Letters to an Ex-Love

Dear Nick,

Have you ever lain alone in your bed at night, and suddenly had a feeling of such total vulnerability strike you that sitting up or lying down became a matter of life and death? No, I didn't think you had.

I've been having nightmares about the most stupid things. Like plucked eyebrows and weddings.

I had 'flu recently, for the first time in my life I missed an official exam. Strange, a year ago it would still have worried me, now I couldn't care less. Some of your free spirit must still be with me, somehow.

Funny how some things can matter for a long time. Like June 10 and July 7. I wonder if you still remember what those dates meant? Funny, too, how two short words can almost change a life.

I must end for today, the rain is pouring.

Love,
Anne

Dear Nick,

Listening to Chris de Burgh music always makes me sad, but I can't escape the beauty of it. Poetry and music draw me without fail. Poetry is something you aren't really close to, or am I wrong?

They're playing so many love songs tonight, right now it's the 'Love Theme' from 'Romeo and Juliet': 'A time for us, someday there'll be a new world, a world of shining hope for you and me, for you and me. And with our love through tears and thorns we'll endure.' Beautiful lyrics.

I am longing for school to end and life to begin. The times when I can live my poetry and my music without guilt for time not spent on homework. I wonder how many dreams come true?

Time and other things are calling.

Love,
Anne

Dear Nick,

Pouring rain always makes me long for the warmth of love. It's been pouring down for hours, good learning weather, but not tonight. History be damned!

My room needs tidying, but why bother, no-one ever sees it except myself, and I can close two eyes to things I don't want to see. I think you know that.

Tears cried because of love truly burn themselves into a little part of you. I'd never cried like that before I met you, I haven't since.You were (wait for it!) my first love. First loves are never forgotten it's said, I think that's true.

Will the rain never end? Almost like tears. People are crying, laughing, dying somewhere in the world every second of every day. Haunting.

Jane gave me the photograph she had of you. One day, when it's old, yellow and faded, and I'm hitting eighty, I'll show it to my grandchilren and say 'This was my first love' and they'll smile and think 'Granny in love!' And, sadly, I won't blame them.

I have to take five vitamin tablets a day, because I catch colds so easily. I hate them almost as much as I hate loneliness.

Enough for now.

Love,
Anne

Dear Nick,

You changed me in more ways than one. I have friends who think I'm stupid to like the music of Kiss, Nazareth and Uriah Heep. But, in a way, that's thanks to you. You made my head spin with David Bowie and Alice Cooper. I doubt I'll ever know now why the lyrics of 'Locomotive Breath' were so important that day.

Sometimes I think I share too much of the essential me with people, and it startles me when people tell me that I am difficult to get to know. I think I'm pretty transparent.

You are different. I never did learn what made you tick. Maybe I expected too much from you. Like being there to lean on, and understanding complexity.

Sometimes I regret those holidays, but not often. Usually they make me sad, to quote Tom Jones: 'Memories don't leave like people do.'

Sometimes, somehow. Words that mean much, often. I think Christine will win the bet. But I forgot, you don't know about it. Never mind.

All things end.

Love,
Anne

Dear Nick,

Have you ever been afraid of death and dying? No, they're not one and the same. Fear of death = fear of the life after; but fear of dying = fear of pain. I am not sure which is worse, to me.

Do you remember Act III? When I learnt that section for exams I couldn't concentrate. Memories took over silently but strongly. There was so much to remember, the jacket, your hand capturing my fingers one by one, the softness of your shoulder. The beginning, and, perhaps, already the end.

My friendship with DW is over. It's for the better, it was becoming meaningless. Am I wrong in thinking that you never liked her very much? But, you and she share characteristics: You both lie to people so well. I think you both discovered how much I hate being lied to.

The winter season is one I love. Walking in the rain or in a storm is exhilarating. It makes thinking so easy, and so free.

I want to tell you so much, but I know some things are better not said. Quite unconnected: David Cassidy (in a song) 'Dreams are nuthin' more than wishes, and a wish is just a dream you wish to come true.'

I turn 17 in a few days time, 'sweet seventeen' but for you and July 7.

Thank you.

Love,
Anne

Dear Nick,

You're the only living ghost I know, but you do your job too well. I don't really know what made you (as CB says) 'the light of my life' for so long. That stage has passed, but you still haunt me. As efficiently as any spirit. Why?

I wonder if Rod Stewart's song 'I was only joking' could, in retrospect, apply to you and me, with you doing the singing? So many songs seem to apply nowadays, some painfully.

There are two roles in life: the one destroys, the other picks up the pieces. I'm getting good at both. You were an able teacher for the latter, the former I learnt from DW, sometimes.

