"Kindred Spirits" part 2

         It’s been over three weeks since I left my letter, my former self, and the message of David on that secluded strip of beach. But it hasn’t been three weeks since I thought about the letter. It honestly hasn’t been hours since I last thought of it. It isn’t even my letter, but I can’t help coming back to it. Part of me blames it. It broke my heart, that much I know. It also gave me a fractional piece of hope. I wish I could rid myself of this hope that hangs around me. I’m afraid my hope for David will eventually trickle into a hope for myself. I think I’d prefer to be allowed to completely give up, to never think that love will find its way to me again. That way I would know that what I had was it. That I am done. That I’d never get to experience the solitude it brought me, and I’d also never have to experience the inconsolable mess it left me in. I don’t think I have it in me to love like that again. But then there is this hope that reading the letter has given me. I was ready to move on and realize that the best I was going to be was never going to measure up to the best that we could have been.  I’d put it all in that letter and I should have just walked away, but I picked up someone elses heartbreak. 

       I sit alone in a coffee shop, determined. I’m determined to write a second letter. A letter that will allow me to erase my memories of love and those I imagine as Davids’.  It’s strange how a love I wasn’t even a part of is effecting me so deeply. I think it’s because we are both so broken. I didn’t pick up a letter about love that had gone right. I didn’t pick up a letter about a happy ever after. I picked up a letter that was unrequited. It was never meant to be read or experienced by anyone else. In that sense, it reflects the love of its writer. A love that was never returned. A love that burned on by itself. Sometimes I think that this unrequited love is one of the strongest forms of love. It goes on because of one person.  One person guarding it and ebbing it to continue. Imagine what it could do if it were shared. If the other person would realize the potential that they could be a part of. A love that had been waiting for them, a love that had been perfected and dedicated.  A love that was wanting so desperately to welcome them.  It’s also a love that requires a special attention.  It isn’t a love that is thrown about carelessly.  It’s a love that must be meticilously guarded, it can’t be exposed.  It has too much power.  Unrequited love has the power to change the  construct of an entire relationship. It has the power to shake the very foundation of a connection.  And that is why it often remains hidden, just below the surface. It’s a love that can be carried around for years, for eternity. Because sometimes the people that carry it can’t fully risk uncovering it. It’s what fuels their life, how could they leave that to uncertainity? How could they hand that over to someone who may let it slip through their fingers? I don’t know if I ever could give up a love I’d protected so fiercly. 

      These past weeks I’ve found myself searching for David. I’ve found myself looking into the eyes of strangers, just knowing that if I saw him I’d be able to sense his love, his loss. I’d be able to see it in his worn out eyes.  I’d be able to ask the questions running through my head. I’d be able to leave behind something I’m not sure I was supposed to ever see. This letter has uncovered thoughts and desires I’ve buried beneath the surface. Thoughts that were so pure and naive, they seem to have come from someone entirely seperate from the person I am today. 

       When I was younger I thought it made perfect sense that I would fall in love multiple times. I thought I’d learn and grow into the best version of myself by giving myself to other people. That way when I finally found the one I was supposed to be with, I’d be absolutely sure. I’d know that all I’d gone through was worth it.  But when I was younger I never thought that I’d give myself completely away the first try. I never thought that after it was all said and done, I’d be recieving nothing in return.  Pathetically I gave myself completely to someone who didn’t find me quite worthy of their forever. Maybe to them I was one of the stepping stones to a great love. I just wish I could have known that all along.  Though loving someone and not being loved back in the same way doesn’t feel like something you could ever prepare for. You can’t prepare for the wind being knocked out of you. Especially when they make you think all along that you are the one for them. That all they have been through was worth it to find you.  When it’s over though, you’re blindsided and it’s irreversible.  You didn’t think you were taking a risk anymore.  You were comfortable and you thought they offered you secruity. You just know that you’ll never be the same.  You’ll never love the same. And it may never make sense.  A past love may be what doesn’t allow me to love again. It may be what keeps me from ever allowing myself to truly and deeply hope like I used to. It may be what has erased the young and naive girl I used to be. A girl who was pure and believed with everything she had. A girl who could not only hear her heart but a girl who followed it. 

       Before I know it I’ve written 5 pages to David. Some in anger, some in sorrow. I’m telling him things I’m just now able to tell myself. I’m also answering some of his “what if’s” and trying to offer him some comfort. And part of me feels okay with this. Part of me knows that if I were to find this David, I would tell him everything. For no other reason than I feel like I know everything about him. It’s true that I don’t know where he grew up or what he does, but I know real things about him. I know things that I’m sure took his breath away when he admitted them with pen and paper. I know things about him that have foreced me to expose similar things about myself. I fold up my second letter for the “Kindred Spirits” mailbox and this time label it with the name David. His unrequited love may not be getting answered in the way he had hoped, but it’s getting answered by me.