Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Not a love letter

And so again, I write about you. I wouldn't have, if only I haven't been reading books that reminded me so much about you and so much about myself when I fell in love with you.

But I did promise never to write you a letter again, let alone a love letter. And I barely have 5 minutes to do this; else, I'd wake up tomorrow being reminded of all those moments I've poured through the pages of my books, weeping silently for I have known what it must've felt to love hopelessly, and be aware that I knew simply because I once knew you. And for that reason alone, tomorrow, I'm gonna wanna worship you, and build you a statue made out of whatever words I will write here. That's not gonna happen.

Because if people were rain, yes, I was drizzle, but you were never a hurricane.

Although I did send you a message tonight. I'd been meaning to since last night. I ended up sending it to a couple of friends, but it was originally meant for you, wherein I quoted John Green's Miles Halter in one of his internal monologues on death, wherein he had said that he had been irretrievably changed, and wherein I added, "Do anything, but please never die." You didn't reply - why would you? Such a random, creepy text of a former admirer asking you not to die.

But for what it's worth: Please don't. Because I'd made a promise with myself to someday, when I can write better, when I'm wiser, write a novel about you. And I don't ever want to end that non-love story with you dying, and with me moping, more than your loss, over the fact that you had gone too soon and left me not knowing you. We are young, and even though I've said a million times about how I'm no longer in love with you, I would still wanna know you. Because among all the things I do not know, I knew love. May it be considered Young Love - but who are people to say? Because when I read these things: of how many times they question themselves worthy of loving someone else, but never having to question the worthiness of the someone else, it seemed to me I had loved. Whichever of the kind it was, I had, and for that, at least, please don't die.

Besides, all my material comes from you. And that's why even if you were never a hurricane, you were still, and forever will be the event that had "irretrievably changed" me.

And all the poignant sadness, or suffering, or self-destruction that came after found shelter in the fact that there was once you; and that I once had found my "Great Perhaps."

I am 22 minutes past my stopwatch and I must stop writing now. Not because you also left me Perhapsless, but because you didn't even have to die. You just had to be you, and I just had to be me, and if love was rain, we make a very good Alabama Summer.

And for that, you don't deserve 22 minutes, not any more, at least.

* The books mentioned and sporadically quoted and cited were Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep and The Man of my Dreams, and the most recent, John Green's Looking for Alaska.

2 comments:

  1. Bravo! This was very moving. Boo to the guy. Doesn't know what he's missing.

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  2. IKR. Hahahahahahaha but even though he's no Alaska Young, I'm no Miles Halter either. Haha.

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