love letter to Tinka

I was so in love with you that I couldn't sleep. I remember getting out of bed and watching your sleeping body in the bed next to mine. It was painful. I cried. I tried to text my dad, but the reception was bad enough that texts weren't really coming through. I remember listening to the same song over and over again and thinking about what an idiot I was. I was sure that you were awake too, aware of my stressful movements. The pain I felt was physical.

I remember after the first time we hung out, I biked home wearing your jacket. I called Madi on the phone and told them I was in love.

"It's a strange time to be in love," they said.

"It's always a strange time to be in love," I replied.

I didn't want to give the jacket back because it was a promise that you'd have to see me again.

I called my grandmother too, and told her I was in love with you. She didn't doubt me. She told me after she had lunch with my grandfather for the first time she told her friend,

"If he asked me to marry him I'd say yes."

You are so alike her in some ways. I remember your desire to buy a silk scarf-- I felt as though I was witnessing the ghost of my not-yet-dead grandmother. We went to De Bijenkorf and looked at scarfs there. Much too expensive. I made sure to introduce you to each other over the phone. I passed out on the bed beside you as you talked in language of ballet. She used to shop at De Bijenkorf when she was living in the Netherlands.

I've never felt so physically in love with someone I've known for such a short amount of time. I've never felt to irrationally in love with someone, scared of my own feelings. You come to my house and after spending hours of the day with me it would be time to go home. I asked you to stay until three more songs had played all the way through. I'm like my child self, begging my parents to stay in bed with me for "five more minutes," as if the pain of separation is going to be more bearable in five minutes. One time I pinned you to the floor. I lied on top of you, "no, you can't go." I'm a bad man, physically restraining a teenage girl.

I can't handle you leaving because nothing about how I'm feeling makes any sense at all. When you're gone all I have is the anxiety of the loss of control and a list of facts about a person who does not sound very lovable at all. Young, immature, naive, irresponsible, doesn't like spicy foods or potatoes, heart-breaker, someone who does not seem to care about the feelings of the people she has romances with, someone who does not feel the same way about me.

Someone who does not feel the same way about me.

That's painful, I suppose, but also would I want the feelings to be requited? They are so irrational, ridiculous, scary to me. Not sharing them seems like the most rational thing about you. I do not mind that the feelings aren't mutual.

But it's a punch in the gut when I'm not enough. You get into bed with a boy you don't really know who spends the whole night trying to force his penis inside you have to sleep with your hands between your legs. At breakfast you're complaining to me that you just want to cuddle you refuse to share a bed with me. Stab me in the eyeball with a pencil, Tinka, it'd be less painful. We're sitting outside drinking wine you're talking after seeing a cute boy you only want to admire from afar.

"Wouldn't it be nice to have some kind of stable at home relationship with someone you really love, but still be permitted to have wild romantic affairs with cute strangers?" you muse to me, a lifeless piece of roadkill you've taken on a wine date.

"Wouldn't it be nice to meet an intellectual American boy with long hair who plays a musical instrument and can help me with coding?"

"You know, I find backs very sexy. I don't think I would be attracted to a very hairy back, but I wouldn't mind it if my partner had surgery and was left with some kind of scar on his back."

Thanks for the garbage piece of information, Tinka. I'll be sure to remember that along with the Dutch king's birthday (27 April). 

I have great sympathy for my lesbian sisters in love with their straight friends. How painful, to know that you would make a much better date then any of the people she's sleeping with, and yet some cosmic god says it can't be. What a cruel joke.

Can't help but feel you don't see me as a viable partner because you don't find me sexy, and you don't find me sexy because I'm not on cocaine and coercing you out of your clothes. If only I wanted to use you as a warm body while thinking about how much I hate myself. If only I would stick my finger up your ass without asking permission first. You're never going to turn to me and say "okay, I'm comfortable trying kissing now." You're never going to say that to anyone. You're never going to tell me "okay, we can try sleeping in the same bed" despite that being something that, realistically, you would be comfortable with, and when you're drunk and it will help you win arguments against Valters, you admit to.

That's a pleasant lie- that you don't share my feelings because you're immature. It let's me fantasize that someday you'll grow out of it and we'll get married. You are immature, but if you became more mature over night the only change would be that you'd be able to tell me you don't feel the same way firmly to my face. It's a lie that makes me out to be superior to you, instead of the simple truth that I'm just as immature as you, clinging to the fantasy of a perfect life with someone who's incompatible with me. You know enough about fantasies to know that indulging this one would lead to heartbreak, and you love me enough to not do that. 

I love you, unconditionally, forever and always, but I will need to learn to let you go when my five minutes are up. I will need to learn how to sleep in the same room as you without crying and trying to call my dad.

I am learning, but every so often the infatuation I felt the night I wore your jacket returns.

I embrace the precious feeling with my sorry heart.

There is nothing wrong with being young and immature sometimes; this I can learn from your example.

Tonight I am painfully in love with you, physically so. What a beautiful feeling, I will miss it in the morning.