!

Letter to my Ex


Hi Mami

How are you doing? Let me just hope you are fine, otherwise I would have heard it through the grapevine if something nasty occurred. Anyway how are you Mami?

If I was an American I would consider you to be Osama Bin Laden because you are quite difficult to get. I reckoned nothing beats the old fashioned way – a letter, a simple letter. Good old letter. Simple words on paper.

I actually intended for this to be a four page letter but since I am helpless when it comes to words, I figured just this few words will do.

Just today I was watching the video I shot last year where the question you were asked was, ‘what is your definition of love?’, and I found your response kind of interesting. You said you were actually still learning and I guess you were right. It was now that I realised that it was the most honest response I got on the documentary. You are still learning and I think your honesty is priceless.

Allow me to use the next paragraph to fill some couple of puzzle pieces to complete the picture. I trust you will appreciate my wisdom, it sounds rather recycled but I learnt it from the best. In every two people loving trust is the cornerstone. Yeah, I guess you knew this one. Okay, here’s the second important one.

In relationships it is important to only make promises that can be kept. As human beings sometimes we promise out of the purity of our hearts, not driven by any degree of malice, but sometimes fate has the last word. You find that you just can not fulfill your promise. Truly, the prospective recipients of such a promise might have dropped some couple of important assignments that they had to do to accommodate you, because they consider you worthy of their priority and in this instance suppose you fail to keep your promise it is just noble to call and apologise. Just a simple, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t make it’ goes a long way. Like I always say, just that line is priceless because it meant you realise that you might have cost somebody their peace of mind. Remember, nothing I worth anybody’s peace of mind, but just a line to say ‘sorry’ can work like a tranquilizer.

And suppose you can’t make it to the phone to make such a call a simple ‘PLEASE CALL ME’ can serve a purpose. Any concerned person will call and then you say the words above. Will the person believe you are sincere? It depends on whether there is a cornerstone or not. Call, call, call, and when one of these days things don’t go your way you will be justified to wonder if things don’t work out because there might be something you have done or something you didn’t do. Because quite frankly if you made a promise and you didn’t fulfill it, that might be the one thing you never did.

One wise person once conducted a study of seven thousand seventy year olds and asked them about what it was that they regretted about their lives. Almost all of them didn’t regret the things they did because they made them the people they were. Whether they were good or bad, they were the fibre that built them. Do you know what they regretted? They all regretted the things they didn’t do. That call they never made, that date they never pitched at, that call they refused to answer, that something they didn’t say. They felt if they could turn back the hands of time they could do things differently, but especially they would seize the opportunities they let slip by because of pride, since they never knew and will never know what lay behind them. They feel that maybe they could have changed their lives. That’s spilled coffee for them, pointless to cry over.

You know Maxwell, the singer, the brother with the borrowed charm. I’m not that much of his fan but in one song he says something in the line of ‘I should be crying but I just can’t let it show/ for the things we should have said that were never said/ for the things we should have done that we never did’. I think it’s pointless, he’s stupid, and it’s at times when I’m listening to this song that I realise that he’s like me, not possessing borrowed charm but an idiot. Me and him have something in common, we are both suckers for love, hopeless romantics but are idiots.

Which brings me to one important point I’m trying to make. You asked me if you did anything wrong and I said ‘no’. I said ‘no’ because I believe that people have rights. People have rights to say something and do something different. People have rights not to pick the phone for an 85cent unit and call. People have rights to promise that they’ll be home for Christmas and not be there without apologizing for raising other people’s hopes. People have rights not to be articulate, not to say exactly what they feel in a situation an about something. People have rights to sponge off all the love they are given without having an intention of actually receiving it and giving love back. People have these millions of rights that actually make it difficult for people to live together in love. As people we are so sad and stressed because we don’t allow people to love us, we ignore the love given to us because we expect love from so and so, love with long attachments, strings rather adoration in the rough, love in its purest form. Far away from the prestige, the backstabbing, the money and the ‘what’s in it for me’. Sometimes I get hurt when people exercise their rights at the expense of mine because I’m a fucking sucker for love. The kind of loving that K****o likes to say it’s about two poor people sitting at the river, bathing each other’s feet. Love that only two truly loving people can share.

Mami, I think my period is over and my lecture stops here. I trust you can find what the words I wrote really mean, pertaining to our situation.

Once again, remember what I said, let nobody tell you different about how you look, you are beautiful, anything to the contrary is malice and jealousy.

I wish I could call this a love letter but it’s not.

Love
Ex- boyfriend