Cplow Esther,
you can’t even imagine how many versions of this letter exist.
It took me 3 years to write it, each time changing the question as I processed the pain.
The gods have not given me the gift of synthesis but I try anyway:
University classmates under 25 fall in love: GAS, raging hormones, some scenes, very much in love, they dream of cohabitation and a future together in the magical world of adults, those graduates who work and make a lot of money.
Cut: 5 years later, at the threshold of 30 or so of money you can’t even see the shadowin his case his degree is also missing, we still live with mum and dad and we see each other for pizza on Wednesdays between one alcoholic evening with his friends and another.
It will no longer be a GAS but perhaps it is a PAQ: he is my best friend, my family, my rock, the person I dream of a future with.
Maybe this is real life, maybe, by waiting, things will change.
While waiting, only a phone call arrives, on an August afternoon when I’m on the beach far from home: “I’m over 30, the others are moving on, I’m not, we’re not. I’m confused, I don’t know what I want and if I want it with you. It’s better if we don’t talk for a while, we will surely resolve everything because our relationship is special”
I’ll never see him again.
The bad relationships, the very bad ones
After a month of insomnia, lack of appetite, tears, disbelief and waiting for a call that will never come I’m looking for it.
A dry, cold message: the decision is final, he wishes me many good thingswhen the dust settles we will certainly become great friends but now we need to make a clean break.
Of course he, however, really has the gift of synthesis.
It doesn’t take me long to find outand his confusion has a name, a surname, blond hair and a 7 year old girl who already calls him dad.
Dark.
kg lost, crying, very long nights, feelings of guilt, junk food, binge watching, kg (many) gained back, bursts of pride, sessions at the hairdresser, questionable online shopping, more crying, psychotherapy.
I discover that he was hiding many things from me, which he wrote to my friends to try, who sold hot photos and videos of compliant girls online.
Relationships that leave their mark
More crying, more psychotherapy, travel, new friends, sports, new projects, even a new love.
And now? Now that we know we’ve dodged a landmine? Sarratore has left the scene, you are finally better, perhaps you are happier than before, sometimes a sincere “thank goodness” hovers in your thoughts when you look back.
What could you want from Ester?
I would like to know why 3 years, 3 governments, 3 doses of vaccine, countless variants of covid later and I’m still here with many questions.
I wonder why I can’t pass by his house (600 meters from mine), why he jumps if I see someone who looks like him, why he spends a night crying at the news of the joint mortgage with the other.
I wonder if this absence will remain so present, if this silence will make all this noise inside me forever.
I wonder if every now and then, as he lives his fantastic new life and bites into a madeleine, something from the 6 years we spent together comes to mind.
I blame myself for everything: if I had behaved differently now, like many exes, we could almost have a civil relationship and not cause discomfort among all our acquaintances or live avoiding shops/restaurants or entire neighborhoods for fear of meeting up.
Doubt continues to hurt me
I wonder if all this isn’t actually still love, whether it is correct towards my current partner, whether the time has come to drink the water of the river Lethe and forget or whether I should take courage and write a message with yet another peace offering that will remain with a double blue tick.
I’m better, I’m stronger, but colliding with that wall of ice again scares me a lot.
Feel? To tell yourself what now that everything is irremediably lost, different, now that there are other loves, other homes and other dreams that it wouldn’t be right and it wouldn’t be good to ruin?
Stealing Kate Winslet’s line in a film that he loved very much and that I had never understood: “At least go back and invent a goodbye”.
Thank you for what you have unknowingly done for me with your words over the last 3 very hard years.
If you want to scold me I will understand.
No, no, no, no not yet.
Ester Viola’s response
Dear B.,
Reread. Do you see that it’s all over? Can you see how well you did?
Subtly, in the email, you can glimpse some glimmer of fun (let’s call it that), for example here: Queen Elizabeth has died, Berlusconi has also died but I’m still here.
And I reassure myself. Because taking the things that made us bleed, and placing them between the words so as to bring out half a smile means that we are fine, more or less fine, almost fine or on the way to forgetting our troubles. Meanwhile this. Let’s feel better together. It’s over, even if you don’t think it’s over.
Defective Relationships «How do you get over a Nino Sarratore?»
People who don’t call, affectionless people, Marsican bears, rare and not rare beasts.
There is always someone, behind us, three years ago, ten years ago, who seems like who knows who, who knows who.
Our Charlie. You will have read High fedelity, I hope. There’s your Nino Sarrarore. Nino Sarratore was called Charlie in the 90s.
No one ever like Charlie. Then Rob sees her again.
Exhausting relationships: read High Fidelity
The fact that Charlie talks nonsense all evening doesn’t help; she doesn’t listen to anyone, she persists in moving the conversation to unusual, unexpected topics, and she assumes all kinds of accents, but all of them unrecognizable and inappropriate. I wish I could say that these mannerisms are new, but they are not; they were already there before, years ago. Once upon a time I saw that inability to listen to others as a strength of character, that obstinacy on peregrine topics seemed like a mystery to me, I found that obsession with constantly changing accents fascinating. How could I have erased Charlie’s flaws all these years? How could I see it as the answer to all my problems? N. Hornby. High fidelity Guanda.
Absence does this and more, my dear. And no one is saved at that age. A card from the deck touches you, here are the seven aces as opposed to relationships:
Long distance love.
Written love.
Unrequited love.
Requited love with several.
The maybe friend, the maybe not straight.
The ex who is with someone else.
The one who was with someone else before, the married/already engaged one.
You can do it
What I know, B., is that then you have to grow up. We tell ourselves that love is an exception, it conquers everything, it dictates every law, that we must give in to it and surrender under the wall. It’s fine a couple of times, but at the third time one can also go in a stubborn and opposite direction. Resist. Start commanding the weak parts. Fix them. Grow. They tell you no, it can’t be done. It can certainly be done. Or at least, I know people who have.
After a certain number of rip-offs, they tell you, after you have dug the excavable there is the bottom. Which isn’t how they paint it. There is an inscription on the bottom, I think dating back to Sophocles. And he says: “And what do we do now? Any other ideas apart from falling in love again like in Dawson’s Creek?”.
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