A love letter

Paris, 3rd of June, 2023

This is a love letter. A love letter that you’ll never read. It’s a letter meant for you, that I’m really writing for me, for someone else to read about us. Yes, we’re complicated that way.

Where does one even start with love letters? It can’t be from the first time I met you; I simply have no recollection of it. Maybe from the last time I saw you -  standing by the veranda when time left a trail of soft wrinkles beneath your eyes. I hate those days, the days when time feels heavy, like an impending storm waiting to erupt, until eventually the downpour of tears finishes me off and sends me to sleep - the only way to numb me from our goodbyes.

Separating from you was my first real pain. Maybe the only real pain. As if everything else is just a variation of when I first lost you and that my life’s mission is this: to learn to live beyond you, beyond us. Beyond the constant destruction and rebirth I go through with every new chapter we write. 

But is there really life beyond this maze? I’ve come to believe our relationship is my life’s labyrinthe. I may discover new turns, new steps, and maybe even hidden arches but I don’t think I’ll ever find an exit, a world beyond the constant tugging and pulling between you and me. Isn’t this what birthed me anyway? 

I remember how terror engulfed me when I’d wake up and you’d be gone. I saw only darkness. I lost myself when we went from a two to a one, from a group to a fragment. I was like sand passing through one’s fingers or sugar dissolving into water. Only the intensity of my anguish could pull me out of that state. And then, I’d bump into you, going about your day and the mundaneness of our routine would soften my fears. You would remind me to finish the food you’d left by the counter and to not forget our appointment at five. 

It’s funny, I've spent most of my life running away from you, from being your puppet, your plaything, your projection. And yet, I’ve been running just as hard towards you - towards your love, your laughter, your life force. It’s all so messy isn’t it? Perhaps that's why the Gods keep extending our lifespan, as if they're rooting for us, hoping that if they give us just a bit more time, we’ll work it out, we’ll learn to live in life’s beautiful mess, but mostly we’ll learn to find peace in love.  

Love and peace were not words that came together for me. Not initially at least. Not when it came to you and I.

It used to be our fights that separated us; now it’s an ocean - an ocean that breeds longing between us.  

And like the tumult of waves, I’m trying to figure out how to stay alive without you, how to keep myself afloat. Is it possible? Is it even worth it? I’m not sure I want to discover what my days hold without you, without your gentle caress through my hair, without your hand wrapped around mine. 

You know, I’ve never watched the movie Bambi beyond the moment when his mother dies. In fact, I’ve even refused to write the word ‘die’ in my first draft of this letter, my fingers typed the word ‘days’ instead. Are Freudian slips a thing for writers too?

We are apart, and yet, you’re always with me  - you’re in the comfy socks you bought me so I wouldn’t feel cold in my first winter alone, you’re in the way I fold and tuck my pajamas so they won’t crease anymore, as if those routine habits, your routine habits, bring you closer to me, to the little terrible duo we once were. 

We are apart, and yet, you’re always in me - in the beauty mark on my hip, in my petite frame that makes others ask me twice if I don’t want any seconds. You’re in the critical thoughts I have, that berate my every existence. You’re in the love I know that breathes life into my days. 

This is a love letter to you, Mum.

They say our greatest loves are messy - they run hot, impossible to leave while impossible to be with. If one of us has to blow up, I’d rather it be me, because life without you is just a dark screen, like the end of a movie.  

Please, give me time to stumble and fall a few more times in my attempts to conquer the impossible. It’s as if the words ‘thank you’ are too big for my mouth or maybe it is your ears that are too small for them. Too small to wrap themselves around the magnitude of what those words mean when I say them to you.

Because if you knew, if you opened yourself to them, everything you’ve always told yourself would stop making sense.

You see, it would be cataclysmic. Like the first mouthful after discovering salt when taste explodes in your palate. 

Yes, maybe that day you would stop only eating leftovers, whilst you serve us freshly cooked food; you would stop silencing your own voice, whilst the world craves more of your originality. 

Yes, on that day, when love and light envelop you, and I finally learn how to package my ‘thank you’ to you, I would tear open. Like the day I stopped believing in God or the day I grasped how truly fragile you can feel. You would hear a crack like a coconut slicing open from a fall. How sweet it would taste. 

I’m not yet ready to learn to live without you. I’m not yet ready to face my guilt, to bear my sorrow. But luckily I don’t have to do it all at once. Hopefully, you’ll want to stick around at the end of the line, just for one more story. 

Mum, will you just pick up the phone? I miss you.