Humanities Professor, Part 2

This is going to be a very long email.  I have a lot to say.  Some things I should have said sooner. Know that I’m saying it all from a place of love and respect, and from a sincere desire to clear this road block and put our frequencies back online.  If I say things that hurt you, please give me the benefit of the doubt and know that hurting you is among the last things in the universe that I would want to do.

I saw a news story once in which a woman’s car had caught fire under the hood while she remained trapped inside.  Her leg was caught under the dash some how, and despite multiple efforts, Samaritans on the scene were unable to free her.  The fire reached the passenger compartment, and the woman’s hair began to singe as the fire and heat crept nearer her.  A driver passing by had seen what was happening, and ran to the woman with a fire extinguisher.  He was able to push the fire back long enough for others to finally free her from the wreckage.  As she tumbled out of the car and to the ground, she wrapped herself around the legs of the man who brought the fire extinguisher and wept, “I love you.”

In a similar way, I was trapped under the dashboard of my life, my faith subscription, my marriage, my job, my family, and my own understanding of myself.  Your class dislodged something in me that allowed me to escape that and have a life worth living.  So when I tell you that you have affected me deeply or that I have affection for you, this is where the depths of it lie.  I love you as that woman loved the man who helped her escape that burning wreckage.  Every moment of every day of the rest of her life would be touched by that man who saved her.  That is the love that I have for you that has depth and strength that can never be uprooted.  This is from where the blossoms of our friendship have grown and will continue to grow.

That is certainly a different kind of love than that of lovers.  Do I love you as a lover?  I think I do, but I don’t know.  I’ve always believed that one must be loved back to truly love, and since your affection for me is muddled then I can’t really know.  I do know that I am as physically attracted to you as I have ever been.  When we’re together and that holding back isn’t there, I feel absolute joy.  I know that I think of you even when I shouldn’t.  I want good things for you. I want to do things that I know would make you happy. I want you to share in important moments in my life.  I want to be near you.  I know the thought of you with someone else feels like my insides become stone.

When you first contacted me on New Years Eve, I was surprised at how readily you were sharing personal things with me.  You’d always kept at least a semblance of professional distance and kept your private life private for the most part.  I was delighted and honored when you began opening up to me in such personal ways.  I felt as if, for once, I had something valuable to offer you in repayment for all you’d ever given me.

I knew you were vulnerable, and so I tried to be very careful to be your friend only and not let my ever-smoldering attraction for you sneak into the dialogue.  When I first began to realize that you were saying things that implied that you cared for me more deeply than a friendship, I told myself that it was just my wishful thinking.  But it grew more and more apparent until I had to acknowledge that either you were interested in seeing me as a woman or I was completely delusional.  That was the weekend I came to Chico.  I had told you that I had questions that I was afraid to ask and that your email answered it.  You did want to see me, and I’ve already told you what I thought that first night.  It wasn’t until breakfast the next morning, as we were sitting at the table and you were so cautious about telling me that you had considered suicide that I knew that I wanted to be with you and that this was the most magical thing I could ever have dreamed.  I thought that our mutual respect, affection, and friendship were too valuable to both of us for either of us to act carelessly.  This is why I trusted that even though you were still suffering over Alice and Shirley (his ex wife), that you wouldn’t have engaged me in this way if you weren’t certain that you wanted it — that you wanted me.

Those first two weeks of together were absolute bliss for me.  I will always have a picture in my mind of the way you looked at me the night of my birthday as you laid a kiss on my bosom and then put your head down on my chest.  I stroked your hair and thought that God must be real and that there really had been a plan all along, and this is what it was.

It was the next day that you realized Alice had deleted you from Facebook.  I went to Kairos the next week and our conversations were wonderful, but it was when I got home from Kairos I first began to feel some distance.  I don’t really know what it was, initially.  Briefer emails, I think.  Much less personal.  I began to feel anxious, but my anxiety always makes me question myself.  Do I really have a reason to be concerned, or am I just worrying as ever?  You assured me that you were “here and not going anywhere, and everything would be all right.”  That comforted me.

Then came the second visit to my place.  You were only staying one night, and I wanted to soak you in and convince myself that the distance I was feeling was my imagination.  But it was there, still.  And when I asked you about it, you said that you were hesitant to move forward.  My heart-ears heard “I don’t think I want to be with you,” and I became afraid and emotional.  I shared my fears with you, one of them being that I was afraid that you would go home and start withdrawing yourself from me.  You shook your head and said no, and that comforted me.

