(Love) Letters

While I was writing in my new "Memory Book," I went looking for a paper I wrote sophomore year because it had some things I wanted to include. While looking for the paper, I uncovered a bunch of letters from my ex boyfriend.

I started reading.

I feel like, being the same age as he was when he wrote them, I understand him and our relationship (just as friends, not even as we were dating) a lot better. He wasn't liked by very many people. He was abrasive. He was actually sort of pitiful. He complained a lot and he was kind of a smartass. But he confided things in me that he didn't tell anyone else because he didn't trust anyone else like he trusted me. He asked my advice, and he shared his thoughts with me. I looked up to him and I was kind of amazed that he was even interested in me. I've said this before, but I think he needed me a LOT more than I needed him. I didn't understand why he was so attached to me before, but now I see that he needed someone, and I happened to be there, and we happened to "click". He wrote me letters just about what he was thinking, and I read them and responded well, which I guess was kind of unique. I'm so passive and accepting (and I was even moreso during freshman year than I am today), I didn't have a problem with him at all. He entertained me, I was fond of his "quirks".

I call what I have in my box love letters, although other people might not define them as such. I think he loved that I would listen and appreciate his opinion, and was in love with the idea of having someone--maybe not so much in love with me. Maybe he was in love with me for being willing to be with him. I don't think now that I was in love with him, although I thought it then. That love was different, SO different from what I have now. It was thrilling, because in a way, it was forbidden and taboo. It was wistful and yearning--rather like Romeo and Juliet. I remember reading New Moon a few months after we split, and connecting with Bella. The passage that struck me most was when SHE was thinking about Romeo and Juliet: "What if Paris was Juliet's best friend? What if Romeo wasn't coming back? Could Juliet be happy with Paris? Could she learn to love him, in a different way than she loved Romeo?"

I hate comparing my life to that now, because I'm SO happy now--Michael is in NO way my second choice. He's absolutely perfectly right for me. The love I feel right now is so concrete I can't imagine anything else. Maybe it's just because this relationship is accepted and approved, not hidden. Like in A Walk to Remeber, "Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful."It's not a roller coaster of emotion like what I had before. It's so different, and so much better.

But I'm not bitter. Those letters are all that's left of that relationship, which helped me grow up a LOT. And I don't miss it. I just think it's good to remember. And to understand.