Jane once asked me did I still like you and I said 'yes' immediately, I gave it no thought. Now I have to think before I slowly and truly reluctantly say 'not really'. How many more parts of me are going to die because of you?

How strangely life works: when people suppose the weak to be strong and use them as whipping boys. It's terrifying.

Sleep beckons.

Love,
Anne

Dear Nick,

Tomorrow at 8.15 I write History, it's 5.30 p.m. now and I've learnt about two pages. History can go to hell, the present is complex enough.

I love birthdays, as I crave getting older. I also enjoy receiving presents. I still wonder what became of the blade chain D. gave me for my birthday. We're both still cross about the incident. Whoever was responsible for the final disappearance is nothing less than a thief in my eyes.

Sometimes I wish I had a stronger urge to learn (as my study aid says I should have), but I doubt I'll master it at this late stage in my school career. As long as I pass all over 60% at the end of the year I'll be satisfied. I'll visit you to celebrate then.

I need people around me often. Loneliness is something I wish nobody to suffer from. It wrecks me to have people throw their troubles at me, expecting me to find the solutions and sort everything out for them. I otten feel like screaming 'I'm not a qualified therapist. I've got enough problems of my own. Leave me alone.' But then I remember that talking it over with someone helps, and I sit still and listen, and try to be sensible with advice. It's truly nerve-wracking. Do you understand?

Duty screams for me.

Love,
Anne

Dear Nick,

I feel free again, and I am just that for the next three days. Time to call my own is a wonderful thing. It's what I need.

Sometimes decisions are more than difficult. When, for instance, a person you haven't spoken to for almost two months sends you a telegram with best wishes for your birthday, what do you do?

Sitting by the fire reminds me of the Saturday night after the play last year, when I sat by a similar fire and wrote your name all over pieces of paper and grinned and giggled seemingly for no reason at all. So my father thought! But then, there was so much he didn't know about and never will.

I was given "You're the Fire" talc for my birthday, has a divine scent.

You were the fire.

Love,
Anne

Dear Nick,

Last Saturday, friends (you don't know them) and I spent about two hours in an art gallery. It was rather amusing. Amazing, too, how one piece of modern art can evoke three different responses from three different people, and all three could be possible. I can't imagine you in an art gallery.

Exams are over now, and the shocks are arriving. Results are seldom looked forward to, at least not my Biology ones. Ugh! Now, too, comes the hard grind of working through nine exam papers. 'It's for your own good, Std 10s', how we've all come to hate that sentence. It sounds so smug and uncaring. I long for freedom.

My life's slogan, 'I thrive on love, poetry and music' is seldom fulfilled. School leaves little time for poetry and music. And for love I don't seem to be a candidate nowadays. Frustrating.

Love,
Anne

Dear Nick,

I am learning to live with disappointments. When people make you look forward to things, events, anything under the sun, and then let you down with a half-hearted 'sorry, but...' and you smile and say 'oh, I understand'. Nothing can make you feel worse, or more unwanted, than that.

Yesterday someone told me I had too little self-respect. Because I care too little about what other people think about me. In a way I agree, I really don't care what people think of my behaviour, but does that mean I've got too little self-respect? I've got my code of principles, I adhere to them, if other people think they're not okay, well, their bad luck. I think they're just right. And I don't expect anybody else to live by them.

To finally change the subject: my results this term are good, if you forget the fact that I failed History.

I still have the ring you gave to me, the one your sister called an engagement ring. Remember, the words 'love is for sharing' are on it. I used to wear it permanently, now only on days when I think of you a lot. Which happens often enough.

It's soon our alpha day, June 10. To think it's less than a year since everything began and ended.

Memories swamp.

Love,
Anne

Dear Nick,

Yesterday could've been our first anniversary. To think that an entire year has passe d since interval and Act III. How many memories that brings back! Three little fingers one by one.... Your shoulder and my head fit perfectly.

'I thought you'd forgotten him' someone said, and I just smiled and said 'No, I haven't' and mentally added 'and never will.' Even the names I've chosen for my children fit perfectly to yours.

Babies, puppies, memories, Three things similar, to me.

'If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was.' You set me free, the motive wasn't love, so I came back to nothing.

So many memories are flowing that they're blocking the words of expression.

So.....au revoir.

Love,
Anne

And there the letters end. It would appear that the demons had been banished. Over the years the memories indeed faded. The photograph is no more, it became a victim of loyalty to one of the boyfriends that followed.
The ring is, I think, still buried somewhere in a box of assorted memorabilia. In keeping with the way life is, 'Nick' went on to marry someone who makes a brief appearance in these letters. They suited each other so much better. Contact was not kept, so I can only hope that they did find lasting happiness together. They deserved nothing less.

Alabama

Last modified on Sunday, 7. March 1999