To: yikes!izzy
Date: Wednesday, March 7—8:57 PM
Subject: imperfect words
Dear Isabel,
I’ve been sitting in front of this computer for half an hour, trying to find the perfect first sentence for this note to you. But as you can see, I didn’t find it. There are too many things in the way of the words, too many conflicting feelings, and there is no way to articulate what I want you to hear. But I guess I can start by saying I love you. And yes, there may also be the fact that I’m in love with you, but that seems so irrelevant now. It seems like such a small, meaningless thing. That’s not the kind of love you need right now. You need something bigger. Because in some ways, being in love with someone is a very selfish kind of love. It demands something of them, doesn’t it? It requires some sort of reciprocation, a kind of emotional contract. You tell someone you’re in love with them, and you expect something in return. And if the feeling is not matched, then you have a problem. Because you still have this expectation, this hole to be filled, and you’re convinced that the other person is the only one who can fill it. But they’re telling you that they can’t, that they’re not even going to try, but you still have this hole inside you, this place you’ve made to hold another person, and you can’t just make it go away. So you end up hating this person you’re in love with, because you need them in order to be whole, and their saying no feels like they’re ripping out that piece of you. Every time you think of them, it’s like they’re ripping it out over and over and over.
I’m not quite sure where I meant to go with that. Basically, I wanted to say that the kind of love I want to give you right now is the kind without any of those expectations. I don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything, that you need to act a certain way, that you need to pretend things are fine if they aren’t. I’m just going to love you, and hopefully some of it flies off of this island and over the water and finds its way to you. Hopefully it finds somewhere cozy inside you to hang out for a while and keep you company. Hopefully you know it is there and it makes things a little more bearable.
There are more things to say, but they can wait.
Love,
Connor