My love,

This began as a story. A story of us. A way for me to get it all out and rationalize what I am feeling. A way to combat the sleepless, longing and lonely nights without you in my arms. Then I realized it’s just too personal and I realized it isn’t a story, it’s a letter. A letter to you. To the man that I have come to know and come to love and come to need. I have to write this. I have to write this because I know that what we have can’t be sustained. I know that what we have will fade and tatter and slowly flutter away because the odds are stacked against us. The world doesn’t want this for us. And deep down, in places we don’t talk about at parties, we don’t want this for us. But there is a place in my heart, a place so deep in my soul that no one before and no one after will ever know but you, that I want this. So our story is now a letter; a love letter, to you. I’ve never written one like it before. I’ll never write another like it again.

There are moments. And then there are moments. You never know where you’ll be when lightning strikes and you can never be prepared for it. As a young girl I grew up watching Rom Coms; Julia Roberts being swept off her feet by a bazillionaire, saved from a torrid life on the streets, Meg Ryan hiding in a closet listening to talk radio and being rescued by Tom Hanks on top of the Empire State Building. These movies. These fantasies. They aren’t reality. I’m 41. I’ve never danced in the rain while Frank Sinatra sang in the background. I’ve never had a secret rendezvous on a mega yacht or a skyscraper or even a house in the suburbs for that matter. To put it quite bluntly, I’ve never been swept off my feet. When I was a little girl my mom didn’t lock me in my closet when I was bad and I didn’t have to fantasize that Prince Charming would come charging in, arm raised to rescue me. In fact, when the time came for us to have the “talk”, you know the one about birds and bees and the fact that a stork didn’t actually drop me on my expectant parents doorstep one night, my mom simply said this, “honey, sex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be”. Now that is parenting at it’s finest. And that my darling, left a lasting impression.

So, I grew up. Watching tv, watching movies, listening to power ballads about love and loss, living in reality but hoping in secret fantasy. Desperately wishing that one day Prince Charming would come rescue me. Day dreaming about boys and a life less than ordinary while keeping my feet on the ground and my eyes on the prize. I’ve never been one to settle. I’m goal-oriented, I’m practical. And yet, when it came to love, I was a disaster. I always found myself falling hard and fast for the first person that gave me any attention. I always settled. Tell me you love me. Tell me fast. Or else I’ll lose interest. And I remember, I remember so clearly that feeling when I got what I wanted. It was so empty. It was so shallow. I had broken another one down. I had gotten what I wanted and I was out. There were no fireworks. There was no tingling sensation in the pit of my stomach. There was no flutter in my heart. There was no stirring in my soul.

Now, to be fair, I’m an antsy individual. ADHD to a fault. I can’t sit still. I’m fidgety, I’m on edge, I’m constantly in motion and on the go. I don’t sleep for more than two to three hours a night. I always laugh it off and say, ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead’, but deep down I’d kill for a solid eight-hours. Deep down I wish I could shut my mind off, I wish I could just relax. Even in my writing I’m all over the place, stream of consciousness…Jack Kerouac and Burroughs watch out, ‘cause you got competition from this girl. See what I mean? There I go again… Anyway, I had this storm raging inside me. This duality. I was this level, grounded, focused, and driven person to the outside world, but on the inside, on the inside I was a tumult of emotion and desire. A tossing and turning sea of wants and needs and dreams. I’d lay awake at night and have the most epic adventures. Pirates. Monsters under my bed. Bad guys who needed thwarted. Secret plots to overthrow the government. Distant shores. Love that left me speechless. Each night was a new story and a new chance at feeling alive. Sometimes, if I liked the plot-line I had created enough I could keep a fantasy going for days, even weeks. Usually these tales involved stolen moments and secret kisses. Kissing that involved someone grabbing my face with both hands and breathing me in. Kissing that made my stomach flip and my hands tingle. Kissing that left me breathless and wanting more. Always. Wanting. More. It was a song on the wind, Elvis Costello’s She and some guy who said “this is you babe, this is what you make me feel”,

She may be love that cannot hope to last, may come to me from shadows in the past, that I’ll remember till the day I die. The meaning of my life is she.

It was always some guy who just drank me in. Saw me in my entirety. And as I waited, and hoped, and dreamed, I became more and more jaded.

I didn’t get that. I got fists and anger and rage. I got accusations and jealousy and judgment. I got demands and ultimatums and truths I didn’t want to hear. I got stifled. I got put down. I got let down. I got jaded. And so I hardened myself to the world. I hardened myself to love. I stopped believing. I stopped dreaming. I stopped hoping. I stopped wishing. I stopped feeling. I settled. I picked guys who didn’t use their fists to wear me down. Who didn’t make my life difficult. I settled time and time again for men who thought they loved me and I’m sure did, in their own way. But deep down, I had given up. I had given up hope and I had given up my dreams. Somewhere, way back when, the little girl who dreamt of a love that the moon and the stars would lie down and be still for, stopped dreaming.

Then I met you. And baby, that little girl came alive. All of a sudden. All at once. Screaming and beating on the walls of my psyche to be set free and let go. Open to possibility. Wanting beyond what I ever thought was possible to desire. Begging me to let you in and let her have a chance. A chance at a life. A chance at a life less than ordinary. A life of kisses that left her wanting. A life of being seen and heard and loved so completely and so thoroughly that there are moments when she is left breathless and stunned and so completely overwhelmed that she can’t move. And so I did, I let you in and I let her out. You have awakened in me something I never thought was possible. You are that dream. You have renewed my faith for all the little girls led astray by life and movies and music. You have shown me that there is such a thing as wild abandon and fantasy.

So you see my love,  I needed to tell you. I needed to let you know, that despite what happens, despite the fact that I know this will end. That you have saved me. That you have opened my heart and my soul to a set of possibilities and wonders I long ago stopped believing existed.

Thank you.

I love you. Very simply. Very true.