Dearest Sam,
A long time ago you told me you’d never ask questions because you only wanted me to offer what I felt comfortable sharing. That was a couple of years after my convoluted sobs in your darkened bedroom the night before graduation, when you told me the past was past and you were falling for the me of the present. But it was before you understood quite how dreadfully I didn’t want to visit my hometown, or to play cards with your family, or stay in a Travelodge on our way to Scotland.
We’d moved in together and I was sobbing to an NHS counsellor once a week and curling into disproportionate foetal rebellion whenever my car broke down or someone said something shitty at work. I was trudging through a thicket of depression. You were kind to me. You didn’t always understand me, but you wrapped me in your arms and made much of my world better. But still I thought you’d leave if you knew the truth. Still I imagined you’d pack your bags if I admitted to waking beside you from dreams in which my mouth sought Matthew’s, or if you discovered the thoughts I sometimes had about losing my mind. You said you loved me, but I wondered what kind of love could survive my absurd psyche.
On a brave day, though, I wrote you a letter. I tried to tell you everything: all the miserable details, all the sordid, cringe-worthy secrets. I wanted you to know inside my head. I hoped you might arrive with shining armour to tackle my demons, but deep down I expected you to run. That letter was a dozen pages long. I left it on your keyboard and went to work.
Your response was simple. A hand-written note by the kettle. You said you worried I liked drama and you feared I would hurt myself, but you never expressed shock, never called me bad. You folded me back inside our cosy relationship as if I hadn’t just told you things that would make your mother stop inviting me for Sunday lunch. You cooked me dinner and we started the next series of The West Wing. You didn’t care.
You didn’t care!
Today I sit in my chilly attic office with a blanket around my shoulders and the cup of tea you’ve just brought me. The diaries I scrawled so earnestly in a decade ago sit on a bookshelf up here, but the photos I’ve pinned to the walls, the anthologies stacked up high, the scattered save-the-date stickers and the endless Post-it notes attest to my present eclipsing my past. I don’t know how you saw through the frightened and confused girl you met in 2005, how you continued to look beyond the depressed and disturbed girlfriend you found yourself living with from 2007. But somehow you did. Through some sixth sense or superhuman power, you knew the woman I’d become and knew she’d be the one you’d love. Well, finally, I’ve caught up; I’ve got to know her too. A month ago, wearing an Alice-in-Wonderland dress and bright red shoes, she stood before you and vowed to be your wife. And, in the simplest possible way, it made her very happy.
Nat