of abandonment. Or more awful, fear of love itself. Do I believe that they're on to something? Of course I still believe that it's possible to cry because you're happy... But I'd be naive if I said there wasn't something to that theory, wouldn't I?

So, there Anders and I were, both of us young, he was incredibly magnetic and ambitious, I was too immature to know better and impossibly messed up, and we were wildly, passionately in love. But we were also doomed. We were damned. We were cursed the way you are at that age when you believe yourself invincible, yet disaster is around every corner. And you love drama, and though you don't know it, if you can't find it, you'll create it.

It felt like the world...Fate itself was plotting against Anders and I, but sometimes we liked it that way. Every small disaster that befell us only served to strengthen our soul-bound bond, to prove our value to each other. Consumed would be a good word for it. Possessed. And there was so much tenderness, so much power between us. It was a dark, strange, beautiful dream, and we left reality behind and were enmeshed in it. We were pure and perfect. We were warrior-poets. We were twin silver rings. We were death-angels dreaming of lying down together. We were the smell of a storm brewing. We were the same strange imaginings. We were throaty, intoxicated laughter. We were each other's answered wish.

But something happened, somewhere. Fear, I suppose, dogged us, or me at least, I can only speak for myself. I remember, just before the end, a period of time where I lived in fear. Who's he with? Is he thinking of me? This can’t be real. Does he really love me? How could he love only me? And in a fit of panic one day I freaked and essentially kicked the door open. I remember calling him up and yammering something about how I wasn’t ready, I’d said it too many times already. He just went *POOF* like he vanished into thin air.

And in six years, I haven't verifiably laid eyes on him. I mean, sure I looked for him everywhere, but did I actually see him? What a mistake I made when he came just to visit me, and I was too screwed up to enfold him, to take him to my house, take him to my bed and love him completely. Anders, of the delicious, swan-like neck that felt like a bolt of raw silk between my teeth and lips like over-ripe plums against mine. Anders; the last great love of my life. The last to make me feel like a real, live, breathing, hurting, weeping, irrational human. Anders of the lost days and nights and the sudden goodbye that left me crazy with speculations and without a single answer. Anders; who vanished from my life and did it so completely that I'd think he was a product of my imagination if it weren't for a collection of letters and books, a ring, a cross, a scar and the utterly fathomless heartbreak he left behind. Yeah. That one.

Once I thought it was him and I'm still ashamed of how I felt for that instant; something like terror and glee and a sickeningly intense mix of emotions too entangled to separate and name. Something awful and wonderful at the same time. I broke out in a cold sweat and my hands shook and that’s just when I thought I saw him. Of course it wasn’t him. I know he is nowhere near me, but I always look for his face in a crowd- he’s surprised me in unexpected places more than once- and any time I see that walk, that stance, that bearing, I savor the moment before I’m certain it’s not him.

I came to the conclusion that we were both saboteurs; so amazed that we had found something so perfect we felt almost compelled to destroy it. Thing is, I've been walking around with a knot tied up in my belly for eight years wondering what went wrong. I can name it now, it was fear, lack of trust, youth, insecurity, plain stupidity on my part as well.

Why now this letter, you may ask? (This is The Unsent Letter, by the way, doesn’t everyone have one?) Too many coincidences. The morning after I awoke from a dream that was so vivid that I fully expected to roll over and ask you what you wanted for breakfast, I scrambled out of bed and headed for coffee; (French roast, extra cream) and as soon as I get in line, as if on cue, This Mortal Coil's song; "The Song to the Siren" comes on over the PA and before I know it, I have to step out of line and get the hell out of there because I'm crying so hard. This may sound trivial to you, but after a year of unanswered messages and nearly nightly dreams of you, I had to make another attempt. I never forgot you, never stopped loving you. Not for one minute. I still stare at the moon, name its phases and hope you are looking in on me from time to time. I'm astounded by fates sense of timing, I'm amazed at how a stretch of time that once seemed eternal can matter almost nothing in the face of now. Did I mention that I miss you? Not even in the “when-can-I see-you-again-I’m-gonna-die” sense, but your absence is keenly felt.


Me.