Letters To Will
I have loved you for a decade, Will. And although I don't remember the exact date I met you, not one of your birthdays have gone by without me being painfully aware of you. Not a single Valentine's Day has gone by without my thoughts turning to you. Ten years is a very long time, and I have been hurting, wishing, longing and yearning for every single second of those ten years.
I was a girl before I met you; strong, wild and carefree, responsible by day and a barely legal nymph by night and my world shifted on it's axis when you came into the picture. And maybe I was silly, and a little less knowing of the world than I thought I was, but I felt more connected to you -- hundreds of miles away and through a computer screen -- than I ever had with anyone else. Maybe, I was just ready to fall in love when I met you. Maybe it was time for me to give my heart to someone. Perhaps, it was simply time for me to take the plunge, to bring someone in, to trust someone enough to hurt me. I had been holding everyone at arm's length all of my life, relationships all around me, amorous and not, always fell apart and I, I thought I was, jaded. But you, with your bad boy persona with small glimpses of a soft heart, you changed that.
I thought I knew what lust was, as young as I was, I knew about desire, but you taught me what it was to ache, to want and never satisfy -- you were the one that distracted me during class. The one person that had my body tightly strung seven days a week. Your voice, your sighs, your laugh. I constantly bit my lips wanting your kiss, I constantly squeezed my thighs together because I knew I was always ready. I always knew that if you were to magically appear, you could slide right in. You could come home.
I thought I knew what love was, but you corrected my childish ideals. I obsessed over you, completely infatuated with the emotional highs fifteen minutes of your time brought me. I never pictured marrying you, having your children, but I felt confident that I could make you a home, make us a home filled with laughter and light. I was so young, but I knew that in my arms, we would both be happy. We had so much teenage angst between the two of us, but I was so sure I could save us. Even redeem us, in a way. I even gave you my Grandfather's ring because I was so sure it was forever with us even though to this day I still pay for giving away what was not really mine, even though I have the scars on my back to prove how wrong I was to believe so foolishly, being so young.
But slowly, things started changing -- more of the finite details have washed away with time but you became so distracted, and the more distracted you were, the more resentment I felt. The more my love grew, the more my infatuation grew, the more my obsession grew but with it came resentment, and a wealth of sadness. I knew that because we were apart, you would have to find your entertainment elsewhere, as did I and I settled for having your heart, because you convinced me you loved me. You were always good at that. I'm not sure how you did it, but whenever I was ready to throw in the towel, you swooped in and said a few thoughtful words and there I was, all yours again.
I want to confess, I knew we were over long before I found out about the one infidelity that cost us everything. You see, your increasing emotional distance from me left me whirling, and so very lost. I started putting pen to paper and at first, oh my god, I was horrible. I couldn't write a couple of crappy, sappy, lines without bursting into tears for hours. And when I did manage to finish something, it was odious. But I kept to it as I felt I had something to say, something to get off my chest and discovered, I actually had a knack for the written word. And then the deluge came, I wrote for hours every day, pouring my heart out to any piece of paper that would listen. I wrote you a thousand letters you'll never read, a million poems, hundreds of stories. Erotic ones, non-erotic ones. Heart-wrenching, gut twisting ones. Ridiculously hopeful and light ones.
I wanted to say so much to you, make you hear me, make you see me, tell you something that would change your mind about where we were heading, have you not take me for granted anymore. I told you this last year, I wrote about you, to you and because of you. I discovered a very integral part of myself because I was in so much pain over you, so for that I thank you, I suppose. I told you I even went into web designing because I had to put all of what I had written over the years somewhere, so thank you for that as well. But as to the confession, all that writing about us, about my feelings pertaining what was going on, and I became very self aware. I learned a great many things about myself, even things that had nothing to do with love and relationships but the most important thing I learned is that I was already mourning you. My heart, my mind and my soul were working to get the pieces of you out of itself. I was letting you go for months before I found out through someone else what you were up to. I was writing about the future, in my instance. I was placing myself six months down the road, after our break up and still crying over you and it hadn't even happened yet.
