Dear S,
So much of me is you. I am made of all the assignments you proofread, all the things I write that you quote at me, and all the times I sang Govinda lyrics to you. Most of all I am the words you gave me. I used to wonder if someone can know a person better than they know themselves. That was before I met you. Last week you told me about ‘rescue distance’ and changed how I understood myself.
Before that, you gave me Wild. Like parents buy things for children on a whim. I have hugged that book so often. Cheryl, with her shit childhood, impulsive life decisions, and crushing mother issues, gave me so much hope by just being hopeful. She said “Strayed: to wander from the proper path, to deviate from the direct course, to be lost, to become wild, to be without a mother or father, to be without a home, to move about aimlessly in search of something, to diverge or digress. I had diverged, digressed, wandered, and become wild. I saw the power of the darkness. Saw that, in fact, I had strayed and that I was a stray and that from the wild places my straying had brought me, I knew things I couldn’t have known before.” Now every time my wildflower peeks out of hiding, I tell myself to hang in there, to count the things this straying has got me. Thank you for her words.
I have got something for you too. The world through what Arundhati Roy wrote for us.
“It was possible for Tilo and Musa to have this strange conversation about a third loved one because they were concurrently sweethearts and ex‑sweethearts, lovers and ex‑lovers, siblings and ex‑siblings, classmates and ex‑classmates. Because they trusted each other so peculiarly that they knew, even if they were hurt by it, that whoever it was that the other person loved had to be worth loving. In matters of the heart, they had a virtual forest of safety nets.”
So dear, sweetheart and ex-sweetheart, I love you, deeply.
P