exciting, informative, snarky, and very likely fabricated tales of life as an american expat in london

the deepest well i’ve ever fallen into

by Jen at 7:02 pm on 1.11.2009 | 1 Comment
filed under: now *that's* love

the other day i was inspired to start clearing out my emails, i’m not sure why. rather predictably, somewhere along the way i fell into the rabbit hole of actually reading them, rather than deleting them. and in the course of that journey down memory lane, i found myself re-reading early emails between jonno and myself.

oh! those early emails! they so perfectly reflect that time of falling in love – falling, tumbling, helplessly, eagerly. the intense desire to both know and reveal everything, the apetite for the most personal details, the willing offering of scars and trust. the awkwardness of trying to figure out where all the pieces fit together, the coupling of couplehood, negotiating boundaries in a tangle of limbs and emotions. it makes my heart hurt to read them, they’re so raw, so needy, so vulnerable, so tentative, all at once. shyly reaching out a hand, the electricity when warm fingers meet and wrap firmly around your own. that freshness of desire that it always feels like you must be the *very first people* to ever discover. that this love is like no other love which has ever been, obliterating all past hurts, blocking out the past like it never was.

it all fades, of course. the rhythms and grooves become comfortably worn. as partners, you map out the terrain of smooth highways, rocky detours and dangerous relationship landmines to be traversed. the small triangle of freckles on their shoulder becomes as familiar to you as your own skin, habits and patterns fitting neatly into the shared life you construct together. the experiences melding together to become something thick and rich and deep with time. and you wouldn’t trade it for anything, really you wouldn’t.

but oh! those early emails! preserving in clumsy words the overwhelming excitement and nervousness of discovering a soul which complements yours so well. i thank god for those emails that, in their own fumbling, bumbling way, stand as record of a heady time we can never recapture, but which i can revisit with just a trip through my inbox.

you and i – wilco

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    Comment by A Free Man

    5.11.2009 @ 05:41 am

    I know that feeling. I’ve lost most of my early e-mails from my partner but I still have cards and letters and oh, the longing.

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