The Woman In The Letters

Niosha Dance Company performs in their Mother's Day Celebration, May 12, 2008. Photo by Faranak Ravon, Iranian.com.

I saw a picture somewhere and I was sure I had seen it before in one of the "forwards" I routinely receive. I went to my hotmail account to search for it, and typed in a word I thought would bring up that email. I wasn't ready for the flood of memories which were displayed on the screen. For some reason, the search had resulted in a list of my old emails, dating as far back as 2001. They were mostly love letters, exchanged between me and a man I once loved. I guess they hadn't been detected during a "clean-up" project I had done a year ago.

I sat in my chair, transfixed, rolling up and down the list, page after page, looking at the subject lines of the notes, the only thing evident from the messages inside. I didn't want to look at those messages again, containing sentiments and feelings and thoughts a few years beyond their "best by" date. The mystery and the joy inside those notes had long disppeared, and now all the feelings expressed inside were represented by a simple "I love you," "I miss you," and "Thinking of you," and a whole lot of "no subject" notes, which had obviously been written and transmitted in haste, telling the other something which couldn't bear the extra seconds it would take to type a subject line.

My eyes welled up with tears, running down my face. Why was I crying? They weren't tears of regret or sadness, I thought. I didn't miss the man behind those notes, not anymore. Where were those tears coming from then? And then I understood the reason, all of a sudden. I was missing myself, the woman that I was in those letters, loved and in love. I longed for the simplicity of expressing love and desire for someone who had a real presence in my life, someone worth the trouble of writing to everyday. I missed the woman in the letters. I dried my eyes long enough to select those notes and click on "delete."