Could you fall in love with someone you never met, saw or spoke to? Sounds unlikely?
***
Ella is an overworked college student whose only plan is to complete her degree swiftly & proficiently. Sounds simple en...
It was as if time stopped as Ella tried to adhere the meaning of what she had just found out. The cold that she didn't notice before was now seeping under her clothes, her heartbeat was loud, louder than her breath they echoed within her body which seemed like it was but an empty pitcher with nothing on the inside.
She still held the letter in her hands, it was thick and heavy and the only thing left to do now was to read it as she found herself a seat. She blinked the haziness away and forced herself to focus, slowly her eyes lowered again and traced the words.
01-Nov-2018
Dear Ella,
You are right. I know who you are. I have not been honest with you.
I've known since I wrote to you that very first letter. I know you enough to hear your dulcet voice in my head when I read your letters.
I suppose truth just has a way of revealing itself.
Today my hand shakes and the courage I gathered over the last few days seemed to have dissipated as I write this. I composed a letter late into the dark hours of the sleepless night as my mind strung words together like beads on a fragile thread, storing them in the deep recesses of my mind only to lose them entirely like a drop in an ocean.
I thought postponing this would somehow give me more time to prepare, but that wasn't easy, evidently, I haven't found any amicable words and I dread writing anything further, but it's something I must do- I must explain.
The day I lost my journal- to be honest, I had it with me because I was thinking of destroying it. Even though it felt better and in a way freeing to use it as a means of expression, it was also scary to write about my secrets and insecurities and all my mundane thoughts where someone can quite easily find them and have access to everything I wasn't ready to give.
Those secrets- they were meant to be earned and someone finding them without my consent was deeply disturbing. I was mad at myself when I realised I had lost it. I was going out of my mind with worry over what it could lead to.
And then I saw you.
You were sitting there on the stairs near the theatre building under the canopy, with that way too familiar journal open in your lap. You had a smile on your face as you snooped through the snippets I've written in a moment of weakness like it was no big deal.
That journal was supposed to be a safe space, a private sanctuary...but it wasn't that anymore, it was intruded and trespassed upon by you.
All my fears were coming true.
I felt utterly helpless and angry, standing there watching you with no courage in me to demand back what was rightfully mine. Instead, I remember feeling relieved that I never wrote my name or any specifics in there. I was apprehensive about such things because even though I had written that journal I didn't want it to be linked with me so directly, maybe it was a way for me to protect myself.
