I love you in a space and time like no other. You are older. I am younger. Does it matter? I dress for you. I laugh for you. I smile for you. You’re a thousand miles away. You’re living a different life. My life is elsewhere. You see, I’m not coping again which is why I am writing to you. I need you now, or, rather I need your memory. In my memory you are as clear as day to me. You are as beautiful as a river on a summer day, your smile is gorgeous. You’re so attentive and giving but you were always like that anyway, even when I met you. I know absolutely nothing about you, only that you are the one man in my life that I love and adore completely, completely, completely. I can’t get you out of my head.
We haven’t spoken in decades but you are the fire in my lungs, the fire in my heart, the fire in my head. You’re looking at her like you looked at me once. Now I’m old. Are you still only attracted to girls?
I haven’t been on the dating scene for years. Had no love affairs. No one else will ever compare to the dream of you. I had both dream and reality. For a time, my life was beautiful because you were in it. You know just how much truth there is in that. You have studied abroad.
You were a complex man when I knew you then as a young and smitten girl. Complicated man I fell in love with you. Perhaps I wasn’t good enough to you. I should have been, then perhaps I would have been your wife today. Where are you? I miss you. Poet.
Philosopher. Intellectual. Managing director. What role are you playing right now, with who are you, who is wrapping their legs around your waist right now? Who is falling for you? Who is loving you? Who are you going to take to bed tonight? I wanted you to give me everything. I was so wrong to love you. I’m sorry. We’re not even each other’s type, pale king. You’re educated. I went to no schools. I’m just the funny girl who made you laugh sometimes. I know there have been times I have embarrassed you. I’m sorry. I didn’t care what I said in front of your friends. Didn’t care what I said and how I behaved in front of your colleagues. I don’t want to talk to my anyone today. I am incommunicado. Don’t want to communicate.
You’ve been out of my life for half of my life, yet your ghost is still hanging around here like it somehow fits into my life, like you somehow belong here. So, I’m in hell again. I’m not coping, Robert.
And when I don’t cope, I reach out to men who are emotionally unavailable to me. In other words, married men. Men I know who won’t show up to shower me with gifts and love. Men are afraid of me. I laughed. Diana, an old friend (we no longer talk by the way) laughed.
But I got the joke. I can’t love. It’s impossible. I’ve tried my utmost to love. I can’t. I don’t know how. I’ve got all the conditioning for ‘traumatic incident in childhood’ and all the intelligence for the guesswork, the detective work that research requires.
My childhood and teenage years filled with an emotionally distant mother, and being sheltered and isolated from other women. I don’t want to sleep with women. I want to sleep with you. I want you to take me to bed and sleep with me. You don’t know what you’re doing to me. I remember the gifts that were exchanged as if we were lovers. Lovers!
As if you had taken me to the inner sanctum of your bedroom, and we had made love. We were never supposed to love each other. We were never even supposed to meet in the greater scheme of things. So, I write this to you. To say goodbye again to you. Jimmy’s wife found out about some of the letters I wrote to her husband. She was mad as hell.
What to do about it?
We both thought we were being discreet. She must have been going through his emails. We weren’t hiding anything from the world. Now he has to placate her, I’m only telling myself this. He is going to choose her again above me. I can’t handle anything. I do understand why I choose unavailable men. So, do you. He chose someone else a long time ago. You are the only one who understands. Understands me, Robert. You let me walk away. I walked away. You loved me so much you gave me my first nervous breakdown. It was Jimmy’s birthday. His wife threw him a surprise birthday party. And then all hell broke loose.
So, I guess I’m writing this to say goodbye to you forever, Robert.
I thought you would save me, rescue me, call me doll face, please sweetheart, yes, honey, faster, faster. You say nothing. Reply with silence. It is like a seawall. I swim into it; it grips me for a few seconds until I feel the glacial wall. Your cold heart. Your mental cruelty. You don’t love me. I’m aware of that now. I still have increase. That’s still there. The end of this, whatever it was or is follows below. I read it and I weep but I’m almost sure that it will make you smile. Everything I am is because of you. She loved him in a space and time like no other. He was older. Had seen the world.
Studied abroad. He was a complex man. Complicated. She fell in love.
He told her she was unstable. There was someone else in the picture. A beautiful daughter.
So, she loved him from afar. He inspired her for the rest of her life.
He fell in love repeatedly with other women. She told herself that of course he wasn’t looking for her. He could have had her years ago. But he walked away from her little girl act. Walked towards another little girl act. Slept with her instead just because she knew reality from non-reality. Just because the other little girl act, she had no marks of self-harm on her body.
