Letters

I'm corresponding with a woman, someone, I will admit, I'm only just beginning to know. But there's an honesty in what she writes, as she slowly reveals herself to me, that I truly adore. I admire that. It's so difficult to share yourself, your true self — yet it is often so very rewarding.

I knew a woman once — I loved a woman once, long ago — who wrote of herself and of her life, but in a sort of idealized way. Who would paint pictures of herself as thoughtful, intellectual, but also lonesome, isolated, surrounded by but not a part of a world of superficiality and polite conversation without depth, or meaning, or truth.

I've come to understand this as not much more than comfort, a defense against the despair that her life had become — having kept herself apart from the world and safe from the threat of emotion, this was the life she created for herself, the life she wanted (and wanted others) to believe she led. She wasn't strong enough to create that world for herself outside of her imagination, and it was not the truth.