I felt it coming though. &Our end, as it turns out, I was not prepared for. This you may not know, but I was a mess for a year afterwards, I finally lost all my direction in life. I had let everything fall apart in my life and you dropping me like I meant little, really broke me into a million little pieces and scattered them so far from where I was standing that a handful of years later, I'm still looking to put myself back together.
I eventually surfaced and continued on with my life, but everyone saw it in my eyes, I was forever changed. Bitter, damaged, scarred and a little scared. I wasn't a girl anymore. I was a young woman, more woman than young and I had had my love, my heart brutally broken. Life was so unfair to us both, but I dare say you've had the good luck to get the better end of the stick.
After you, men became a means to an end and nothing I wanted in my life other than for a handful of hours a night. I became the ice queen my friends only joked about before. I used them for sex, and everyone involved was okay with that. A few of the good ones fell in love with me, but I didn't feel like I was good enough to be loved so I walked away. I attached myself to the bad ones because I felt like I deserved little less.
I was going through the motions. I fucked whomever was there, I got promoted at work, I went to the movies with friends, shopped like a fiend but my soul was so far removed, you couldn't find her with a telescope. And then I attached myself to the worst one of all. He was very few of your good qualities and all of your worst. Obviously, as with most relationships, things were wonderful at first and I started to forget about you. I no longer cried myself to sleep every night and I was starting to smile smiles that would reach my eyes. I was dancing again, and laughing out loud with gusto. My mother even commented on it one day, saying that it was like seeing me wake up from a deep sleep; she actually calls me Sleeping Beauty to this day.
We moved in together, and I was starting to believe that I was worthy of love. He asked me to marry him and even though I said yes, and even though I said I loved him, I never stopped loving you enough to really accept him in my heart. When he, or any other man for that fact, was inside of me, my brain shut off and with my eyes closed, all I saw was you. All I heard was you.
I never learned to let go of you, I never figured out a way to separate you from the man I happened to be with. Every time he abused me, I thought about you. Every time we fought, I turned off and shut myself in my own little world, wondering why you didn't think to fight for me. And when things really went sour, and I was no longer good enough for him, I mourned for you, not for him. I cried on the bathroom floor for days for you, never for him. A grown woman still weeping over her first love.
You are still the subject of everything I write, every "you" in a song is directed your way. And it's quite possible that I'm still so affected by you because you were the first. The first to pick me up, the first to throw me away. But maybe, you really did affect me this deeply. I've accepted that I will never really know for sure and that, I'm okay with.
There is something that will always nag at me, though. And it's the fact that maybe this was all one-sided. Now, I know you've said it isn't. But I can't help to think that it is. Maybe, all this time, and I've been the only one having a hard time. Maybe I've made no impression on you at all. But why do you keep coming back into my life then? Why even remember my name? This is what I don't understand, what I've never understood -- is it just a game to you? You are still really good at coming back the second before I manage to forget you. You creep back into my life when I think I've come up with a plan to let you go. You manage to sneak your way back into my thoughts and the sleepless nights,, the lust, the pain all comes back again. And you only stay long enough to make sure I'm hooked. Long enough to make sure that I'm stuck on you, and then you go back to whatever it is that you do best.
But, it's been ten years; three thousand six hundred and fifty-ish days and I'm almost a quarter of a century old, Will. I'm a grown woman who has the love of a good man who tries to convince me every day that I'm the amazing girl you once said you fell in love with. And I want to believe him. I see her in myself every once in a while after all the trials and after all this time, when I decide to go crazy and put on a red dress to go dancing, or rolls up her sleeves to make all of her friends and family an impromptu, yet fabulous, dinner. I see her when I decide to buy the corset or when I drive in my car, with all the windows open, blasting music as loud as I can.
