Your Promise

Dear Ornela,

Why are you here? Why do you open my journal nearly every day to read the words that I have written only to you? My letters to you are not filled with the fictional stories or occasional musings that constitute most of my journal. These are love letters...and they are love letters written just for you. I write these letters because I am in love with you, and I have faith that you read them because you love me too. If you did not love me, if you did not want to see everything within my heart poured out for you, you would not read any of these letters. You would not be here right now. But you are...and I know that you read these love letters because you want to feel close to me, just as I want to be close to you too.

You made me a promise. You promised to consider giving our love a real chance if I would promise to try to find love with someone, anyone but you. This promise hurt so very much for me to make, but it hurt even more when it was fulfilled. What you do not know, what I never told you, is that I fulfilled this promise to you long before you asked me to make it. For two years after we separated in early 2012 I searched for love with many different women, all of whom were caring, loving, and genuinely good people. But they all lacked one quality that meant I could never truly love any of them...none of them were you. Every date I ever went on, every late night conversation I ever had, every intimate moment was meaningless to me because the woman before me wasn't you. I never wanted to share those experiences with any of them...I wanted to share them only with you. I tried Ornela, I tried so very hard for two years to find love with another woman, only to realize that everything I was looking for I had already found. I had found true love...and it was with you.

Now you ask me to go down the same road again that I have walked alone for two years. Ornela, I know where this road goes and I am asking you to walk a different path with me instead. I am asking you to keep your promise to me and walk our paths together, holding each other's hand, as we stroll down a road we have never been before, but one that already seems so very welcoming. I don't want to walk alone anymore. I want to walk only with you as we discover all of the amazing twists and turns that our journey will lead us, down the road of a committed relationship that we walk together, sharing our lives with each other and growing in love each day.

I know that you would never want to hurt me, and you probably think that talking to me again will only cause us both pain. I thought the same thing when I ended things between us nearly three years ago. I genuinely believed that I only had the ability to hurt you and the only way to protect you from getting hurt was to completely stop talking to you. But it was a lie I was telling myself. Holding my feelings inside and trying to handle everything on my own instead of talking to you was a mistake...one that has cost me dearly. It cost me a relationship with the person I love more than anyone else in this world...it cost me you. I beg of you not to make the same mistake I did. Please talk to me about how you are feeling. Please do not turn away from me. Please open your heart so that we can have the deep and trusting relationship we once did, that special relationship where we get to share the most intimate sides of ourselves only with each other.

You made me a promise, one that I believe you are trying to keep right now. That is why you read my love letters to you nearly every day. These letters stir feelings deep within your heart, the same feelings that let me hold your body close while we laid together in bed, the same feelings that surrendered to a kiss in our last moments together. 

Love wins Ornela. And our love will bring us together again. I believe that because of a simple promise you made to me just before I left Boston, a promise I know you will keep.

Love,

Bobby