The Most Intense Year and a Half of My Life, Part 2

Part Two: The Long Form Note

So.  I had just been introduced to Violet.  We began by exchanging (now defunct) blog sites, and accepting friend requests on Facebook.  I remember sitting for an evening, reading her material, being absolutely taken by the writing style (grace and brevity), and by the aching beauty of its content.  I remember, the way my heart beat just a little faster when I saw that she was on to chat. 

I remember our first long FB conversation.  I remember it less for the content of the words we said, and more for this tremendous feeling that overcame me.  It was the feeling of a doom befalling me.  Now, dear reader, you would say, "Phil that sounds awfully gloomy, and rather grim and foreshadowing."  But I would reply to you, dear reader in this perhaps somewhat condescending manner, "Well, dear reader, you are correct, if you consider the conventional understanding of the word doom.  But I mean by it a different sense.  Violet was my doom, in the way it was to 'ordain or fix as a fate.'"

I sensed, a moment that stretched for the entire evening, that Violet would become part of the rest of my life.  I think we humans are accorded in this life a few genuine premonitions, and for me, this was one of them.  I knew that Violet, in her careful, precise and delicate words, her curious and forthright manner, was my beauty to win. 

I knew that coming out of a summer where my heart had been scraped over a rough emotional landscape of restraint, desire and betrayal, I had to protect myself, and to hold carefully in my hand the tiny germinating seed of love. 

I knew this, and so I very consciously avoided talking to Violet about the emotions she stirred within me with her words.  I remember feeling how important that sense of discretion was.  I needed to hold my feelings at arm's length.  I wanted to show myself discipline, and in a way, her as well.

We had embarked on a journey of the long form note.  We wrote during our time at school, both out and in class.  We spoke a dialogue of politics, culture, religion and literature.  We asked each other questions.  She had not received the same sense of things that I had about our prospects, we were pen pals - not potential partners, but I had a sense of the trajectory we were on. 

And so, I wrote a letter.  (That's Part Three!)