And I love him, he is the first man that I can see myself walking down the aisle to. The first person I've thought about having children with. My love for him isn't crazy/sexy/wonderful like my love for you, but it's a love that makes me feel safe and cherished. I have been with him for a while now but I have never felt the need to make him known to you because I always felt like, somehow, Fate would smile on me for once and we would get a chance to be together, you and I. I have always known that I would drop Danny, or anyone else, if you decided to pick me again, even knowing that you could drop me just as fast. I was always ready to pick you over him.
However, recently, it dawned me how improbable that is and even if it was possible, how unfair that would be. To you, to him and most of all, to myself. How wrong it would be. You will always have my heart, there's nothing I can do about that now. My spine will always tingle when I think of you, your voice, your laugh and I will always be a little saddened by what we could have had.
If we are no closer to being with each other than we were ten years ago, maybe it's time to securely place you in my past and embrace Danny as my present and as my future. Even if I don't marry him, or we don't make past tomorrow, he deserves all of my love, all of my attention, right now. The erotic dreams I have, he should be the one touching me, sliding inside of me, kissing me. In the every day dreams I have, he should be the one I'm driving with, or grocery shopping with, arguing about the color of the furniture with. And in the futuristic dreams I have, it's his children I should be making breakfast for, and singing Spanish lullabies to.
I hope you fully integrate with your family and you find a way to love your wife with a full heart. I wish you all of the happiness in the world and I want only the best for you and your beautiful children. May you always have the support of your friends and family and may you always have plenty. I hope you walk around knowing that I will always love you and that there will be days my resolve cracks and I walk beside you instead of him and there will be nights that I will taste your mouth instead of his. Most of all, I hope that you feel like you can reach out to me, as a friend, knowing that I will always be there to take your hand.
Always yours &
With her most sincerest regards;
Isaura Ledo
PS; If you have any sort of response to this, please, I beg of you, share it with me. And, also, if by any chance, you still have my Grandfather's ring, could you possibly send it to me? I know that's a lot to ask but it would mean the world to me, you have absolutely no idea how much. Thank you, Will.
I was a girl before I met you; strong, wild and carefree, responsible by day and a barely legal nymph by night and my world shifted on it's axis when you came into the picture. And maybe I was silly, and a little less knowing of the world than I thought I was, but I felt more connected to you -- hundreds of miles away and through a computer screen -- than I ever had with anyone else. Maybe, I was just ready to fall in love when I met you. Maybe it was time for me to give my heart to someone. Perhaps, it was simply time for me to take the plunge, to bring someone in, to trust someone enough to hurt me. I had been holding everyone at arm's length all of my life, relationships all around me, amorous and not, always fell apart and I, I thought I was, jaded. But you, with your bad boy persona with small glimpses of a soft heart, you changed that.
I thought I knew what lust was, as young as I was, I knew about desire, but you taught me what it was to ache, to want and never satisfy -- you were the one that distracted me during class. The one person that had my body tightly strung seven days a week. Your voice, your sighs, your laugh. I constantly bit my lips wanting your kiss, I constantly squeezed my thighs together because I knew I was always ready. I always knew that if you were to magically appear, you could slide right in. You could come home.
I thought I knew what love was, but you corrected my childish ideals. I obsessed over you, completely infatuated with the emotional highs fifteen minutes of your time brought me. I never pictured marrying you, having your children, but I felt confident that I could make you a home, make us a home filled with laughter and light. I was so young, but I knew that in my arms, we would both be happy. We had so much teenage angst between the two of us, but I was so sure I could save us. Even redeem us, in a way. I even gave you my Grandfather's ring because I was so sure it was forever with us even though to this day I still pay for giving away what was not really mine, even though I have the scars on my back to prove how wrong I was to believe so foolishly, being so young.