But then we had that day or two of static on our frequency.  I was so confused.  Things that I had said to you in past emails that had given you strength and brought tears to your eyes now seemed to make you uneasy and you questioned whether it was you I saw or some fantasy of you like what Alice had created.  I felt like nothing I could say would fix it.  I just kept digging a deeper hole.  I finally decided that I needed to just drop this topic and move on.  You had said you weren’t going anywhere.  You had said that you wouldn’t withdraw from me.  I needed to deal with my insecurities on my own and find a way to sculpt this misstrike into us.  But then you did withdraw, Paul.  No more affectionate names.  No more roosters or wolves or birds or butterflies.  No more “I think of you,” or “did you think of me?”  And I wondered if my insecurities broke us.  I tried to pretend I didn’t notice and just go on as I would have anyway.  I hoped if I just chilled out a while, you’d see that while I might have my moments of mild crazy, for the most part, I’m a rational, thoughtful human being and you would come back.

Then came your day of sadness for Alice.  Hurt.  Fear.  Anxiety.  Deep breaths.  This isn’t about his feelings for me.  This is something else, and I need to be his friend first.  I have tried to be.  I have tried to keep the hurt and the sadness and the loss to myself because I haven’t wanted to pressure you or make you feel guilty or bad in any way.  Even when you told me that you’d had contact with her, I wanted it to be a good thing for you.

On Saturday you kissed me on time.  But you kissed me, so I thought that maybe you just didn’t like public displays.  I looked forward to bedtime.  Always before we had talked and cuddled and kissed.  Then you got into my bed and put your back to me.  But you were in my bed, and snuggled up to me, so I was just confused and sad and missing you even though you were right there with me but not.

It felt like you had made up your mind that you did not want to be my lover but hadn’t made your way around to telling me this.  I’ve looked for each email from you these past couple of weeks with simultaneous anticipation and dread.  Maybe there will be some scrap of affection tossed my way.  Maybe this will be the one in which he tells me that it was all a misunderstanding and he never meant for us to be more than friends in the first place.

I knew when I asked you about next weekend on the phone and you said, “I don’t know,” that you did know but prefer to communicate in writing.  You didn’t say much in your email that I hadn’t expected you to say but it hurt me all the same.  I wanted to tell you that you haven’t given us a fair chance.  I wanted to tell you that I am sorry if I came on too strong and frightened you away.  I wanted to tell you that Alice says things to you that make her feel better without any thought to what they would do to you and that you need to get angry with her or you will never get over her.  I wrote and wrote and rewrote and revised and deleted and wrote again trying to convey to you how much I care for you, regardless of what shape our relationship takes, but that I want a fair shot at being something because it all still feels so magical and beautiful to me.

So when I woke and there was no email, I panicked.  As much as my logical mind knows that you want me in your life in some capacity, my irrational mind felt like you were saying, “It’s over,” and I felt dread and cold darkness.  I sent you a text message hoping you would send back some comforting words, but your email just confused me more.  More distance and more waiting.  So I sent another text and we know how that went.

Yesterday was so dark, Paul.  Each time I thought the rain had stopped, I’d look up and more would be falling.  I brought all the dogs inside.  They took turns laying in my lap and licking my face.  It continued to rain even through the night.  It stopped sometime before I woke this morning.

In the span of two emails and ten hours, you have brought up three past lovers in the context of our relationship.  The thing about Shirley hurt me a great deal.  I regret what I said.  I regretted it before I even knew you’d read it.  I tried to apologize before you read it.  I don’t make a habit of blurting before thinking, but I stumbled.  Then you told me how lovingly you tried to communicate with Alice despite how deeply she hurt you.  Sometimes I wish I could be a damsel in a tower so that you would want to comfort me and protect me in the way you want to her.  I was trying to communicate lovingly with you.  I have always tried to communicate my love for you by keeping my hurt to myself and trying to give you the space you need to figure things out.  Then it was the friend with whom you tried to be lovers.  I feel like I’m fencing with ghosts from your past all at once and with a blunted weapon.  I just want a chance to see if this could be as wonderful as I believe it could be.  I don’t need the physical part to feel loved by you, but I need the sweetness and silliness and wolfishness.  I need our frequency back online.

I want to send this now, but my heart, head, and stomach hurt.  I don’t want this to feel like blaming or accusations or anything that implies fault.  I just want you to know what this has felt like for me so that you might understand the things I’ve said and done a little better.  I hope you read it with the loving voice with which I truly tried to write it.

No matter what happens, I will always want you in my life.  I too look forward to our study of Catholicism.  When we’ve sated ourselves on that, I’d like to read some books on Eastern religions.  I have other Young Adult fiction to recommend as well.

With all of my heart,
Love, peace, and always,
Jenna

He wrote to me and apologized.  It basically came down to too much baggage on both of our parts.  For a long time I wondered if it wasn’t at least partly that I’d gained weight since the college days.  We big girls always wonder if that’s part of our rejection.

We remain friends, still.  He’s still trying to find the right woman.  He’s over 60, now, so he feels that time is running out.