Fool

I went through a phase during my late high-school and early college years where I became frustrated with stories of lovers kept apart. Separated by duty, by circumstance, by social standing.  Even worse, if these tragic characters freed themselves of their constraints, they would alter their core beings in such a way that their love would no longer be pure. I remember Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence in particular drove me to fits.  I take reading seriously and I tend to become attached to certain characters and vested in their fates.  I got completely fed up with characters I liked not being able to come together.  Painful, unrealized, unlivable love.  Misery, because of love.  I was still young and believed that two people loving each other was all that was enough.  Any stories saying otherwise were just overwrought melodramatic foolishness.

And then I got an email that turned me into an overwrought melodramatic fool.

There was never any way that I wasn't going to respond to J's email.  A dozen years of wondering what happened to that sweet, sexy, intelligent graduate student who had brightened up a long-ago dark winter was finally going to be resolved.  The thing is, there was never a breakup with us, no bad feelings tainting the pleasant memories.  It was a long distance relationship attempted by two ridiculously busy graduate students and it just wasn't going to work.  We liked each other too much to drag it out and were too overwhelmed with school to mourn it for long.  We drifted out of contact and that was that.

Until that fucking email.  The email that excited and flattered and frightened me all at once.  I read and re-read J's words throughout the evening until I found myself reciting passages in my head from memory.  And late that night, after the kids were in bed and the husband was dozing on the couch, I wrote back.  As I typed, I felt myself slipping back in time, to the me J remembered.  Easygoing, sharp, funny. Happy.  Hopeful.  I closed my eyes, typed before I could over-think things and hit send.