But slowly, things started changing -- more of the finite details have washed away with time but you became so distracted, and the more distracted you were, the more resentment I felt. The more my love grew, the more my infatuation grew, the more my obsession grew but with it came resentment, and a wealth of sadness. I knew that because we were apart, you would have to find your entertainment elsewhere, as did I and I settled for having your heart, because you convinced me you loved me. You were always good at that. I'm not sure how you did it, but whenever I was ready to throw in the towel, you swooped in and said a few thoughtful words and there I was, all yours again.
I want to confess, I knew we were over long before I found out about the one infidelity that cost us everything. You see, your increasing emotional distance from me left me whirling, and so very lost. I started putting pen to paper and at first, oh my god, I was horrible. I couldn't write a couple of crappy, sappy, lines without bursting into tears for hours. And when I did manage to finish something, it was odious. But I kept to it as I felt I had something to say, something to get off my chest and discovered, I actually had a knack for the written word. And then the deluge came, I wrote for hours every day, pouring my heart out to any piece of paper that would listen. I wrote you a thousand letters you'll never read, a million poems, hundreds of stories. Erotic ones, non-erotic ones. Heart-wrenching, gut twisting ones. Ridiculously hopeful and light ones.
I wanted to say so much to you, make you hear me, make you see me, tell you something that would change your mind about where we were heading, have you not take me for granted anymore. I told you this last year, I wrote about you, to you and because of you. I discovered a very integral part of myself because I was in so much pain over you, so for that I thank you, I suppose. I told you I even went into web designing because I had to put all of what I had written over the years somewhere, so thank you for that as well. But as to the confession, all that writing about us, about my feelings pertaining what was going on, and I became very self aware. I learned a great many things about myself, even things that had nothing to do with love and relationships but the most important thing I learned is that I was already mourning you. My heart, my mind and my soul were working to get the pieces of you out of itself. I was letting you go for months before I found out through someone else what you were up to. I was writing about the future, in my instance. I was placing myself six months down the road, after our break up and still crying over you and it hadn't even happened yet.
I felt it coming though. &Our end, as it turns out, I was not prepared for. This you may not know, but I was a mess for a year afterwards, I finally lost all my direction in life. I had let everything fall apart in my life and you dropping me like I meant little, really broke me into a million little pieces and scattered them so far from where I was standing that a handful of years later, I'm still looking to put myself back together.
I eventually surfaced and continued on with my life, but everyone saw it in my eyes, I was forever changed. Bitter, damaged, scarred and a little scared. I wasn't a girl anymore. I was a young woman, more woman than young and I had had my love, my heart brutally broken. Life was so unfair to us both, but I dare say you've had the good luck to get the better end of the stick.
After you, men became a means to an end and nothing I wanted in my life other than for a handful of hours a night. I became the ice queen my friends only joked about before. I used them for sex, and everyone involved was okay with that. A few of the good ones fell in love with me, but I didn't feel like I was good enough to be loved so I walked away. I attached myself to the bad ones because I felt like I deserved little less.
I was going through the motions. I fucked whomever was there, I got promoted at work, I went to the movies with friends, shopped like a fiend but my soul was so far removed, you couldn't find her with a telescope. And then I attached myself to the worst one of all. He was very few of your good qualities and all of your worst. Obviously, as with most relationships, things were wonderful at first and I started to forget about you. I no longer cried myself to sleep every night and I was starting to smile smiles that would reach my eyes. I was dancing again, and laughing out loud with gusto. My mother even commented on it one day, saying that it was like seeing me wake up from a deep sleep; she actually calls me Sleeping Beauty to this day.
We moved in together, and I was starting to believe that I was worthy of love. He asked me to marry him and even though I said yes, and even though I said I loved him, I never stopped loving you enough to really accept him in my heart. When he, or any other man for that fact, was inside of me, my brain shut off and with my eyes closed, all I saw was you. All I heard was you.
