writing love letters to my exes
more often than not, i do give my boys their flowers.
in 2019, the sunday night of memorial day weekend, my first boyfriend and i broke up. i sat up on my couch and his head was in my lap, our hands intertwined—it was a natural position for us to settle into. we spent hours recounting the happier times of our relationship, talking far, far into the early morning hours. we were both the kind of people that exchanged very few words of affection, but when we did, it was always in the form of a love letter of sorts, either on college-ruled notebook paper or cards for special occasions. that last night, we talked about mailing each other one last love letter. i sent mine days later. he sent his a year later. and yes, this is the ex that i got back together with a year or so later.
for a while, words of affirmation and affection were something i absolutely craved and clung onto. i would be lying if i said that i don’t still thrive on them—it might be just an after-effect of being a late bloomer in the romantic relationship space. being liked and desired as an adult is hard to believe when during your formative years, you watched other girls get crushed on by your own crushes. my significant other would have to constantly affirm that yes, he was indeed attracted to me, and yes, i am a desirable person. and yet, i would never absorb these words, nor would i ever believe or accept them. having them in a form of a love letter was a physical reminder of their affections for me; i struggled with emotional permanence and love letters were my crutch.
in coming up with the idea of this newsletter, i was determined to write love letters to everyone who played a significant role in my life, regardless of if they were or are still present in my life. i drafted love letters to my friends, my family, my significant exes, and the person i was seeing at the beginning of this newsletter.
“why write love letters to people who aren’t in your life anymore?” i read somewhere that as we grow while in relationship, whether that relationship be platonic or romantic, our definition of love grows around the other person. if that other person leaves, there’s still a remnant of them in us, in our love and our heart. cheesy, i know. i used to think that if people left, it was more like a void, a hole, taking a part of myself with them. however, when you consider the big picture, it’s more like a unique, delicate piece of lace, with openings to allow light to shine through.
relationships that end shouldn’t only be seen as a failure. writing my love letter to that first ex was like a four-page reminder as to why i believed in us. this person had the privilege to make his mark twice in my half-assed analogy of love being a piece of lace. some openings are small, some are significant, all are necessary for the structure of it all.
i’m not planning on giving that first ex a second letter, but it definitely is written. i have other letter drafts saved, to give to people either on their birthdays, or just as a random gift. i used to be ashamed of showing people how much they’ve affected me or how much i like them—let’s be real, there’s still a tiny bit of shame tied to it—but everyone deserves to know how much they’re loved, even if my share in it is less significant than others. everyone deserves their flowers.
but writing love letters is for me, too—a reminder of the love and affection that is or was there. a practice of emotional permanence.
