Unrequited Love Letters

September 29, 2004 | Category:

How did a story about a new Afghanistan radio station end up with me writing about my old love letters? Well...

Every Tuesday night this new radio station airs anonymous letters - mostly from young people writing about unrequited love. Sending their most intimate feelings to be read publicly.

This is a big deal because Afghan culture frowns on (to put it mildly) love letters outside of marriage. In a world where a person rarely chooses their own spouse, falling in love is something done usually from afar and is rarely requited.

Thinking about love, I have known only freedom. Free to follow my heart and openly pursue courtships with anyone I choose. Something so beyond the reach of those Afghans - still. Still. The people I've been free to love haven't always loved me back.

It seems to me that unrequited love is universal. It is a global experience. There. Here. In my own past.

I thought about all those crushes, those one-way loves. Then I went down to the basement and brought up the plastic bin with my old love letters in it.

I spent hours over the last couple of days, digging through and being swept into the past. So much drama, and pain. So much giggly lust. So many kinds of love letters. So many grammatical errors.

"I'm not - I AM NOT - going to end up another former boyfirend who is still a close friend of yours!!!!!" the crumpled old letter reads. I remember getting it, after telling a guy I had dated off and on through high school that I'd fallen for someone. I had thought we were casual, and had been desperately wrong.

"Well, at least you were honest. I guess that's half the battle," he wrote in the first line. From there it was a fierce diatribe on how careless I had been with his love. How, if it was indeed unrequited, I should have been gentle. Respectful. And he was right. He marched out of my life, and didn't look back.

"How is school, classes, etc.? Write me and let me know. I enjoyed spending the time we could together while I was out. It is not going to be easy to build our relationship while we are 900 miles apart but ... I hope we can." Another letter on lined loose leaf paper, written by another guy I knew in high school. We'd bumped into each other in Chicago, and I'd thought that a spark had been lit. Another visit, intentionally to spend time with each other a few months later. I'd fallen like a leaf. Floating, drifting, dizzy. This letter had sent me over the moon.

I called him the night I got it. He was out, his roommate told me, with his girlfriend.

We never spoke again.

Oh, look. Another letter in black ink on lined paper. Are guys under 30 physically unable to buy stationery?

"Why are relationships complicated, Elizabeth?" the gorgeous college guy wrote just after we'd met in my sophmore year. "I feel like I've known you for years. It's a deceptive feeling, but it sends the message of hope. We all want a love that won't break our hearts."

And then he broke mine.

On the other hand, another letter reads "I don't want to fire you." This one, for a change, is on yellow lined paper. "You are an asset to the paper. But it hurts too much to see you going off with other guys. So you have to choose. Keep it business-like or leave. Or are you that cruel, that you don't understand?" He was editor of the student newspaper and we'd dated maybe 3 times. He probably had a great future ahead as a stalker. I was rapidly turning into a bitch. For the best of us both, I quit. And then I transferred schools. Again.

College is a hotbed of unrequited love. I remember the Volunteer. A guy who spent his semesters leading groups down to Belize and Guatemala on volunteer missions. I met V early in the semester, one of those late summer days.

The next few weeks were a whirlwind. He was a "friends first" kind of a guy. So we did all sorts of friendly things, getting to know each other. I knew there were other girls around. A straight, good-looking, confident, self-effacing, funny, decent, Christian guy in a program almost dominated by women is going to get pounced on like a narc at a biker rally.

One morning I found a note slipped under my dorm door. He'd signed it, "Yours in desire and faith." My heart just about jumped from my chest. Two weeks later, another note. This one signed, "Te quiero ". When I saw him later, I told him that I didn't speak as much Spanish as he thought I did. He smiled and kissed me, between my ear and my cheek. I melted. Right there in the cafeteria. A puddle.

And then, it was over. A weekend, other people, and we slipped out of togetherness.

I pined for him. Unrequited love sticks like snot. Years later, I found a unsigned note (again with the lined paper!) It said: "Qué Linda la mañana que nos habla de ti. Qué Linda la mañana." I remember the night I'd slept on his couch and we'd gotten up early and greeted the dawn over coffee and chatting about nothing. I remembered him slipping me this note hours later, and kissing me goodnight. Chastely, but not too chastely. So close.

Once I'd moved into the corporate sector, and turned 30, the unrequited love letters stopped. The letters became passionate, adult. It had become a time of requited feelings. And of CD.

An Afgani man in the article said "I was once 21, and I was in love, and I remember that when I listen to the radio." I was 21 once, too. And I remembered that this week.

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