36 Letters, 3 Poems, 2 Stories

2 Stories (final part)

Sometimes when you're young and full of dreams shining like stars in your eyes, sometimes when you're listening to music about a 100 year old love, sometimes when you're 17 and in love and the cracks of your broken heart aren't fully healed yet, you cling to the hope of everlasting love. There is nothing wrong with that hope. It might just be like a vaccine that prepares you for the real heart-wrenching, pain to come.

I am old now, happy but more than that, contended. And when I open that envelope with all those letters I wrote to him, my eyes didn't swell and my heart didn't bleed. I had understood that what we shared for one year and one week was beautiful but it was not a 100 year love, it was a one year and one week love. No reason for it to not be as beautiful.

Of course, it didn't seem so beautiful when each night we would go to bed angry, frustrated and grieving. My exhilaration at his anger faded into fear. He would yell. He never struck me, never raised his hand but there was something in his eyes, a look of desperate hatred that scared me. It would be over in less than an hour, he would crumple into someone smaller, enshrouded in misery. The look of desperate hatred was replaced by only desperation and despondence. It was a new side of him. For me, even before we vowed a love that would last 100 years but only lasted one year and one week, he was never angry. Disturbed, hurt, broken maybe but not angry.

"You bitch!" he said. For the third time ever, this was followed by 7 seconds of silence and his sobs of utter agony. The agony was mine. I asked him to listen to me because I was always listening and sometimes it became very hard to forget what I heard. I asked him to talk to me, talk about his light because all he talked about was dark. I asked him to start again, we could try again, re-build what was crumbling. I didn't ask him to read anything. He didn't answer anyway.

I was confused. The most honest emotion I felt was confusion. I felt summer, like his love and affection, his warm smiles. I felt winter, like his cold, hating eyes, his mocking sneers.

I wrote a story, finally. When a year had passed and one week remained. I wrote a story that began with my hands in his hair and gently, very gently caressing his cheeks. I loved him as much as I had wanted to love him in those 100 years. I spent a life time with him, under the sunshine, dancing in the rain, smiling, crying, and sometimes being afraid, mostly being loved. I poured as much love, bled as much as I could at 17 and then I said goodbye. I kissed him slowly, softly. I let him say goodbye.

He raged on for months. I let him hear me say goodbye. The biggest lie would be to say that it was easy, for him or for me. Saying goodbye was more than a letter, a poem or a story, it was like ripping a piece of your soul out with exaggerated slowness so that you felt it going from being a part of you to not being one. I didn't send him the story, I didn't ask him to read it. One reason was that he had said he didn't like stories where the guy and the girl didn't even end up together. Another was that I needed his storms to end. I needed him calm, like a clear spotless sky before he heard my final goodbye. Maybe I was selfish. Maybe I was.

"I said goodbye, while his warmth was just fading from my finger tips. I said goodbye when his eyes were still closed, living in the moment half a minute in the past. I said goodbye when he had read my poems and cried to them. I said goodbye when I could love him, always love him, love him for a 100 years in memories both good and bad. He said goodbye while a faint hint of a smile still remained on his lips. He said goodbye when the storm, the hurricane, the rage, the anger, the hatred inside him had subsided. He said goodbye when he had read my poems and cried to them. He said goodbye when he could love me for 100 years without hating me, without wanting me. We said goodbye because we had lived not 100 years but 36 letter, 3 poems and a story." I had written, he finally read.

He never got to read the second story, though. I only just finished it.