Dear love,
I know what you must be thinking. I’m a sentimental sort for even thinking of writing this. Well, forgive me if I want to indulge a little. I don’t get to do it often.
I miss when it was just us. We were both young and knew nothing about the world, about our lives. Summers on the beach, winters camping in places we never should have been in while up to our ankles in snow- blissful happiness without all of the doubts that hang over us now.
Don’t laugh, please, but I want you to do one of those visualisation exercises again. I’ve made a recording for you. Listen to it after you read this, eventually. I know it’ll make you cry, and you’re probably wearing something really nice right now. I wouldn’t want to mess it up – mess you up more than my self-indulgence already has. It won’t be long and it won’t be much, but I want you to remember, for me, what you felt back then.
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I hope it’ll help. Your memory’s never been the best, so I have a few pictures from some of our first trips as well, if you want them. Ones I never showed you. I thought, maybe, they’d be “useful” somewhere down the line – for the sake of embarrassing you at a holiday party if the topic ever came up.
You look so much more relaxed in them. I’ve missed it – though maybe that’s nostalgia talking. Did you know that the fishing trip we took last year was when you got that scar on the back of your leg? I figured it out while looking over things for the funeral, but you’d been so enamoured in telling me about the fort you found while gathering firewood (and high on prescription painkillers) you didn’t notice you were rocking your leg back and forth on the log. That’s where you got your constellations, imprinted like tattoos are.
Is it weird I like knowing I’ve left a mark on you? An impulsive trip I insisted on out of boredom left you with a physical piece of me. It’s neat, right? I figured out who I am today because of you. I hope you’ve enjoyed watching me find my bearings in life as I have with you.
I’ll keep watching. It’s been such a joy seeing you become a person and don’t let me not being there make you fall apart completely. You found out who you were with me, now time to find out who you are without.
This was always going to happen. We’ve joked about it and I know that when it’s real, it gets more terrifying, but this is why I have the visualisation. In your memory, I’m still here, and things are still okay.
I just need you to trust me, and keep going. That’s it.
Yours, always.
PS: Let the cat in. She deserves that – you can always get new furniture.
This story was published in The Irish Times Fighting Words magazine, a collection of stories, poems and essays by young and international writers
