Other People's Love Letters_ 150 Letters You Were Never Meant to See - Bill Shapiro [2]
i regret some of what i wrote
“I thought digging up these old letters would be no big deal. I thought I’d mourned, healed, and moved on from all of my serious and not-so-serious relationships over the last ten years. But apparently not: I was completely surprised by how painful it was to look at the permanent record of all these lost loves.
“I noticed a couple of things: I’m blessed in that I have some gift with words, and that I can use words to inspire joy in someone or to comfort someone. But there’s this dark side that when I’m hurt or in pain, I can draw blood with my words. And I regret some of what I wrote out of anger or hurt. I feel real shame from this. Did I cause harm to someone? I’m seriously thinking about going back to some of these guys after all these years and apologizing.”
it was first love
“I hadn’t read the letters since I’d received them—that was about fifteen years ago. It was a college relationship, my first love.
“As I read them, I had this sudden desire to feel that intensity again. I wanted it back in my life right now. But when I thought about it, I came to realize that you can never re-create those feelings because it was the first time, the first love. And that’s actually the beauty of it: If you could experience those feelings again, then they would be worthless.
“After I read the letters, I e-mailed her. We hadn’t talked in five years. We had a laugh over our letters because they were so gooey and naïve. But I felt a little different about them than she did: I was probably more nostalgic, more romantic.”
a great honor
“My mother and I went through stacks and stacks of my grandparents’ letters. They had corresponded for four years, sometimes three times a week. It was a great honor to be able to see the intricacy of their courtship and that they truly adored each other until their parting breaths. My mother and I were both touched by their love. I don’t mean that in the cliché sense—we could see that their love affected all of us as developing people.
“We spent days reading and organizing them, and then my mother decided to assemble a book of all of the letters. We gave one to everyone in my family. They, too, were entranced.”
who was i then?
“Reading them again was disorienting. You remember thinking the thoughts and writing the words but, man, you can’t touch those feelings. It’s like they belonged to someone else. Someone you don’t even know. I’m aware, in an intellectual way, that I felt all of those things about her, but those emotions are far away now.
“What’s so strange to me is that I can’t even force my heart back to that place where I felt that all-consuming passion. That makes me feel distant from myself. Who was I then? Will I ever be able to get back to that place? Reading the letters again made me wonder: Which is the real me? The one who saw the world in that emotionally saturated way, or the me who sees it the way I do now?”
i cried my eyes out
“When I read a few of the letters, I just cried my eyes out. It was like I experienced the end of each relationship again.”
a nice surprise
“I didn’t know these letters existed. My grandmother died before I was born, so this was the first time I’ve ever heard her voice, heard how she constructed her thoughts. It was an amazing experience. Sometimes she seemed demanding, sometimes she seemed scared. The stories I’d heard about my grandparents were that they were so different, but to have a glimpse into their sweetness and excitement about love was a nice surprise.”
my love comes in many shapes and sizes
“By going through my old letters I saw that my love comes in many shapes and sizes: Some are free-falls in a mad, passionate way. Some loves have been more friendship-based, sweeter and warmer. Looking at these letters reminded me that I’ve had the opportunity to