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Love Letters

© Brenda - circa 1998

This is an essay I wrote in the fall of 1998. It was a particularly strange time for me…I was on a self-imposed hiatus from relationships that had begun in late 1996. It was unusual for me to be without a boyfriend, but after a heartbreaking “relationship” that ended with me realizing I was the only one in it, I decided to take some time off. Started smoking, drank too much, and rambled on with some pretty bad poetry. Born out of this period was the essay, which led to my one and only endeavor in a writing group. This essay appears in the only issue we ever published (self-published)…Lush. I have done some minor editing but it exists here pretty much the way it did then. Cynical but yet unwilling to give up on love, what follows is the truest barometer of exactly how I was feeling at the time – my first step into SUW-hood. I hope you enjoy.

“Love Letters”

I take off in the car, not knowing where I am going exactly, not particularly caring. First stop – I buy some cigarettes even though I am quitting the next day. That’s the plan: one more pack before I do. One more drink for the road. One more kiss before you leave. One more dance and then we can go. Why is it that we always want one more before it’s all over, when what we really want is never having it end?

The radio sings to me, lulls me into a state of auto-pilot. A well-turned phrase that might pass me by during daylight’s harsh reality while rushing here and leaving to go someplace else, always hurrying. One more place to go. The words jolt me back into the here and now and I adjust the volume slightly. The sound seems to be invading my reverie, and for the moment, I’d like the peace of not having to think about anything so that my thoughts can finally come.

Down the street from my parents’ house lives an old lady who stands outside in her bathrobe every afternoon until very late, when she should be sitting down to dinner with her family. They are long gone and so she is alone, positioned out there to remind us of something we can’t forget because we never knew. She points her finger in a menacing, unforgiving fashion at each car that passes. “Slow down, it will all be gone before you know it.” In her outward appearance of foolishness and senility, she personifies the wisdom of having learned a lesson a bit too late. I want that knowledge – crave it, in fact – but I’d rather die than have to live with knowing it. Always desiring what I cannot have and then tossing it aside when I get it: human nature or merely habitual mental self-preservation? We are never satisfied in order to keep ourselves going.

The copyright of the article Love Letters in Single Urban Women is owned by Brenda - circa 1998. Permission to republish Love Letters in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.