Dearest Mary Angel

Happy belated Valentine's Day. Here is what I did for much of last week. Nice, you think?

I made somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty floral arrangements, and in the process wore myself out. I'm too old for twelve hour days with little opportunity for breaks, let alone sitting a spell. But I did manage to take a few photos. And though I wasn't near as fast as the boss would have liked, I deliberately took time to think on a good many different things.

My lunch went well with LeNee` week before last, but she's just not all that into developing a friendship. I have to initiate everything. Being lonely means you ante up too much of your heart too quickly in every hand you're dealt. I knew my feelings would get hurt by this but I also know I said I didn't care; better to try than sit out the dance, right?

I've never been a good dancer, so whoever I end up with must be patient in teaching me. Speaking of which, I wrote a rather long free-form poem for a book I'm about halfway through titled The Gardens of Loveplay. You can read it in its lengthy entirety here. I plan and hope to finish it this year.

When LeNee` and I are together she encourages me, but when we are apart I hear nothing from her. No calls, no texts, no email. Even when I contact her there's no guarantee she will respond. In light of this I've decided to ignore her. If she's interested (which I don't believe she is) she'll get in touch with me. I promise not to hold my breath. So, I have begun to seek other opportunities.


This past week I spent the four days prior to Valentine's Day at the flower Shop. I took vacation from my primary job to work at the secondary. Twelve hour shifts as I've already said, doing little more than arranging flowers. Friday was a miracle of cold wet fat snow falling thickly from a leaden sky... I took photos. I'll post them at E's Third Eye in the next few days.

I've squandered much of the morning on things other than the web page I have to build and post before 5p tomorrow. I have much more to say, but it'll just have to keep till next time.

All my love

God be with you


Eric / Etienne

Something Old

January 0898


Dearest Mary Angel,

I humbly apologize for not writing to you in such a long time. My last letter was the night of my birthday and I had allowed myself to get horribly drunk. I hadn't been like that since the year before, the excuse for which being (if excuse it could be called) the death of a friend from work. I rarely drink as it is, which is a good thing, and I was foolish enough to allow myself to go so far, but that's neither here nor there. My last babbling letter was a cry for help. And you can't help me.

I had been so miserable, and it took losing my job to see it clearly. Eight days after my birthday Colin fired me. It was completely without warning and I was too stunned to even ask why. All he said was that my performance was "too little too late," and that it was out of his hands. He went on to say that if I wanted I could continue to work in the kitchen as a cook until I found work elsewhere, but he never gave me a clear answer as to why I was being fired. I told him I would think about it and give him a call. He asked for my keys and I left.

I had another set of keys at the house and for a month and a half I contemplated going to the restaurant some night when everyone was gone, disabling the alarm system, and wreaking havoc on their food inventory and stealing money from the office. But I never did, and I thank God for it-- yes, I am human. I too have terrible thoughts. Instead, I applied for unemployment and made a half-hearted attempt at finding work (meaning, I didn't look at all). I figured after ten years at that place I deserved a vacation. So I took six weeks off and slept almost continuously. I was so emotionally exhausted.

I actually decided several months prior to being fired that I when I left that hell hole I would never work in another restaurant again unless I owned it, and so, when I looked, I looked outside the food-service industry.

In early November, I went to both television stations here in Dothan and applied for whatever might be available. Channel 18 never called for an interview but Channel 4 interviewed me on the spot and I was hired the next day! I am now what is called a 'Master Control Operator,' which means little in regards to pay-scale but the job is so incredibly easy that circus bears could do it. I literally get paid to watch television and push a few buttons.

And get this: the most amazing thing happened the day after I was hired! Spinnaker's Restaurant, the establishment to which I had devoted ten years of my life, without any warning, closed three hours early on a Saturday evening and informed the staff that it was closing its doors in Dothan forever. I received a call that very evening from a kitchen worker I am friends with, and while he cried and cried, he told me everything. The home office, I later learned, closed six other units that same week and had recently closed two prior to the Dothan closing.

Initially, I was so elated to hear that the company for which I spent ten years slaving had been forced to fire almost five-hundred employees and over thirty managers to stay afloat. But as I began to think more on it, I began to feel sorry for all the people who had been let go four weeks before Christmas. They had all, like myself, given a significant amount of time every week to a company that, in the end, couldn't have cared less about them.

