LETTERS FROM HOME: SOMETIMES THE MESSAGE IN THE BOTTLE IS THE MOVIE IS FOR YOU

March 4, 1999

Dear Angela,

While watching the movie "Message in a Bottle," wondering why I was at this soap opera, I had an epiphany of sorts. Kevin Costner's character had kept his dead wife's art studio just as it was when she'd died, and when he met a new woman he could fall in love with she found his house a bit too crowded, what with the ghost. Every soap opera on TV has drawn tankards of tears from this plot. Nothing is new, but it is when the "Aha" comes your way.

Ten years after saying goodbye to you and five years into my marriage, I realized I hadn't completely let you go. At least not the idea of you. A tiny part of me still wondered if someday in a far future our lives might somersault in the same direction, leaving us facing each other again with a chance to get it right. I didn't know how this might happen, had no intention of making it happen, and in fact viewed it with trepidation no matter how unlikely the possibility. It was just a little daydream that lived in the corner of the room, or existed like an alternate reality bleeding through.

But the task is working things out in this one. Of all my ex-girlfriends, DC has said you're the only one she feels any jealousy about. I used to think it was sort of cute for her to be jealous but now I think she only knew what I had not fully realized.

The idea I have been holding onto is more like a regret. I am grateful for the lessons of those two years but still felt a sense of failure for not being the man you wanted. I have realized that part of the excitement of being with you was my fear that you might at any moment spurn me. My image of myself as a man was at stake.

Everyone copes with the same fear every minute we are alive, the fear of things not going our way, of some calamity changing us forever, of not being loved enough. We have experienced the ultimate rejection, being born, and through our lives encounter reminders that all love is not given freely. Finally, when we've grown up enough, we understand that love given freely is all that matters.

And if any of us ever wonders if we are loved, the fact that we are alive is the best proof of how deeply.

There is something about letting go I had not understood either, how powerful it is to say, That was, this is. Hurt feelings and bitterness can seem like a refuge where beliefs that you were wronged are reinforced. Love is the only refuge.

DC couldn't go see that movie with me, so I told her about it and about all this the next morning. I apologized over and over. None of this was a revelation to her. She said she'd surprised me with a trip to Paris after you'd sent me a photograph of yourself there.

Love forms connections not limited by time and place. I think they remain in place unless severed through an act of conscious will, a decision to let go so that new bonds can grow stronger and flourish.

I performed a small ritual of farewell today. I walked to the fire circle in our back yard and burned a memento I'd kept from those years. I watched it twist and disintegrate, the smoke curl into the air and disappear.

Now I'm writing you this letter to make sure you know, though if I am right you already do.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.