Dear you,
I am not going to ask how you've been because frankly I am afraid your answer will only make me roll my eyes. What is it this time? Did someone die again? Are you sad? Are you tired? Do you have no fight left in you anymore? Do your bones ache and does your heart crack?
Rude, right? How so rude. Completely insensitive and totally uncalled for. I know. I am sorry. Up until this moment this letter had been resting rather cozily in my head, surrounded by nothing but the bittersweet aftertaste of love and loss. But now? I am amazed and surprised too. These words caught me off guard, I swear. I was going to write to you about a dream I had the other night, which you starred in, and how since then I hadn't been able to think about anything else but your touch and your lips and your hug but it all seems redundant now. No point revisiting the same old past and shedding another tear about whatever it was that we had but don't now.
Honestly though, I think I had been holding onto those words and this emotion for a while. I have written about our love, our unfortunate end and the grief that followed its death plenty times, but I have never written about this side of the story. Maybe you know my pain, but you certainly don't know my anger. And I am here to tell you that I've been pissed.
It's funny that I find myself here today, considering I finished reading this book titled The Forty Rules of Love only the day before. You'd assume that a book like that would lead someone like me to pen down another heart-wrenching story about the demise of a love that hadn't even had the chance to completely bloom yet, but here I am, writing to you instead about how angry I have been, at you, at your misgivings and your failure to keep us together. I don't think any other word could describe this last speck of sentiment I have held on to since I first met you.
I understand very well that love isn't all rainbows and unicorns. I understand very well that sometimes love needs us to be strong and patient, not only for ourselves but our partner too. I understand that nobody is perfect, we are all flawed, no two people have the same heart and that we all carry baggage in our own personalized ways and forms. But, what I don't understand is how our love managed to elude all of these definitions, all at once, towards the end? I know that we've all been taught that with love and its likes, there comes suffering and agony with no exceptions, but what I don't understand is how our love managed to carry in abundance nothing else but that?
The book is divided into five parts, each part corresponding to an element (of the universe). Earth, water, wind and fire constitute the first four sections of the book. The last one is titled The Void. It points to the things which are present through their absence. Wouldn't surprise you if I said that bit caught my attention the most, right? From the things that are solid, absorbed and still to things that are fluid, changing and unpredictable; from things that shift, evolve and challenge to things that damage, devastate and destroy-- our love had it all, didn't it? But after all this time, what's remained is your absence. You, and you alone, occupy the void in my life.
At the heart of a sulk lies a confusing mixture of intense anger and an equally intense desire not to communicate what one is angry about. The sulker both desperately needs the other person to understand and yet remains utterly committed to doing nothing to help them do so. The very need to explain forms the kernel of the insult: if the partner requires an explanation, he or she is clearly not worthy of one. We should add: it is a privilege to be the recipient of a sulk; it means the other person respects and trusts us enough to think we should understand their unspoken hurt. It is one of the odder gifts of love.
~ Alain De Botton
So, where do you think we messed up? Did I not sulk enough each time you left me disappointed and mad? Or did you sulk too much each time you chose to walk away, hoping and expecting that I'd come running to fix things between us? Did we overburden ourselves with this odder gift of love or did we not exchange it enough times? I confess-- I have been snappish, I have been utterly confused, I have been overconfident, I have been jealous and I have been difficult (at times) throughout the course of our relationship, but believe me when I say this--all of it stemmed from a place of not knowing how long you'd choose to stay and love me because you always seemed ready to leave it all behind and break my heart in an instant. I have never felt both powerful and brave but also fearful and uncertain in the same moment, just as I did when I was in love with you. How can one feel like they could do anything and be anything in this world if they had love backing them up, but also fail to do the right thing(s) or be just enough for their partner while in love with them?
Anger is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care, the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for. What we usually call anger is only what is left of its essence when we are overwhelmed by its accompanying vulnerability, when it reaches the lost surface of our mind or our body’s incapacity to hold it, or when it touches the limits of our understanding. What we name as anger is actually only the incoherent physical incapacity to sustain this deep form of care in our outer daily life; the unwillingness to be large enough and generous enough to hold what we love helplessly in our bodies or our mind with the clarity and breadth of our whole being.
~ David Whyte
Maybe I should have made my anger more apparent, and sooner. Maybe then you would have understood what I'd meant when I'd said I loved you. But it is all a thing of the past now. There's nothing that I can say or do today that will change the course of our relationship. But, in being mad at you, I also realized that somewhere deep down I'd been mad at myself all along. I guess a little bit of this anger had been spilling over the past few months out of the pot labelled you in my head, because I've found myself increasingly mad at this twisted and complex world recently.
But fret not, I have worked out a solution to this conundrum. It is this. To acknowledge an emotion as it is, not get caught up in a flight vs. fight moment and just take a minute to figure why I am feeling that way, why in that particular moment and what is it that the emotion is trying to teach me. Sounds exceptionally mature and thoughtful, right? I know. I am growing up. I am choosing to treasure within the folds of my heart our good times and bad; I am choosing to learn and forgive, both you and I.
It took me rather long to even say it out loud to myself that I deserved more and better in love. But now that I am working towards believing in that very notion, I am certain that it will lead me to a better place in my head and heart. Love is difficult, challenging and immensely time and soul consuming, but it is definitely also beautiful, amazing and worth fighting for. As I struggle each day, some days more than others, to keep pushing myself to live and be better and care for the world more than I manage to despise it (at times), I guess the love I shared with you keeps me going one way or another. It's surely presented me with ample moments of learning and taught me to be more empathetic, more accepting, more open-minded, more patient and more forgiving.
Most of the problems of the world stem from linguistic mistakes and simple misunderstandings. Don’t ever take words at face value. When you step into the zone of love, language as we know it becomes obsolete. That which cannot be put into words can only be grasped through silence.
~ Elif Shafak,The Forty Rules of Love
So I hold you close to my heart in that void now because it is always silent there. I know I have to fall back on words to emote and express in my writing but I know I need none of those worldly tools in there. That is it. Now you know too. I've been mad, and it is okay. I'll walk the length of this rickety bridge as far as I have to and complete my journey one day, a little more wiser and a little more in-love with love than before.
Until then, in the words of Charles Bukowski,
Yours falsely.