Some Secrets Were Meant to Be Told

Alex,

I heard our song today. It made me want to hear your voice again. Remember how we always used to call when we heard it on the radio? We ended up calling each other at all hours of the night. Remember the night you called my house at two in the morning and my dad almost had a heart attack, and made us promise that there would be no more early morning calls? Then I remembered that you were on the other side of the country, and that I hadn’t spoken or written to you in months. You wrote to me every day for the first month or so, and every time you signed the letters with, “I miss you.” Then your letters started coming less often, but you always signed them with “I miss you,” up until your last letter. You said that you weren’t going to write me anymore until you heard from me. I guess I already know I’m not going to send this letter anyways. So this is my goodbye, even though you won’t ever see it. It’s just like all the other letters that I wrote to you and never sent. I just can’t bring myself to mail them. I have so many things that I want to say to you that I just can’t. Your letters are always so descriptive and so beautifully written, that it breaks my heart that I won’t ever get to read another one. But if you are waiting for my answer, you won’t have to worry about writing to me again. You deserve an explanation that I can’t provide. So I guess this is goodbye my love.

Megan.

As I signed my name at the bottom, I vowed to myself that I wasn’t going to send it. I would just file it away with the rest of the letters that Alex had written. I had responded to every single one of them, but I had never sent them. It wasn’t that they were too revealing or anything, it was just that if I responded it would open back up communication between us. Along with that communication, all the hurt of being on the other side of the country, and not being able to be with her would come back too. I decided that it was better to just cut everything off. I would rather have no contact with her, than talk to her, and yet not be able to hold her in my arms, and wake up with her beside me in the morning.

When I moved across the county I had no idea what I was leaving behind. I was leaving the woman that loved me more than the world, and I realize now, that I loved her more than I could ever out into words. I might have been scared that my father was going to find out about us, but I shouldn’t have let that ruin the one thing that meant the most to me in my life, my relationship with Alex. I feel like I failed Alex in the same way that my father described how he failed my mother. He ran out on my mother while she was pregnant with James, my younger brother. He always says he was only pursuing his own happiness, at whatever the cost.

I did the exact same thing. I ran from the woman I loved, because I loved her so much. I felt that I wasn’t good enough for her. She was so perfect, and beautiful, and graceful. Then there was me, a closeted lesbian, who was too fucking scared to be happy. I wasn’t out, and there was a good chance that I never would be. With such a homophobic father I was pretty much stuck in the closet. I didn’t want her to have to deal with a closeted girlfriend. She deserves a love this heart can not provide. So I took a job on the other side of the country. I would rather have ripped my heart out of my chest with my bare hands than have left Alex, but I had to get away, I just had to. That’s why I can’t write back to her. I managed to get those feelings bottled up and hidden away. Sending that letter would be like opening Pandora’s Box.

So I folded the letter I had written in half and stapled it to the one Alex had written. Then I pulled out my tin box that Alex had given me the Christmas the year we met. It was letter sized, meant to hold stationary, but it was Pon and Zi, our favorite cartoon characters. It said “If I can’t hear your heart beat you’re too far away.” I thought that it was appropriate for the situation, so I kept all Alex’s letters and my responses in it. Maybe one day she would know that I had responded to every single one of her letters, but that day wasn’t going to be any time soon.