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Yesterday, I was walking with a journal in my hand, and out fell a love letter. Okay, in retrospect in might not have been intended as a love letter. I’ll probably regret that mis-interpretation forever, and since Suzie and I no longer speak, there’s no chance I can even apologize for letting my heart go.
She was amazing; an intoxicating mix of brilliance, quirks, wit, and beauty. I gave a passing attempt at being realistic about the situation, then let go, the impossibility of the situation only making the falling worse. I was in love with her in the worst way, literally memorized the moment I first saw her. Suzie’s eyes were electric and bottomless, in them I saw a universe of sadness and joy, and I fall into them. We were close for a long time, and held each other in high regard. She saw me as a unique and devoted friend, though must have known she was dealing with a boy who was tortured by thoughts of infinite devotion. In the end, I think that finally pushed her away.
Back to the letter. To my delight, Suzie often wrote me while traveling, which she as part of her job, but more as part of her nomadic, restless soul. I was, in her words, the person who could best understand her surreal view of the world, the bizarre mix of comedy, delight, and horror, which she relayed to me as she flew from place to place. This letter, the one I found yesterday, was from a 6 hour layover at SEA-TAC airport. She wrote it while sipping martinis at the ‘13 Coins restaurant’, the finally to a rather demented week spent leading retarded adults on a bicycle trip in the Pacific Northwest. The letter was nothing special, really just a stream of conscious rant, but the words revealed tiny fibers of her character, the heartbeat and perceptions of a girl that broke my heart.
The letter had fallen out of a journal I was carrying, and I found myself paused in mid-journey, motionless while I re-read her words. Just as before, by the time the letter was over, and her stories were spun, I was in love with her again. How easy it was for me, how perfect she seemed. I was lost in the humor, in her way of holding life in her hands, words sneaking up on and highlighting the details that didn’t quite fit. I could also feel the letter telling me of our comfortable bond, a near-telepathic connection to a prized and distant boy, a comrade in the beautiful non-sense of it all. When I finished the letter, returning to reality, a was aware of an old feeling I had tried to forget. The searing knife of rejection had returned with me, and was pulsing in my chest. This pain had been nearly forgotten, woven into a part of me by the distractions of time.
Suzie had signed the letter "I love you, Aaron." At the time, I took this for what I wanted it to mean, and ended up with broken heart. I ever admitted to myself how truly broken it was, deferring that pain with rationalization, blame, and excuse. Now, made brave by hindsight and distance from these events, I decided to grab that knife in my chest and try to remove it. Fact is, I was in simply, blindly in love with her. And here, in my hand, was the proof that she "loved" me. Not only did I have the three simple words, etched by her hand on that stolen piece of hotel stationary. The evidence also lay in her sharing, in her knowing my character, in her embracing me as a deeply cherished friend. But, years later, without the urgency that had stricken me at the time, I realized she had never said she was IN LOVE with me. To her credit, she probably tried to make me aware she was not, but I could not hear it. I needed her love, and I was blind to the difference. That blindness may have been what drove her away. Suzie changed, turned cold, not out of a need to make me hurt, but as a defense from my poisonous desperation. I had spent so much energy wishing she would hold still, would stop dodging my feelings, and just let me love her. In the end, I was actually turning that energy into a wedge, and now she is gone, forever.
It still hurts to think about it.
All this hindsight and learning is the detailed re-telling of an instant of knowledge that came over me yesterday. As I re-read the letter, the self-aware me processed all of this, and found a peace for the blinded, suffering me of then. Clarity filled me up, indescribable in its newness, the careful words of naming to arrive hours later. Still, this new felling, though formless, had made itself known, and I drew on its wisdom. Not moments after I was aware that knife was still in my chest, I felt the knife cool. I slowly pulled it from my chest, and the long-standing wound bled ever so slightly. "Damn you, Suzie” I muttered to myself. “You broke my heart – my heart was broken, it hurt". Afterward, I felt something move inside me, the agents of healing already in action. By bringing the events to a close, I was finally free to attend to the damage. In retrospect, Suzie might have caused me to break my own heart, but I don’t think that even matters now. What does matter is that I had never admitted it, never opened up and let the pain run it's course.
It was the best, most awful feeling, As the ache and growing mingled inside me, the life
I sensed a glimmer of hope. Maybe – hopefully - my heart can be repaired.
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