Preface
This is the letter I wrote to the younger version of me who was hurt from the divorce of a four-year marriage that she got stuck to the past and became jaded about love. I call her Allysa, a young lady living my age from eighteen to twenty four. It was a golden period when I traveled across the continents from China to this country, fell in love fearlessly, believed in true love unwaveringly, and gave out all my love unconditionally. Allysa, like most young adults, experienced all the ups and downs in a relationship and eventually got married because she loved her partner whole-heartedly. As time went by, she felt drained without equal emotional reciprocation. So she doubted love, questioned marriage, and felt nothing but sadness from the man she has been with for seven years, believing that marriage was the tomb of love, that reality would ultimately annihilate romance as passion flagged, and that all of her past relationships ended because the other party did not love her the way she did. As a result, Allysa disappeared after giving birth to me when the long-term relationship was over. The only proof of her presence was the occasional wail and rebuke with savage vitriol against love when I watched a romantic movie, heard a beautiful song about soulmates, or watched happy couples on the street. I held pieces of her memories, heard about her stories, but did not go through her journey physically or understand her feelings along the way. I believe she is lost somewhere in the past. So here comes the letter in an effort to lead Allysa out of the morass before her voice further sabotages my life when it comes to love.
Dear Allysa,
I can’t tell you how excited I am as I tamped down the keyboards and wrote this letter to you. I don’t think we’ve ever talked and I apologize for this long-awaited communication. I am Fan who is living in the present moment, and I’ve noticed that I lost you probably since the end of last year. I’m writing to reconnect and break you free, so we can enjoy the ride of the exciting future together.
I felt your presence today as I revisited the reality show “Love is Blind” after dropping it for a week. I heard you ranting “This is stupid. These people are going to get a divorce if they get married. They do not match at all and they are just doing it for the show!”. To be honest, this is not the first time you’ve lambasted me for watching that show or feeling anything related to love that seems too good to be true. Your voice was so strong that I put the show on respite for a week. But today I want to face you, your attitude, and your intermittent censures against love. I want to have a heart-to-heart conversation with you, because I’ve come to realize that I cannot live and enjoy my life to its fullest without addressing your problems and having you as my companion.
Allysa, I know you are stuck somewhere in the past and I want to tell you that you have every reason to retrieve and hide after what you’ve been through. Getting a divorce with someone you’ve thrown your heart to for seven years is hard. You told people that this experience gave you tremendous shame and ignominy because you’ve failed a major lesson at the school of life, with marriage being the biggest failure among all of the subjects. That you were embarrassed and your parents would be ashamed for not seeing their daughter graduate like everybody else with a happy partner and a few children.
You know what? You’ve stayed in your cocoon of disappointment for so long that you’ve missed your graduation ceremony. Your education is over when you say that I’ve learned enough and it is over. So I’m handing you your degree right now to celebrate this belated moment of graduation with a proud announcement to the world, to your parents, and to your peers, that Allysa has officially graduated and excelled everyone’s expectations with an exceptional GPA in the school of marriage. You’ve given your heart genuinely and unconditionally to this marriage that every meal you made was fraught with love and dedication; that every trip with your partner was planned with meaning and celebration; that every house party you hosted was blazingly warm and fun. With a puppy to raise, a giant house to steward, a career to develop, and a partner to support, you’ve achieved so much in this relationship that you gave me a winged heart to embrace freedom and a richer lens to see the world on my own. You set me free the moment you left your marriage, and fashioned me into a strong, independent, and compassionate woman who appreciates and enjoys all of the abundance that you have created. If there’s anything lacking in my life, that’d be you.
That is why I came to find you. I’ll try my damndest to pull you out of the dire darkness of pain, because healing you means saving myself. The deeper you sank into the mire of grief, the harder I felt the smithereens of your smashed heart and I balked at my life journey feeling empty inside and discombobulated to the road ahead. Allysa, it’s been so long since you came out of your shell and I don’t want you to stay there for too long, because you deserve the chance to experience the bounty of freedom you’ve created for us. I know you feel safer in your own citadel but I don’t want you to become a monument to the past, and I know that part of you is not frozen and it is yearning for my attention. Every condemnation you made towards love gives me hope. It shows me that the overachiever in the school of marriage is still out there and she has just as much love as her pain. Your pain is not eating your love but is domineering it under its shadow. Why not preclude the brute of pain you’ve tirelessly besieging and let love shine for a while? I think you’ll feel relieved and lightened.
My earthly presence is shorter than yours, but one thing I firmly believe is that your love is always there, no matter how hard you try to hold back, so magnanimous that it transcends time and location to support my existence and draws me back to you. It imbues warmth to my heart and builds marvelous connections to my life that are solid and fulfilling. I want you to enjoy those connections as much as I do and I want you to believe that your participation will add unprecedented colors to the bonds.
You might think that my free-spirited temperament means you are not needed in my life, but that’s not true. I can never love romantically like you did in the past, and I sincerely invite you to teach me your fierce and rich love again. I promise you a safe place in this world I manifested where your vulnerability is protected by the fortress of resilience and your giving will always be reciprocated with my appreciation. Would you hold my hands and give your love out like you did before?
You are an inseparable part of me and I’ll never be my true self without you. So please let me take you to the light and give me a chance. Try dating me like you did with full bursts of passion, and I’ll show you that the “stupid” reality show has some theories that might be true. That love is blind if you don’t see it through your eyes, but feel it from your heart. That true love does exist against society’s preoccupation of material possession and financial wealth. That you were fully loved in your marriage but you refused to believe, because you didn’t love yourself enough.
X.O.X.O.
Fan
Coming up next…
Letter to Allysa (Part II): Allysa wrote back asking how she could get out of the misery. Fan shared her perspectives and advice to people living in their twenties, untangling the mystery of pain and growth, which eventually set Allysa free.
