plead forgiveness

I wrote to her when I was lonely and bored. It took me hours to start; I couldn’t find an appropriate opening line. Where do I start? How do you begin something that ended two years ago? Do I say beg for forgiveness, plead that “I’m sorry for deserting you”?

 I told her that I missed her and that I was thinking about her and that I was sorry. I was sorry for running away and not telling her why. The mountains, I proclaimed, were too frozen, too static, too cold. I apologized for not taking her feelings into consideration. I had been selfish. At the time, I had spent every waking moment with her. I had told her everything, everything about my life and the people I loved and then, suddenly, I was gone.

I had never sufficiently said goodbye to her that spring.

 I told her that I was now completely, totally, honestly, comfortably out of the closet and I had never been happier. I told her that I had moved to a big city and a new school and I made new friends. I told her that I found love and lost it. That someone had left me the same way I had left with her, with little to no explanation.

 I asked her what she was up to and what her plans were after her graduation this spring. I asked if she was still taking photographs, and I admitted being inspired by her to start my own passion for photography.

‘You’ve changed my life and I never told you why’

 I felt better immediately after I sent it. That’s they way it always goes.

 I didn’t get a response for about two weeks. At first I thought that I had sent it to the wrong e-mail address. I had practically forgot about it until I saw her name appear in my inbox one day.

 My stomach clenched and I opened it with hesitation.

 She was cordial and polite and respectful. I could hear her voice the second I started reading. It’s funny how things work like that. Time doesn’t erase memory. 

She told me that she had accepted my desertion that spring in Montana, but it had taken her about a year to fully recover. She said that she would spend her days and nights in Bozeman, incessantly talking to our mutual friends, trying to explain to them why I left. She confessed to looking for me on our small campus, knowing full well that I was one thousand miles away.


 She said she was bitter for a long time. Was angry that I was silently vacant. Was upset that I seemed to have no remorse. She said that, before, she would have had an arsenal of dialogue in her back pocket. That she would be ready to yell at me if we ever talked again. Would have said that it was too little, too late. But she told me she could practically hear the guilt in my words, now.

 She accepted my apology. She complimented my writing. She thanked me for the letter. We haven’t talked since.