Faith

I remember the first time I ever fell in love. It turned spring into a fairytale. The windows sparkled, the new sky was so blue, the last apples of fall and winter were especially red. We were young and everything seemed infinitely possible.

Long after it ended I wondered: If it wasn’t possible, then was it love? And if it wasn’t love, then what was it? The next time, and the time after were the same. No, not the same, but similar: each time felt possible. Until it didn’t.

What is it that erodes that sense of possibility? Something in us takes unbridled enthusiasm and tamps it down.

When I look back at the landscape of my relationships, I can’t see what drew me to and then drove me out of each outpost and small village. I try to understand how each one failed, when each one seemed so full of promise. I can’t see the same invasive species that has followed me the same as it follows any of us, the vine blooming with anxiety, expectation, previous hurts, deep-rooted fears. I don’t know how much that vine twists its way around me and pulls me backward, even as I press on.

It is when I chop off that vine close to the root that I finally understand what it means to fall in love.

One asks: “How do you know, how do I know, how do we know if it’s real or if we’re deluding ourselves?”

“It’s as real as we believe it to be,” answers the other.

The first love letter I ever wrote must have been remarkable, as all love letters are in their own way. I can imagine what it must have been like, because I have written many since. All of them, underscored by questions and doubt and anxiety, have remained with me, long after love was over and the correspondence had ended. There is something about the shamelessness of those love letters, with their fearless promises, their exuberance and wild desire. I think back on the words, so naked with their need, still yearning for a response. I wait for myself to feel embarrassed. But I don’t.

A love letter is not a declaration of truth so much as it is a treatise on hope. There is nothing shameful in this.

And so I think, each of those letters, one after another, they were drafts. I was writing my way to you.