Reading Old Letters

"There is one thing about you that troubles me. You have everything a girl could ask for (at least apparently) and yet you do not look happy. There is a sadness about your eyes. I fear I may not have it in me to give you more than you already have - if that is what it takes to make you happy.

I am very attracted to you. I am aware that the sense of connection I feel with you is rare and I will most likely not feel it with another. Yet I question the merits of pursuing our relationship to it's logical end. I feel very confused"

R wrote to me seven years ago. It was approximately summer from what I remember. Our parents knew each other through a mutual friend and we were a perfect match. I was sitting curled on the couch the afternoon my mother handed me his picture.

In the infinitesimal amount of time that it took for me to flip it over to the right side, I had in my mind visualized a face. A face in no way similar to anyone I knew but an amazingly clear one.

R's face was exactly how I had seen it in my mind. A fleeting sense of panic came over me as I sensed a deep Karmic connection with the man who smiled at me from the photograph. It was a theme that persisted through and after our marriage.

"I never knew my eyes looked sad. Do they really ? No one has a perfect life even if that is the outward appearance. I have known sadness in my own way, differently from others maybe. I will not quantify , qualify or even compare on scales absolute or relative.

To me, a relationship is not about one person trying to make the other happy but about the two people being happy just to be together. You will need to feel at peace with your decision whatever that may be. While the connection is very significant it may not provide you the entire rationale for pursuing this.

I am more fatalistic than you are.I will allow a course of events to unfold unhindered. What happens or does not happen is then God's plan for my life. I will accept it gracefully and without question"

There was a lot else I wanted to write - tell him about the photograph incident in particular but thought it would be unfair to bias him. R called to say good-bye. I remember his last words to me "I know I am loosing a dear friend at least maybe in time I will realize that I have lost much more than that" We had decided to make a clean break so we could both move on.

"I apologize for intruding upon your life. Everything in the past year and half has been going reasonably well for me though there was a sense of something missing. I was engaged to be married. I met her not long after we parted.

The closer we were getting to marriage the more I found myself thinking about you. When I told her she was extremely upset. 'Why do you want to marry me when you are so obviously in love with her ?' she asked me.

I told her I was not in love with you because I honestly did not think that I was. Our relationship changed though. She believed me, we were still engaged and getting married but it was just not the same thing. When I decided to call off the wedding our families were very disappointed. I am sure that she was terribly hurt. I am not proud of myself but in the end I could not see myself spending my life with her when my heart was obviously not there.

I started to realize it was you who I had wanted to be with all along just that I did not trust myself enough. I will understand if you don't want to start over, if you feel different about me than you once did. I will walk away and this time I do promise not to return. I would know that I tried and from there like you once said before it is Destiny. I will accept mine gracefully."

When I replied to him, I had in essence started twining our destinies together. We loved to write to each other and it made the physical distance between us seem trivial.

"Sweetheart, I think sometimes that you deserve much better than me and that I don't deserve you at all. My biggest fear is that I will take away from your life than add to it" He wrote to me a few months before our marriage.

"Maybe for me you will become who or what you think I am deserving of. Is that not the transforming power of love ?" I reply.

"When I do become that, I would not be the man that you first fell in love with even though he was not deserving of your love. I want to improve myself in everyway yet there is a part of me that resists. It is like change will efface my identity. You will change me. I know it for a fact. I fear that almost as much as I desire it" He wrote back to that.

Our marriage was everything R feared and desired. He was the best friend I never had, the most sensitive and romantic lover a woman could desire. He excelled professionally and academically - change had turned him invincible.

To compensate for that he wanted me to remain forever the half-hesitant, cloistered, gauche small town girl he had fallen in love with. I had forsaken my right to evolve with time. I was his preserved in amber wild flower charm, a jewel he held close to his heart - beautifully devoid of life.

"A piece of paper cannot the sever the ties between you and I. In my heart you will remain forever my wife and the mother of my child. You may choose not to recognize that relationship and move on. I wish you could have been happier " He told me when we last spoke several years ago.