you are difficult to write love letters to.
every draft turns into a complaint.
i suppose that says something about both of us.
for one thing, i am not convinced you exist.
for another, i have spent an embarrassing amount of time being angry at you.
which is ridiculous.
people are not supposed to hold grudges against hypothetical beings.
yet here we are.
i stopped believing in you several times.
unfortunately, disbelief requires a certainty i have never possessed.
the first mistake was expecting consistency.
you have always had terrible communication skills.
years would pass.
then suddenly something beautiful would happen.
a stranger saying exactly the right thing.
sunlight arriving at the correct moment.
a coincidence so precise it felt almost rude.
and i would think,
there you are.
then nothing again.
honestly, you remind me of every person i have ever loved.
this is not a compliment.
once, a boy i liked fell in love with somebody else.
i knew before he told me.
he started smiling at his phone differently.
it is humiliating what heartbreak turns people into.
i learned her favorite color against my will.
i knew which songs he suddenly started listening to.
i knew things that should have remained none of my business.
i wish i could say i handled it with dignity.
instead i spent several weeks conducting imaginary arguments in the shower.
he never heard any of them.
neither did you.
this has happened often enough that i am beginning to suspect faith and unrequited love share a border.
people tell me suffering has a purpose.
i would like to return mine.
it does not fit.
i know what i am supposed to say.
i am supposed to talk about mystery.
about divine timing.
about plans too large for human understanding.
but there are days i want less mystery and more explanation.
there are days i want an apology.
there are days i would settle for a receipt confirming my prayers were delivered.
i wasn't asking for paradise.
i wasn't asking for miracles.
i wasn't asking you to rearrange the stars.
i wanted one person.
just one.
and you couldn't even manage that.
before anyone accuses me of selfishness, i should confess that they would be correct.
there are wars.
there are famines.
there are entire countries breaking apart.
and still i keep returning to the same absence.
the same name.
the same wound.
love has never understood scale.
that is the problem.
when someone leaves, the whole world develops a limp.
i spent years being angry with you for that.
years.
imagine.
being furious with someone you aren't even sure exists.
if nothing else, i have always been committed.
the embarrassing thing is that i keep coming back.
i stop praying.
i stop looking for signs.
i stop translating ordinary beauty into correspondence.
then somebody is kind to me when they don't have to be.
or i hear a song at exactly the right moment.
or i survive something i was convinced would destroy me.
and suddenly i am back on your doorstep again.
knocking.
which is humiliating.
if this were any other relationship, my friends would have staged an intervention years ago.
sometimes i imagine describing you to them.
they disappear for months at a time.
they never answer directly.
they have broken my heart repeatedly.
and somehow i am still making excuses for them.
the worst part is that i still want your attention.
which feels embarrassingly adolescent.
like checking whether someone viewed your story.
like rereading old messages.
like convincing yourself that coincidence is a form of communication.
sometimes i think faith is just longing that has nowhere else to go.
sometimes i think you are simply the name i gave mine.
i don't know if you exist.
i don't know if you've ever listened.
i don't know whether i have spent all these years speaking into an empty room.
but if you are there,
if by some miracle you are there,
i hope you understand that this letter was never really about belief.
it was about wanting.
it was always about wanting.
and perhaps that is why i keep writing to you.
because every love letter is, at its core, an admission of powerlessness.
a confession that someone else's existence has altered the architecture of your life.
you are difficult to write love letters to.
for one thing, i am not convinced you exist.
for another,
i have never quite managed to leave you alone.