2nd Letter: Raphael

The morning was a rush. Her family was, as usual, running late for their flight to San Francisco so they were constantly running about like headless chickens, phantomly clucking about the time. She, on the other hand, had all her luggage arranged and was more than ready. She was simply waiting for them to tell her that it was finally time to go.

She went back to her room one last time; her beloved sanctum that would soon be abandoned to accommodate distant cousins and relatives that would stay to look after their house. How she would be missing this place. As soon as their dad arranges for them to live with him, the stay may become permanent. Their family would be whole again; whole but far far away from home.

She sank into her bed and remembered just how soft it was. Oh, how she’d lie there every night, wide awake and unable to sleep, then she’d take that precious picture that she had stowed away from a friend’s wallet and hold it close to her. At that moment, everything would simply be alright. She took the same picture from her bag and looked at him. He was smiling there, smiling for her only.

From the sala the frantic voice of her mother called for her, telling her to hurry – please damn hurry – so that they wouldn’t miss their flight. She obeyed and headed out towards their van.

###

The insistent buzzing of the speakers that nagged the passengers to board their respective flights was deafening, especially since her mother was doing her own broadcasting, scolding them for nth time for being late. She didn’t want to speak, savoring the small breath of peace in her silence. It had just been just a day since she left school, but it had seemed as if an eternity had already passed.

He hadn’t called nor replied in some way. It must’ve been just as she had always feared. You’re so stupid, Julia.

“Julia! Julia!” she turned and walked towards her mother’s direction, her head downcast. “Stay close would you! Go off daydreaming again and we’d never get on that plane!”

She looked up, saw the vein at her mother’s temple throb and just turned away. There was more than enough of that kind of stress for a day. Loose conversations and farewell wishes flitted through her mind as she tried to preoccupy herself with the thought of living in another country instead of thinking about her mother’s haranguing… and about the letter. She tried to envision the spear-shaped leaves of spring-time trees lining those boulevards, of the foreign stores and the tourist sights, but the memory of her hand guiding her pen carefully as she wrote on that piece of paper kept on bobbing up in her mind.

She decided to place her gaze elsewhere and look for a more tangible distraction. So many people walked around, so many lights, so many things moving and moving around… and then she saw a familiar face, and everything seemed to fade.

He was walking; looking for something; searching for someone… they were so far yet so impossibly close. She couldn’t speak, her voice caught in her throat; she could only stare at him as he walked. Then finally, he looked towards her direction. When he saw her he stopped and stared. At that moment she wanted to go to him, but he just stood there, looking at her. Not moving. Not speaking. Just seeming like an austere statue looking at her looking back at him. He did nothing and she was left to stare at those eyes that she’d miss so much.

At the far end of her consciousness she heard monotonous announcements fill the air and vaguely felt her mother pulling her away, taking her into the boarding hall. Everything, every sight and sound seemed to slip inside a vacuum, infinitely making no sense. She closed her eyes and felt herself allow her mother to snatch her from the aching that was dampening her thoughts.

Farther and farther away from him she went, and within her sudden oblivion all that she had hoped for was the simple sound of someone calling her name, and she would run to him, but the sound never came.

She drew away and still he just lingered there. So utterly unmoving that the image of him stuck out like a splotch of grime amidst perfect white sheets in a picture that was littered with people hurrying across the halls, walking here and there towards coffee shops, lining up to get in boarding halls and scanning booths with multi-color displays for toys and confectionary presents.

Finally the monotonous announcements ceased.

###

She settled on her window-side seat while inwardly battling with the tears that were vainly trying to escape from her eyes.

“Is there anything wrong?” her mother asked, now thankfully calm and suddenly once again more parent-like.

“No,” she said and absently rubbed her eyes, pretending as though dirt was caught in her thick lashes, and then averted her glance to the small porthole. “Just missing my friends, I guess.”

“Hey, sis, I almost forgot. I took the mail before we left, there are lots for you,” her sister said as she unzipped her bag and handed her an inch-thick pile of letters. “Mom was so psyched out that I forgot to tell you about it.”

