I received an email regarding my post about The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as follows:
Correct me if I’m wrong.
When I read posts like today I notice the distinct
lack of the girl who loved you, for years, and still
does, but you didn’t love her back.You speak so much of loving people who didn’t love
you, and the feelings that you had being the only one
on the end of loving the person, but you don’t seem to
mention what it’s like to not love the person who has
always loved you.I thought it was weird, that’s all.
This is the response I just emailed to her:
When other people read posts like today’s, they don’t notice it because they’re not you.
I’m only aware of that happening to me once, and … I was still the romantic idealist who believed in love, hoped for love, was looking for love, and still didn’t find reciprocal love. It doesn’t fit in with the things I’d want erased from my memory, or with the one instance of love I mostly don’t. It doesn’t come up for me. I don’t get reminded of it (for instance) every time I take a shower or every time I smell a certain fragrance or every time I hear a certain song. It didn’t have emotional ‘hooks’ for me, it didn’t stick.
When I think about it in the context of my post, perhaps I would add a paragraph about how there must be people out there who wish they could erase me permanently from their minds. How they liked me or loved me but didn’t end up with the sort of “good memories” that they like having around. That the mark I left on their life probably keeps coming up, they’re reminded of me by little things … the same as I am for the people in my past, and they wish they didn’t have to keep thinking about me, loving me. And that if that were their desire, I wouldn’t have a problem with their removing me from their memories. That in fact at this point in my self-loathing I might encourage it and understand it.
Of course, maybe it’s happened more than that. Maybe people have loved me and never let on.
Damn if I wouldn’t hate that to be the case.
Wouldn’t it be nice if I loved “the girl who loved me … but I didn’t love her back”? I’d finally have that reciprocal love I’ve been looking for for so long. Has it occurred to you that perhaps I’ve always wanted that to be the case, that perhaps a reason for my distancing myself from her was that she was a constant reminder of a possibility for happiness I can’t quite fulfill? That every time I think about her I search myself for that spark that cries love so I could encourage it and work toward a beautiful relationship? I have some idea how she must feel, and if I let myself I might end up feeling worse about the situation for my own lack of love.
-Teel
I just thought I’d share. Oh, and instead of putting it in comments, make it a post, to up my wordcount. ::winkwink:: ::nudgenudge::
I really liked your entry on love. I, too, am in love with love and while I’m a writer myself, I most definitely could not have said it better. By the way, are you still single? *sigh* Even if you are you probably don’t live in Florida. That would be my luck. But honestly, I’d never felt so connected to someone just by reading their words since the last time I read a Heinlein novel, and this is different. (And before you get scared I’m not stalking you. I’m going away now, I hope you write back.)
I really liked your entry on love. I, too, am in love with love and while I’m a writer myself, I most definitely could not have said it better. By the way, are you still single? *sigh* Even if you are you probably don’t live in Florida. That would be my luck. But honestly, I’d never felt so connected to someone just by reading their words since the last time I read a Heinlein novel, and this is different. (And before you get scared I’m not stalking you. I’m going away now, I hope you write back.)