This is my first love letter

I’ve loved multiple people in this life and written poems of adoration a couple of times. But I figured I haven’t written a letter — a genuine, more than a paragraph long of words that encapsulate how my heart feels in readable characters. This will be my first love letter.

First times. Although for the fact that we’re not each other’s firsts, were always particular about doing things together the first time. You were my first to sit behind the shade of a tree, I can attest it was my first sight of genuine adult’s delight for an essentially kid’s sweet course…

7 months ago, I drafted this letter with the intent to send it to someone I thought was worthy (okay laugh at me now byrhee). I was just scrolling through my drafts after the realization that I hadn’t published an article or a piece in this account in months. I have so many unfinished entries, and this is one of them — in fact, it’s the crassest. Why now, I think I have enough motivation to finish what I started — and to laugh about it right after. I’m glad I didn’t finish it by the day I started writing it because…uhm, you might as well get the gist of what happened.

Out of my several hopeless romantic attempts of immortalizing men and women I adore (for a moment) through poems and elusive words, I realized I haven’t written a real-real-realest, genuine-genuinest love letter yet (emphasis on YET). I thought I had though. But if long paragraphs of breakup messages are counted, I wouldn’t be writing this article. But now, I wonder what must it feel like to fall in love so purely you write them a letter? Letters, at least for me, are a BIG DEAL I’LL MARRY YOU NOW type of adoration. If I receive one, I’d buy myself the ring and chain and drag the person who sent it for us to sign up for a marriage license application (jk but not jk). Exaggeration aside, though I would never standardize genuine love and have love letters on the list of criteria, I wonder when I’ll finish writing one.

If love letters are attestations of pure adoration and love, I believe the ‘loves’ I had from the past might just be shallow, because I haven’t written any, yet (emphasis on YET — again because I have a fear of being incapable of feeling and giving love). Or is it that I don’t know how to love a person yet?

I wonder how beautifully crafted the unfinished letter above would be if the ‘love’ I thought was real was indeed REAL and persisted. Sometimes, when things go well and you’re at the peak of ecstasy (in this case, the dopamine surge after finding a potential lover), we have the tendency to lean towards a recency bias. Recency bias is to favor what happened a short time ago, to agree with what was most ‘recent’ (in my writing of the letter, what’s recent was the emotion of ‘pseudo love’). At the initial stage of attraction (3 months in my case, particularly by the time of writing the letter), you risk your rationality and jump into an emotional conclusion that the person you’re so into might just be worthy of adoration because — they acted as is and waved no red flags (not your fault). Well, no babes, because what is real love in this age?

Hate aside, I wouldn’t deny that there must be an underlying genuineity with my primary motive for writing the letter. If you’ve felt the emotion of wanting to actually care sometime in your life, or if you’ve allowed yourself to give in and shatter your walls to let someone in before, that was the feeling! The initial stages of wanting to love are so aberrantly blinding that you can’t see yourself putting on a clown mask in the quick process.

After introspecting, I believe I didn’t finish the letter for a reason. When writing, especially when writing about someone, I overvalue the ‘taking my time’ to find the right words process. I have the tendency to let the kimchi of words fertilize so perfectly that I can add and input thoughts that are fitting — words as worthy as the subject. But I haven’t and didn’t get to “find the right words” days and weeks post-drafting. My heart and thoughts just stopped giving me the “write about it drive”. Perhaps it was the sign — words stopped coming, and the realities of human stupidity came in to light.

Amidst my fear of intimacy (let’s talk about this on a later entry), I’m happy that I know I was capable of feeling — though even rushed by addicting love chemicals, I was aware of what I felt. And perhaps in the process of writing that unfinished letter, the love — or at least the adoration, was real, though fleeting. I once asked my best friend if it was possible to fall in love with someone in a day. We didn’t get to a conclusion but I believe the conception of love can start anytime, and it can also terminate whenever. Seconds, milliseconds, a year? I’m not sure if love can be alternatively defined as “being in awe of someone’s existence; of their Dasein”. Dasein is a German existentialist term that literally means “being there”; also, “being-in-the-world”. It means being in touch with nature, its people, your body, and anything that exists. Do also agree that it’s a beautiful term? DASEIN — to exist, and be, and be aware that you are. Existential psychologist, Rollo May defined love as:

“a delight in the presence of the other person, and an affirming of his value and development as much as one’s own”

I was sure, in the moment I decided I wanted to write about the person, I acknowledged and was in awe of their Dasein. If they didn’t give me a reason to stop affirming their existence, their Dasein, their being-in-the-world — I would have continued to do so.

Nonetheless, I would want to sound more hopeful than regretful — or sarcastic about this unfinished letter. To reflect, this failed first love letter is a testament that loving is transient — how I didn’t finish it, may be a subtle acknowledgment that some emotions are meant to be experienced, and then gracefully released. Everything that has Dasein — bids adieu. I guess that’s what makes it meaningful. That’s what I love about human existence, things and situations are transient. While, us? We will die and perish eventually— and that’s what gives everything meaning though it makes no actual sense.

With that, how many unfinished love letters should I at least expect? (no no, because my one life goal is to finish writing one).