She smiled absently and took the letters. Neon envelopes, characteristically colored according to her specific friends’ tastes, hurt her eyes. She shuffled through the others and found that some were pastel, most baby blue or baby pink, and all of them were scented. That’s why when she saw the simple white envelope with a simple print of her name she took notice. She took the letter out and began to read it.

While her eyes went across the words she was smiling yet crying at the same time, and when she finished it she just couldn’t help but let tears stream down from her eyes.

She stared at the letter that was slowly tearing her heart into irreplaceable pieces then gazed with incomparable regret at the sight of the airport turning into a miniature rendition of the actual place as the airplane zoomed up into the sky. How so plainly it reminded her that she can no longer turn back; that she had not turned back when she still could.

“Dear Julia,

I hope that you’d read this letter on time. I feel so stupid to not have at least told you what I feel for you and I know that I’ll always regret the time that I wasted without telling you all this.

I admired you from the first time you sat there next to me. You were almost perfect. I loved watching your eyes sparkle when you laugh and how you smile so brightly. You’re just so beautiful, almost too beautiful for me to grasp the reality that you were real. But now I know that even if I had my eyes closed all this time I would still feel the same way, because I saw your beauty outside as well as inside. I saw how beautiful, how real you are, that I need not think why I have fallen so deeply for you.

Later on I realized that you had your flaws. Yes, you had your crazy moods, your baggy-eyed mornings, your silent tantrums, your bad hair days, but somehow I have seen beyond that and now these are things that could only make you more endearing. I cherish them because they make you more real.

This is quite hard to explain. My heart beats for you; I have no other words for it, but in this strange way, I feel you in there. When I’m beside you, when I utter even the beginnings of a single word, when I wouldn’t even dare to hold your hand but dare to think it – my heart seem to beat faster and faster, filling my veins more and more with this unexplainable passion.

I cannot define what love truly is, but I guess that it cannot simply be a feeling of need and want, because you’ll live even if you do not have these things. Merely needing and wanting leads to selfishness, because they only aim to satisfy a person. I must admit that I need and I want you, but why do I seem to feel that I would die in a life without you in it? That it serves something beyond satisfaction. Maybe that’s love. Maybe it’s something that gives us a gift beyond existence…it makes us learn how to live.

Then I guess that I do love you.

What you are is the reason for the pulsing of my beating heart…and that made me so afraid. I know that you’d be going off to another country after this school year. That crushed my hopes, so I held back, thinking that if I tell you what I feel I may not be able to let you go anymore or that I may have to face the reality that you simply do not love me. I mean, who am I beside you? But despite this thought I was so horrified when I looked into your eyes and thought I saw there tenderness when you looked back at me. Knowing how it could possibly end and what frustration a false assumption could bring, I harbored the fantasy that I would be beside you always in that small classroom…that my dreaming would never cease. But my dread grew and the more that it grew the more I realized that I’m falling helplessly deeper.

Time passes. I know that it’ll never stop moving and I know that the time when you’d have to go would come. But I just couldn’t live with the thought of me not telling you how I feel. I would be willing to endure what pain there is of accepting the reality that you may not feel the same way, but I know that I cannot endure waking up each morning and feel nothing, because my heart had stopped beating.

All that I could say is that I love you Julia. Beyond time, beyond emotion, beyond words, beyond existence…I love you. When it really began, when I realized it, why it is so, I have no way of knowing, but know simply that I do.

If you love me, meet a happy man at the airport tomorrow and he’ll tell you never to go away again. He’ll hold you tight in his embrace and tell you the most honest thing that he knows…that he loves you and that he’d never leave you. But if you do not love me, just cast down your eyes and grieve for a broken man who, at least for a moment’s time, saw himself in the eyes of the one he truly cares for.

Regret nothing, Julia. Whatever choice that lies within your heart I shall accept, for it is from you and it is who you are that I’ve come to love.

Raphael’