LETTER TO THE LOVE OF MY LIFE
Dear Love of my Life,
I hope this letter gets to you, not when I am dead and buried and lost in the sands of time. I hope in the not too distant future, a future I’ll feature in and would be happy in equal measure, that you read this letter and swell with pride or tears or anger or whatever emotion you deem fit for this. This letter, I hope, would be the first of many more letters I would be writing to you because you know.
Oh, you actually don’t know anything about me. And you will, soon enough. Maybe by the time you read this letter, I would be languishing somewhere in an obscure part of the world, struggling to live each day outside my cave. Maybe when you finally see this letter, you might have found the love of your life who isn’t me, obviously, and who makes your world swell while the person I’ll be spending my life with would be in constant regret. Maybe, too, there would actually be no maybes, and we will fall recklessly in love with each other, laughing at stupid things and raising our children…I hope you like children ’cause I love them…when they all grown and don’t have to disturb me with cries for something when they can just open their damn mouth to speak.
I write you these series of letters because I am tired of waiting for you to come. Or for me to find you. I am slowly losing belief in love and all the bullshit emotions. Love hasn’t treated me fairly. And to be frank, I haven’t managed it reasonably either. I am scared, love. I am terrified of falling in love again. So afraid that I always run away whenever the dawn of a woman’s love approaches me. I am not ready for a relationship, I tell them. They pretend like they understand, but they don’t. I know they don’t. I am scared shitless of having my heart housed in the palm of another, even though my own palm quakes too much for the heart to settle; I just don’t trust anyone to hold this fragile heart, making me love them in a million ways. They’ll break it, and I’ll find every piece of my fucking heart in every corner of the world, on every fucking face I see, and I won’t be able to unlove them no matter how hard I try.
Love, I have loved and loved with all that I have. I have given up myself for something I believed in, only for that same thing to turn and declare me unholy. I became pagan to her love. I tried again, after grieving for two years, to fall into the arms of another. But I fell into an arm occupied by another man. And even though I loved it there, in her arms, I wanted all of the space. I wanted her whole, not a part of her. She would not understand why I was always lying still whenever we finished making love. She thinks I am thinking about something profound. No. Never was. I think of how the bed was too small to contain all the love I had to give and how I was unable to spread that love like a film of paint on an ocean. How I was restricted by morals and society and the other person on the other side of her palm.
Love, loving a person in part when you want to love them in full, is the hardest part of loving. It sucks the energy out of you, but somehow you remain because there’s no other place safe enough to protect you from the war inside your body. So, there I stayed, restrained, unable to kiss her hand in public or stare into her eyes in the middle of a random conversation. There I was, ever watching over my shoulder for any clues that would give me away, my aching love, and want for every hair on her body. I was too afraid to hug her and tap her gently in her ass and say; you are my religion; I have faith in your love. No, I could not, and it sucked.
Dear love of my life, I have always believed I am a good man. And maybe I am. But recently, I don’t think I am such a person anymore. If I am that good, why do I feel lonely? Why do I feel like the water is drowning me, and I can’t escape because I love the water? Why do I not run away from the ocean even though the sea graves me every time I get close? Why am I here, allowing the current sweep me off my feet and leave me aching on my back? Love, why the hell am I still waiting for love? Why do I feel like I deserve to be loved, and loved fucking fiercely? I am not a good man. Good men are loved. Good men have women they call when the fire rages. Good men have bodies outside theirs where they run to for refuge, bodies that run to them for safety. Good men are loved and love. I am not a good man. And it sucks.
Love, I should be somewhere doing something productive. Maybe writing a series for TV or writing a book or looking for gigs on Fiverr because I am dead broke and I don’t know what to do and I don’t think I am good enough for anything useful, but here I am, writing to you; writing a letter, you might never read. Would I ever find you, love of my life? Will our paths ever cross? Will you like the twinkle in my eyes on the first day we meet? Will you find me funny and smart and a good & bad feminist? Would you think I am stupid for wanting women to be free? Love, would you even love me the way I love you?
I find myself writing about people I will never meet. I am tired of waiting for love to happen. Sometimes, in the comfort of darkness, in the absence of laughter, I conjure images of my second lover, the one whose house was too occupied to allow me to love her whole. I conjure images of how she kisses me whenever she wanted me to go down on her. She was not a good kisser. Not like the first one. The first woman I loved…boy! I’ll tell you about her one day. She is the epitome of heaven in human flesh. She reminds me of what god looks like. She kisses so well you would think our lips were Siamese twins. They fit so perfectly. And her lips were soft. They tasted like honey. You don’t rush honey, you take it slowly. You take in every sweetness with precision, else you’ll miss the honey pot. She was everything I wanted life to be like. But she broke me, like everything in life does. But I am hoping you don’t break me because, you know, you are the love of my life, and I want to live for quite a long time.
So, back to my darkness companion and me. I often stir images of her and masturbate to them. Weird? Not really.