The cyclical nature of my relationship with words. Or is it relationships via words?

First their was the vision, and then the retreat to books. Now there is the letters of love. It comes full circle after I am allowed to have more vision, expression, and actual consummation, but then dissolves into this blog which finds me again using words to find fulfillment and meaning. But for now, my formative years of letters and longing.

I learned note-passing from my girlfriends. It was high-art in middle school, with intricate ink colors and origami-like folding of the pages once they were filled with gossip, emotion, and confession. I received many notes, saved them all, and read them time and time again.

I also read my sister’s notes she kept in her desk. I loved how mature her friends’ writing seemed compared with my own. The boys who wrote to her talked about music, identity, and self-expression. I loved how the page could contain so much, and began to add my own obscure phrases to the notes I passed my friends. And I began to get attention.

The bulk of my readers were girls, because they were also the bulk of my friends. However, I soon become aware of the fact that I could write letters to boys, saying more than I would dare to say in person, and they would read them and even reply. For some reason machismo didn’t exist in the realm of paper and pen.

I fell in love often, and always with boys who liked me but would probably never love me. Mostly because these boys were dating my female friends, or other girls, and didn’t realize how much better I could have been for them. But instead of simply moping in the depths of unrequited love, I pursued them poetically. I appealed to their intellect, and to their ideals. And it worked.

My favorite epistolary romance was with Ray. For weeks we left missives in each other’s lockers, and each was more passionate then the one before. In fact it was almost like a competition to see who could outdo the other’s passionate prose.

We both asserted how strongly the other’s last letter had made us feel, and spent paragraph upon paragraph trying to convey our teenage titillation. And eventually we would have moments in person that we would both write about after, describing each sensation as best we could remember. Cuddling at a friend’s house watching a movie, skipping swim practice and lying on top of one another in the park. That last one was extremely important to me because he wrote that he felt “…as if I was made only to support your weight, to hold you on top of me.” I may forget that afternoon someday, but I will never forget those words.

Although I never had the opportunity to have an open and recipriocal romantic relationship with a boy while growing up, I am still stimulated by the memories of these letters.