I used to write all the time.

I used to write all the time. Not only to escape or live greater adventures than my life offered as a kid, but as a necessity. It’s always been my way to process, cope and let go of things. Once it was on paper, it wasn’t weighing on my chest anymore. It was sometimes so instant, that I couldn’t even understand why that thing bothered me so much just a few minutes ago. I won some writing contest prizes as a teen, then I stopped writing stories. I started writing my own in journals, then a blog (anyone who remembers 20six?), more blogs… and eventually, to the man I would marry. I guess it’s no surprise this is how we met and fell in love. I’ve had pen pals before and aside from the time I kept in touch with my best friends through letters at 15, I’ve never had such deep conversations with someone by mail. Phone “didn’t exist” for him at the time and we had thousands of miles between us, so letters were really everything we had to get to know each other. We started as complete strangers and quickly trusted each other with our real deep selves. I will never be able to explain how it happened or how this was even possible. I didn’t think it could be but I watched myself become addicted to his words and ears. So we shared and shared until we crossed that line of knowing and appreciating each other enough to recognize there was love. A beautiful love not based on anything superficial like what we looked like, but based on our raw characters, forgiven flaws, and communion of thoughts. We were never meant to meet, though we belonged together. It was a delicate journey to accept the obvious and make a commitment to each other. We wrote our way to each other, maintained a relationship through mostly letters for years, and now we are trying to manifest a future that is not supposed to exist.

Unfortunately, writing has been hard lately, for both of us. Our minds are monopolized by anger and despair. And since I don’t write, I don’t get rid of those heavy feelings. There are things you cannot share when you are in a prison relationship. Your letters are read, your phone calls are recorded, your own lawyers step into your most intimate moments by requesting everything. Only someone with a similar connection and the same means of communication, in the same terrible predicament, can understand. For and by everyone else, we had our humanity stolen. We are a number, a story, nothing is private, nothing belongs to us, no one respects the boundaries.
Some days, I wonder if a deep love that cannot be expressed is able to survive. If so, what for? Will things get better, will it all be worth it?