Writing Letters To My Love

Letter Thirty

You said you'd leave with me.

My Love,

I have proposed we just run away or go on an adventure or road trip multiple times and you have always shut me down. I told you the other day that I was going to Thailand as soon as I got the opportunity and you said you'd go with me.

At first I didn't believe it and then after a while I was really, really excited and I actually imagined being with you on the other side of the world for a few brief moments. I smiled like an idiot and my whole demeanour changed from glum to radiating blissful happiness. I'd go with you in a heartbeat.

You said something I never expected you to say and it filled me with incomprehensible joy. For the first day or so.

After I thought about it, I mean really thought about it I realised that I wanted to embark on this journey alone and be by myself for a little while, kind of like a life away from life. It is not that I didn't want you there; it was that I wanted you there with every fibre of my being and that was the problem. I depend on you and I can't imagine existing if you don't co-exist with me. I wouldn't call it parasitism, more like we're in a mutual relationship where the one benefits from the other and I just want to break away from that. I know that love is losing yourself in one another and then finding yourself in one another, but how can I find myself in you if I don't even know who I am all on my own, first.

I never told you that I would prefer going without you, because quite honestly I highly doubted that your word of going with me would ever amount up to much. I know it is a horrible thing of me to say, but you are a creature of habit, you like your safety net and you don't like taking risks and that is why I question if you will indeed actually go with me when the time comes. I want to believe you would though. I hope that with all of my heart that you actually meant it when you said that you'd go to Thailand with me.

There is also another reason why I don't want you to come with. The reason is that I don't plan on ever returning to South Africa for longer than three months at a time, I plan on travelling anywhere and everywhere and not stopping. I want to do that for the rest of my life and I doubt you want the same. I want to volunteer and live really basic and that is not a life you want.

Travelling with you would mean the world to me, but I can't expect you to travel with me if I'm not planning on settling afterwards where you want to be. I don't plan on settling anywhere and you need that. I can't expect you to make sacrifices for me if I'm not prepared to do the same for you.

You mean the world to me, but I need to discover a world outside of you.