"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