So here I am: It's 1998, and I am somewhat happier, but the loneliness I feel grows stronger every day. I want a family, and I'll probably have to hurt someone I care a great deal about to get on with my life, and find someone who will love me.

But that's all I'll say about that for now.

With great love and longing,

Goodnight and sleep well,


Eric

Present Day:

There are some twenty letters between the first and this one. I was very unhappy with my job, and unhappy with where I was in my life. I looked everything through a prism of regret. I viewed every lost love as a last hope for happiness, but you were always chief among those lost loves. I say 'loves' but there were only two; you and one other.

Anyway. I've been at the station for twelve years now. I've gone from Master Control, to Audio, Graphics, Tapes, Servers, to Creative Services and Cameras, Commercials and Editing to where I am now in Sales, building advertising for the internet. For the first time in my life I actually have an office that's all mine. The pay still stinks, but I'm finally in a position to negotiate for a decent increase. And from all I've heard the GM is concerned about whether I'm happy. And truth is, I am. I wish I made more; I wish I made what someone in a larger market would make doing the same work. I wouldn't be driving a '91 Corolla with 232 thousand miles on it if I were.

The contrast between then and now is night and day. I was a miserable hateful wreck back then, mostly because of how raped of goodness I felt at having to be the kind of manager they expected me to be. A starving dog generally receives more compassion that I did. But today... today I'm treated quite well (accept in the pay department), and I'm respected (accept in the pay department). And that alone goes a long way toward easing Eric back into the mainstream.

In a few months I'll be free to court. And I intend to be courtly. I will be the kind of man who enjoys good company and treats his dates with respect. And maybe... just maybe, the Lord will bless ME with someone who will make all my letters to you moot. And yes, when I find her I will tell her about my letters to you. I will let her read them. And I will hope she sees in my letters to you the promise of someone who will love her with equal and greater fervor. She will know what she can expect from me in response to the love she gives in return.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Whoever she is, wherever she is, if I can't share these letters with her, how can I open my heart to her? These letters-- all twelve years of them --ARE my heart. The fullest most honest expression of my heart.

And yes, twelve years later, I am still on the cusp of hurting someone I care deeply about, but who has made it quite clear she doesn't wish to marry. I can't... no... I won't wait any longer.

And I have work in the morning. Someday this week I will have to find time to tell you of my lunch date last Thursday.

Until then,

Take care, and may God bless you and all you hold dear,


Eric

Dearest Mary Angel

I was stumbling across the internet this morning and came across a wonderfully insightful quote by C.S. Lewis, which speaks to recent developments and fears in my own present life.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."

— C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)

I hate the thought of being vulnerable, yet greatly desire opportunities to be vulnerable. And this is what I'm trying to do even now.

Lunch yesterday was wonderful. For Her it was a working lunch; She fielded texts and a couple calls while we enjoyed each others company for the first time in almost six weeks. I confided to Her how much I enjoyed the time we spent together, telling of my conversation with the other Eric to whom I said I would rather a relationship with Her that promised nothing more than friendship to the situation I current find myself in. I told Her that in Her company I had freedom to be myself, and speak my mind and heart. With the other I must hide who I am, and zealously guard the gates of my heart from her; she doesn't respect my heart. Over the years I've come to realize I can trust her with a great many things, but not my heart. I hate that I've allowed my life to get to this point but I am thankful I have matured enough to both see where I am, and find strength enough to do something about it.

Lunch with Her is a very public statement for me. It says I am doing something about who and where I am. Again, should nothing further ever develop between us, I am happy to have a friend with whom I can enjoy spending time.

'To love is to be vulnerable,' says Lewis. I knew this all along, but its never rang clearer than this morning.

I told Her again she was beautiful. Now, I can see the imperfections; I can see that Her beauty is not flawless in a physical sense. But since when did physical perfection ever trump the perfection of inner beauty and character? At the end of the day, better to have in your arms someone who transcends physical beauty, because in the end physical beauty is but a memory; an unlovely husk of skin and bone and spotty recollections. All that is unimportant in the face of encroaching eternity. What is important is knowing who you are in God first, and then in the eyes of those with whom you shared your love and life.

