Open letter to a beloved one

Dear Kerstin, my dearest one,

I should be studying right now, but I cannot stop thinking about you and about what could have happened to you in the last… 13 years.

We were both 25 years old as we met for the first time. For me, it was love at first sight. It might not interest you, but I never felt the same for another woman again, in my whole life. You were there, dark, aggressive, as pale as Death, with your black makeup and your punk attitude. You never respected rules. You had your ones. I can recall my heartbeat racing as I got to know that I would have shared the same room with you. And Simone. Paradoxically, years later I had sex with Simone, and she was my first, sweet and wonderful lesbian lover, while I always desired you and never managed even to kiss you.

You were my mentor in everything which helped me destroy myself. You taught me how to cut myself deeper, you wanted to lock yourself in the bathroom with me to get drunk, and in the end, despite they had explicitly forbidden this to you, you had your lip pierced, and so did I.

I started dressing like you, acting like you, bitching like you. You took me out a couple of times to a gay bar, a place I did not know. I have a sweet memory of the time we spent together there, since we did not get drunk but had time to speak. People thought we were a couple. In fact, as you said the last time I saw you (the only time in which you proposed me to spend the night with you, and I refused), you wanted to tell me you had feelings for me. I did not have feelings, I was madly in love with you. But still, you were lingering in memories about your last girlfriend, and your feelings remained unexpressed, and my love just vain.

You did a great damage to me. To my self-esteem, to my trust in women and more generally in people, and because of you I rejected people who might have become good friends or maybe also more than just friends. But as soon as I saw you for the first time, all my doubts about my being homosexual were gone. For a long time, before knowing you, I tried to compel myself into being straight, because being straight in a mostly homophobe world is easier than being gay. I wanted to be “normal”. I tried to look at men and find something attractive in them. I forced myself into loving my ex boyfriend, with whom I was still together, but nothing compared to you.

I still remember your voice as if you had spoken to me yesterday. Your typical Swiss accent, your smile while playing with cigarettes pretending they were joints, and your dreams about studying pedagogy and come out of the dark tunnel that your life had become. I can just hope you achieved your goals. The good ones. Indeed, as soon as you had become a cocaine addict, you started talking about “living the punk life”, and this for you was begging for some money on the street to buy drugs with peers and live from one dose to the next one. Obviously, I could not share your point of view, even if I was not in a better state of mind than you. I was a wreck, psychotic most of the time and absolutely not in control, but I never did hard drugs (I just smoked hashish for some time) and my dreams were, well, they were everything I am doing right now. University, success, friends, a position, respect. I just miss a girlfriend in my life, and, honestly, I still wish this girlfriend was you. Absurd, isn’t it?

Absurd, because I guess you do not even remember me. I was never important. Or maybe you had love stories with every possible girl apart from me because you wanted to show me some respect? I want to think it was for that reason, even if I doubt.

I would like to conclude with a promise. I will look for you. On social media, on whatever means I can use to find you. I will not insist, but I want to make an attempt. Because after all, I still miss you.

Forever yours,
Flaminia