I began my writing of love letters in elementary school. At that time, I wrote it all in a journal (which I called a Katie as a ten year old), stories and tales crafted into letters of how I had given up my heart and for a just cause, for the cause of love.
My prime letter writing days lay in high school and I lived on letters for all the years I spent there. It was a small school, more of a tiny community and I wrote about it all, and everyone knew and made peace with that. All over me, stray papers and empty pens were found. I would write about my heartbeats and the destruction of my heart when all my love was unrequited.
I remember the first time I had an inkling that maybe I shouldn’t bare out so much to a piece of paper. I had written a detailed letter to one of my high school crushes whom I’d absolutely adored. As it goes in high school, I told a mutual friend to give this sacred note with my heart all over to him and she did. But my crush didn’t read it, not in private at least.
He read it on the bus ride home, and blew pieces of my heart out in the wind. He laughed at me, to my face asking if he was a publisher that I had given him a book, yelling at me for being too ugly for him, giving out my heart that I -obliviously- put on paper, for everyone to touch and poke.
I was humiliated. I sat still on the bus that evening, barely moving as the tears streamed down my face.
That was the last time I gave out a letter to a crush.
I believe that there is an astronomical amount of intimacy that comes with writing a love letter. The way the words dance off the pages in whatever handwriting you possess is the way to hold ones heart and never let go. Words on paper say what the mouth refuses to. If I were to say ‘I love you’, I would say just that. But if I were to write it, I’d write that my heart reaches to you in the way that my lungs reach for oxygen and depends on it and every fiber of my being has memorized every nook and cranny of yours and that transports me over and over to a place of serenity, a place where you are. I’d write that whenever I close my eyes and sit still enough I can feel your hands holding me whispering sweet somethings, telling me about your day. I’d write a whole lot more than three words.
But I bare my heart out in a paragraph or two and I send it, but I get nothing back, not even three words. Not even I love you.
So, before we bring back love letters, lets bring love back.