I never learned to let go of you, I never figured out a way to separate you from the man I happened to be with. Every time he abused me, I thought about you. Every time we fought, I turned off and shut myself in my own little world, wondering why you didn't think to fight for me. And when things really went sour, and I was no longer good enough for him, I mourned for you, not for him. I cried on the bathroom floor for days for you, never for him. A grown woman still weeping over her first love.
You are still the subject of everything I write, every "you" in a song is directed your way. And it's quite possible that I'm still so affected by you because you were the first. The first to pick me up, the first to throw me away. But maybe, you really did affect me this deeply. I've accepted that I will never really know for sure and that, I'm okay with.
There is something that will always nag at me, though. And it's the fact that maybe this was all one-sided. Now, I know you've said it isn't. But I can't help to think that it is. Maybe, all this time, and I've been the only one having a hard time. Maybe I've made no impression on you at all. But why do you keep coming back into my life then? Why even remember my name? This is what I don't understand, what I've never understood -- is it just a game to you? You are still really good at coming back the second before I manage to forget you. You creep back into my life when I think I've come up with a plan to let you go. You manage to sneak your way back into my thoughts and the sleepless nights,, the lust, the pain all comes back again. And you only stay long enough to make sure I'm hooked. Long enough to make sure that I'm stuck on you, and then you go back to whatever it is that you do best.
But, it's been ten years; three thousand six hundred and fifty-ish days and I'm almost a quarter of a century old, Will. I'm a grown woman who has the love of a good man who tries to convince me every day that I'm the amazing girl you once said you fell in love with. And I want to believe him. I see her in myself every once in a while after all the trials and after all this time, when I decide to go crazy and put on a red dress to go dancing, or rolls up her sleeves to make all of her friends and family an impromptu, yet fabulous, dinner. I see her when I decide to buy the corset or when I drive in my car, with all the windows open, blasting music as loud as I can.
And I love him, he is the first man that I can see myself walking down the aisle to. The first person I've thought about having children with. My love for him isn't crazy/sexy/wonderful like my love for you, but it's a love that makes me feel safe and cherished. I have been with him for a while now but I have never felt the need to make him known to you because I always felt like, somehow, Fate would smile on me for once and we would get a chance to be together, you and I. I have always known that I would drop Danny, or anyone else, if you decided to pick me again, even knowing that you could drop me just as fast. I was always ready to pick you over him.
However, recently, it dawned me how improbable that is and even if it was possible, how unfair that would be. To you, to him and most of all, to myself. How wrong it would be. You will always have my heart, there's nothing I can do about that now. My spine will always tingle when I think of you, your voice, your laugh and I will always be a little saddened by what we could have had.
If we are no closer to being with each other than we were ten years ago, maybe it's time to securely place you in my past and embrace Danny as my present and as my future. Even if I don't marry him, or we don't make past tomorrow, he deserves all of my love, all of my attention, right now. The erotic dreams I have, he should be the one touching me, sliding inside of me, kissing me. In the every day dreams I have, he should be the one I'm driving with, or grocery shopping with, arguing about the color of the furniture with. And in the futuristic dreams I have, it's his children I should be making breakfast for, and singing Spanish lullabies to.
I hope you fully integrate with your family and you find a way to love your wife with a full heart. I wish you all of the happiness in the world and I want only the best for you and your beautiful children. May you always have the support of your friends and family and may you always have plenty. I hope you walk around knowing that I will always love you and that there will be days my resolve cracks and I walk beside you instead of him and there will be nights that I will taste your mouth instead of his. Most of all, I hope that you feel like you can reach out to me, as a friend, knowing that I will always be there to take your hand.
Always yours &
With her most sincerest regards;
Isaura Ledo
PS; If you have any sort of response to this, please, I beg of you, share it with me. And, also, if by any chance, you still have my Grandfather's ring, could you possibly send it to me? I know that's a lot to ask but it would mean the world to me, you have absolutely no idea how much. Thank you, Will.