Will She be the one? who knows? At present I wouldn't object. But I also don't presume She has any intentions Herself beyond friendship with me. And there's another fear to consider here: Is She an object of contrast? A rebounding affection? Time and tide will tell. For now I'm simply relishing in the "entanglements and little luxuries" of being helplessly infatuated with a very beautiful woman.



I know my letters to you are selfish; I speak only of myself. But please understand. You are a ghost; an ephemeral memory, bittersweet and all the more alluring because of it. I would that I knew who you are today, but that is not why I write you these letters, sweet Mary Angel. They are cathartic; a salve to smooth the pain and scars of years misspent and unchallenged.

It pleases me greatly to know you are where you are, wherever you are. I am pleased for the life you have, despite its losses, and I am pleased that you married your best friend. Shouldn't it always be so?

When I began writing you thirteen years ago, I never thought you'd ever read them, so I was entirely without inhibition in my writing. When I mulled over posting these online, again, it never occurred to me that you would ever read them, but I was naive to think that in this day of accessibility and Google you wouldn't one day stumble upon them-- let alone say hello. So I am left with a dilemma.

I am not ready to give up the young woman I began writing to more than a decade ago, neither would I dishonor you or your husband in anything I write or have written, by using these letters for anything more than for what I've used them since the very beginning.

In heaven, there will be no need for apology, for there will never enter our thoughts anything that would not honor God. We will love each other perfectly, without jealously, shame, or any other petty human emotion. We will be like Him. We will enjoy his perfect love and presence, and we will enjoy each other-- not just you and I, but your husband, your children, my own wife (should God so bless me), and all the redeemed of heaven. Imagine that, everyone in perfect love with God and each other. I will have literally millions of best friends in heaven. The reality of it is too much for my simple mind to comprehend. I still think and feel like the fallen man I am.

I realize now I can't just post any letter I've written you in the past, even though those letters were not written to you, but to the ghost of you... the nineteen year old you. These memories of you are my own, and I cannot apologize for them. But I can and must temper them, and choose to be more circumspect in my posting. And to this I hereby promise.

Thank you for listening. And hopefully, for understanding.

May God richly bless you and yours,

All my love,


E

Dearest Mary Angel

I saw her today for the first time in five weeks. She smiled and hugged me; she was genuinely happy to see me. I complimented her, told her she looked beautiful. She asked if something was wrong with my eyes. I told her she was a sight for sore eyes. And I told her she WAS beautiful. And she was.

We were to have lunch last Friday, but she couldn't break away from clients. We were to meet yesterday, but she was stuck in Enterprise awaiting a transmission repair. We are to meet Thursday, and it is my hope nothing will prevent our meeting.

I like her too much. Far too much. I will only get hurt in the end, but I do not care. I have to try. You can't spend your winnings unless you buy a ticket, right? She knows I like her, but she doesn't turn me away; she continues to encourage me. She's said things to others that indicate she is interested. Or was five weeks ago.

I had a conversation with the other Eric today. Prescott. He laughs to see how bad I have it for her, but he understands. He's not mocking. He listens and offers advice. He says she knows how I feel. And to be patient. I confided to him that even should nothing come of my infatuation-- should she and I never advance beyond the occasional lunch --I would still rather have that relationship that the one I now have. At least with her I feel alive and valued and listened to. I feel alive around her. I can speak my mind. I don't have to hide who I am; I can speak freely without fear of laughter or rejection. She likes who I am... enough to share the occasional lunch with me.

I want to ask her for more... a movie or dinner. But I'm not free to date. Not until I'm on my own. We were supposed to see a movie last month but never got around to it. Just as friends. She hates to see movies alone, as do I. I could use a best friend, and I wouldn't mind if it turned out to be her. Even if that's all we ever became.

As I said. I like her too much. But I can't help myself. I waited twenty years for one woman to say 'yes.' And in the end she has made it clear she doesn't want to marry... not me, not anyone. I want to belong to someone. I want to be happy. And as I said, even should nothing develop between us, at least with this beautiful and vibrant woman I'll learn once more how to socialize-- how to befriend and be befriended.

I finally feel as though this ship I'm on can actually get somewhere, that winds will actually fill its sails, and its prow carve a furrows across this seemingly interminable sea. I've been a long time rocked upon its merciless surface, and I'm looking forward to dry land. I'm looking forward to someone who won't balk at one day putting a ring on my finger-- whoever and wherever she may be.

God be with you and yours,

All my love,

Eric