Not All Love Letters Are Real, Not All Love is True
One evening, I asked my mom to tell me the story of how her and my dad met. She sat me down, pulled off her thick coat eroded with smoke, poured herself a dirty martini, and said, “Okay, but I don’t think that you will like it very much. I was working with this new company doing advertising, I had just gotten divorced from Ed, and your father’s desk was eminently close to mine. We hated each other,” she said. I was shocked and demanded to know why. She said it was just this feeling she got when around him, that bad feeling you get in the pit of your stomach that some may call intuition. I asked, if you hated him, why are you married to him?
My mother went on to tell me they had been paired up to go on all these business trips together, and as their time together grew, what was once hate became a friendship and once that faded, she fell in love with him. My mother was right, I did not like the story one bit.
She told me that my dad used to write her love letters while he was away on business. He would scrawl out in black ink his contemplation and admiration for her existence in relation to his own. They would go a little something like this.
Dear Sher,
I’m flying back from California as I write this, after being gone for three days. I can’t wait to see you. In lieu of a card I decided to write to you because I remember how much you like it and because I felt moved to do so. In anticipation of seeing you, I’m reminded of an old Sharon Old’s poem about a couple who’s separated on a beach for a long time. He’s gone swimming and should have returned by now, and she is worried about his safety. When she finally sees her lover walking up the beach toward her; she’s relieved and happy at the same time—struck by the fact that he looks somewhat different than she remembers. The final line of the poem, which goes something like “when someone is lost it is never quite the same person who returns,” is striking. On a deeper level, I see this as a recognition and affirmation of love. I’ve come to realize since falling in love with you that love adores and celebrates people as they are, while at the same time allowing for the inevitable changes in them or their love over time.
*
Perhaps these are the seeds for my growing love and fear for language, for words, for literature. Words, I learned from my father, can be used as the ultimate weapon of deception and mendacity. My mother was quite foreign to the notion that someone who is quite passionate and incredibly articulate does not equate to an honest man. As I grew older, my own fascination with writing began to unroll beneath me like a magic carpet—I didn’t want to abuse its mystical, ethereal qualities. I began to tremble at the thought of ink moving itself across the page. The sound of the clattering of a keyboard unearthed something from me; a chunk of me that I never wanted to face or to become—my father.
*
At night, my mother would fall asleep to Walt Whitman read to her in my father’s best voice until she fell into a deep sleep. He was an English major in college, but ended up selling Health Insurance. Growing up, bookshelves took over the entirety of the walls in our living room, right under the dusty fireplace that always remained unused. Lots of things in our house remained unused—the books, too, seemed to grow old before my eyes. I could hear their sobs and groans of broken pages, ripped seams, missing letters. Even I didn’t want to touch or go near them. I never saw my father pick up a book for pleasure. At some point, as we both grew older—he began to read self-help books. He began writing a memoir that he would share with me to edit, and I would share with him my writing in exchange. If he told me something was good; I really took it to heart. Despite my mother and countless strangers he had encountered in his lifetime, I could always see right through him. To me, he was a transparent glass figurine—rigid, cold, but easily breakable.
The first of January, my father’s affair was exposed. I knew my life and my family would never be the same again. My mother had suspected for a long time and, finally, when he was in the shower one morning, decided to go through his phone. Dirty texts scrolled through, her mouth was over her hand, her eyes hollowed out and ghostly. She shouldn’t have been surprised.
When he got out of the shower, my mother confronted him. He sat there with a smug smirk slapped on his face, and all he offered was, “You don’t want to know.” He never once apologized—and he took off to Minnesota where his mistress lived without any of his belongings. His ratty t-shirts and business suits still remain in the closet like ashes on a mantle. I would never see my father again. This I knew for certain and the realization of it lodged itself deep in my chest. It wasn’t the cheating, although that wasn’t forgotten. It was as if my father had been a struggling magician my whole life and, finally, while doing his last big trick of the night—his cards were all laid out in spades right before my eyes. It’s sort of like when you slowly start questioning whether Santa or God really exist, but you don’t want to stop believing in the possibility. Now I no longer had the option of living in denial. I couldn’t believe in him anymore.
*
My father has now begun writing me love letters—emails and texts resembling a false prophecy. I let myself read them over and sit with the lies. I refuse to be a blind sheep like my mother. In the beginning, my mother was flailing, getting wasted every night, mixing it with her sleeping pills, though she would always stay awake. Chain-smoking out of the balcony, I see fully that he has broken her slowly over time. The desire to put her back together is far too strong. The fear of false love begins to take over my fear of loneliness, even my fear of death. For now, I will stick to what is real. Sometimes, in moments of desperation, I will close my eyes as I walk down a quiet, deserted city sidewalk. I will feel the cement hard and unflinching beneath my feet. I will feel the wind blow through my entire body as I leave the window to my soul open for just a little too long. I will hear birds flying or, perhaps, cars idling. But when I open my eyes again, I can breathe once more. I am here. I am real.
Maddy Ipema is a poet, nonfiction essayist, and music freelance writer who is currently based in Chicago. She is a recent graduate from Columbia College Chicago, where she earned her BA in Creative Writing—and was awarded a certificate of merit from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association in its Gold Circle Awards of 2018 for her published short story, “Baby May.” She is a writer who utilizes her craft as a means to articulate her search for clarity, truth, and healing. Her work is often centered around exploring themes of deception, sensuality, and a profound search for identity. A writer who maneuvers from one genre and form to the next, whatever shape her writing takes is one that is meant to convey a search for meaning, self autonomy, and liberation. If you would like to explore more of her work, her music editorials articles can be found at RedRoll.com.