A recent assignment for my Expository Writing class was to find a really great e-mail we wrote and share it with the class. I keep almost all the e-mails I send, so I have archives dating back to 1997.
In May 1999, I started dating Rebekah. I had just finished my first year of college at AACC and an internship at WHFS. Things were beginning to feel right. For the previous two years, I had been involved with a girl named Maura I had met over the Internet. That relationship just couldn't compete with what I foresaw having with Rebekah, so I sent the following e-mail to Maura:
Maura -
For weeks before your birthday I tried to write a story. I tried to write a story about us: how we met, how our relationship grew and overcame bumps along the road. I couldn't finish that story and I still can't now. The end of that story is something that I don't want to realize, but I'm going to have to now. Maura, we aren't what we once were. I hardly talk to you anymore, and when I do our conversations are short, forced, and unenthusiastic. I haven't stopped loving you and I never will. But it's a different love. I love you as a friend, as someone that helped to shape me into the person I am today. You'll always be a part of me, because you helped me become me, the person that is writing to you today.
I've tried to wait for you, for you to want me. I can't anymore. There is someone in my life now that wants me, that adores me, and I can't and I won't hold back my feelings for her. I'm falling in love with her and I can't keep letting you think that you still have me within finger tips reach. I'm sorry, I can't keep fighting to break down that wall.
If this is good bye, so be it. That's not what I want. I want to go on being your friend, someone that you can rely on, as I always have been. I don't want to be cut off anymore. I still want to be a part of your life, but a different part, the part of a friend. I'll always be here for you, you know that.
If we don't talk again soon, I wish you luck next year at [school] and wherever you go beyond that, in whatever you do.
Tim
Excuse the cliché Let's just be friends.
That really is what I wanted, but it never panned out. In all the time we were involved, we never met and I never saw a picture of her. She attends college in Massachusetts now and when I last visited my sister, I tried to get in touch with her, but she never got back to me.
Maura has the greatest phone voice. Very innocent--soft and sweet. I was really good at making her laugh. When I got too sarcastic she'd ask me Are you talking?
in such a way that I could hear her smile over the phone. I miss that.
I got the following e-mail in response to the one I sent her. It's one of the best e-mails I've ever read.
Tim,
I think you know as well as I do that your e-mail is more or less you straightening out your own thoughts. I don't need the "friend" talkdown, but I do appreciate you trying. Honestly, I never expected you to wait...and I think I've always been pretty blatant about telling you not to waste your time on me.
I never thought you were within fingertips' range of me...if I believed that - things would be much less complicated than they ever were. But...I do envy you...for being unabashedly emotional - unafraid to love, anxious to feel. I feel as though I've become a shell of my former self. My passion has been filtered into politics and music while my soul has suffered and my heart has become obscured by this supposedly inherent strength. I never meant to hurt you as a result of my fear. I never meant to hurt you because I couldn't deal with someone loving me when I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror. I never meant to hurt you - period.
I'm getting some of my writing published relatively soon with the constant prodding of Ms. Bryson. I'm also joining a band in Massachusetts while I'm up there with my amazing guitarist friend, Ryan. I think it's a step for me - sharing my writing and my music. Before you know it, I'll be opening up a bit more. I attribute a great deal of the progress (no matter how small it may seem) to you. It just saddens me that you'll only really see who I was and how I felt during our relationship on paper. That definitely was not fair of me, and I apologize completely for my total lack of regard for you.
But...I am truly happy for you and for that girl of yours. You've always deserved more than what I could have ever given you, and I'm almost giddy over this new relationship of yours.
You will be successful in life, Tim. Regardless of what your father says, regardless of what your mother does, regardless of the trials you face and the tribulations you endure - you will succeed. I have full faith in you, and one day I know I will look back and smile when I read your name in the newspaper and toy with the thought that someone so strong and persistent could care about a stompy, little brat such as myself. ;)
I've appreciated every word of encouragement...every phone call...every "I love you"...every cyber-*hug*...every conversation...every laugh...every "grrr"...every everything.
You're an amazing man - the only one I ever let see through me. I'm just sorry that I wasn't who/how you would have liked me to have been. It was the most painful and beautiful time of my life, and, for that, I thank you.
My love,
Maura
She followed her dreams and it looks like she'll be graduating this May with a Pre-Vet degree from the Honors college of a very prestigious university. Congrats, Maura.
