The Ninth Letter

Dear A,

    I did say I would write to you more often but my days have been quietly uneventful filled with the same small patterns that repeat themselves without pause or surprise and yet, I find myself wishing I could still share them with you –  every dull moment and fleeting thought – as though they might become more meaningful simply because they are told to you. Tonight, my letter might feel shorter than usual. I’ve just returned from a three-hour drive in the dark hush of early morning, hoping that exhaustion might grant me the sleep that’s been slipping further and further out of reach since the day I learned about your wedding. Still, something happened today that, although small in gesture, left a lingering weight in me, something I cannot seem to shake off, even now.

    Recently, I signed up for English classes, partly because I’ve always wanted to express myself more clearly in a language that has always felt just slightly out of reach. And perhaps if I’m honest, I simply wanted to speak with you in the language you seem most at ease with. I’ve always admired how naturally the words seem to come to you in English, how your words flowed more freely and how you seemed just a little more like yourself when you allowed that language to carry your thoughts, especially when you are upset or passionate about something. And I remember thinking how beautiful you looked whenever your guard was down like that as though something in the language allowed you to bloom a little further and I suppose I wanted to become fluent enough to be someone you could always speak that way without holding anything back. I want to be someone who understands you – fully, in any language.

    The truth is, I have tried many times over the past seven years, to be more disciplined with this goal. I would set small rules for myself, such as speaking only in English for thirty minutes each day but the habit never quite held, and I would always return to silence within a week. But this time, with you unknowingly anchoring my intention, I signed up for lessons – real ones, consistent ones, and I’m trying my best to keep the promise. I’d tested out a few tutors but none felt quite right until I met AJ. He’s patient, thoughtful, and never interrupts me, allowing me the space to find my words even when they come with awkward pauses and tangled grammar. And although his rate is a little steep for a broke college student like me, I find myself believing that he could help me grow. He encourages me gently, praises me even when I don’t believe I deserve it and reminds me, in subtle ways, of you; warm, composed, kind without effort, and professional without coldness.

     Today’s session with AJ took an unexpected turn. It began with a simple question about movies, which led me to mention Pride and Prejudice. I never really considered myself a movie person, but I picked it up again recently, long after I’d first watched it, because I remembered that it was your favourite. I can see now why it holds such a place in your heart. There’s something about the longing, the way two people can circle each other with so much restraint yet so much intensity that made me realize I am perhaps more of a hopeless romantic than I ever admitted, and that I understand you better than I thought I did. Since the movie was an adaptation of a classic novel, we then shifted to classic reads. AJ told me he preferred classic romances over modern ones and I agreed. In classics, you’re invited into the minds of the characters, into the spaces between words, where longing and fear and hesitation live. Unlike the fast-moving simplicity of many stories today, where everything is shown but rarely understood.

    When AJ asked what my favourite novel was, I surprised myself by answering with Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. I told him that I related to Werther, perhaps more than I should. With AJ, I found myself being more vulnerable than usual, maybe because he doesn’t know me at all – not my upbringing, not my circle, not even the shape of my daily life. It felt safe to speak honestly, and so I told him everything. I told him that I understood Werther in ways that others often dismissed, that I, too, once experienced the kind of unrequited love that hollows a person out from the inside. I told him that Werther, young and sheltered, likely never learned how to carry the weight of being unloved in return, and that when he met Charlotte, he was met for the first time with a world that did not bend to his hopes. I told him that love, when it blooms in someone so inexperienced, can become the entire shape of their world, and when that love ends it can feel as though life ends too.

    AJ listened carefully, and then asked me gently, “Why do you think unrequited love happens?”

    “Because they’re already with someone else.” I said which felt simple but true.

    “Do you think it becomes more desirable because it’s out of reach?” He asked.

    “It can.” I said.

    “It depends on what you do with that desire. If you feed it without question, it grows into something distorted – infatuation, obsession, something that hurts rather than heals. But it can also push you to become better, to rise to meet the space you believe they live in. Maybe we meet people not to keep them, but to learn from them. Some stay for a season, others for longer, but all of them shape us. And if love doesn’t unfold the way you hope, perhaps it’s because the gap between your worlds is still too wide. The only way to cross it is by growing, by changing.” In halting English, I told him all of this while searching for words that felt true, pausing often, but he, fortunately, understood me.

    After our session, I decided to treat myself to a movie. Funny, considering how I’d just said movies aren’t really my thing. But tonight, I wanted to do something spontaneous, something slightly out of routine. I don’t often indulge in abrupt choices, but every now and then I give in to something unplanned – a break in the rhythm just to feel like I’m still living.  So, I watched the movie and when it ended, I didn’t go home right away. Instead, without thinking too hard, I began driving again. This time toward your neighbourhood, long after midnight, under a sky heavy with moonlight. I always feel the moon is brighter there, fuller, almost as if it’s hanging lower in the sky just to be seen by you. I wish you were the kind to love the moon like I do. I wanted to ask you to take a photo of it for me. I wanted to call, but again, for what feels like the thousandth time, I held myself back. So why was I there? Why drive all that way in the dead of night, knowing you would be fast asleep, knowing full well there would be no chance of seeing you by accident or fate?

.

.

.

    “So which category do you fall into? The one who drowns in the ache or the one who turns pain into growth?” AJ had asked me earlier. And I wasn’t sure whether I was in an English class or a therapy session, but I didn’t mind.

    “I hope I belong to the latter,” I said, though my voice didn’t quite carry the conviction I wanted it to.

    “But it’s hard to look on the bright side when the one person who makes you feel at home in your own silence belongs to someone else.” I said it like it didn’t matter, but inside, it still ached.

    “That sucks.” he said, without dressing it up.

    Just that. And I think it was the first time I heard someone describe my feelings in the exact way they live inside me – not romanticized, not sugar-coated. Just…that sucks.

    “It does,” I said quietly. “and I’ve been invited to the wedding.”

    “Will you go?” he pried.

    And I sat there, in silence, not because I was hiding the answer, but because I truly didn’t have one. And in that long pause, as my silence stretched out between us, he gave a half-smile and said gently, “Oh. You’re in deep trouble.”

.

.

.

    Truth is, I still don’t know. And maybe that’s why I drove out tonight. Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to places where memories feel more alive than I do. Because I keep wishing I’ll run into you so you’ll say something that will help me know what to do with this heart that keeps waiting for a letter that may never come.

Yours,
H