I ♥ California

A Love Letter

This morning, I got up after another fitful night of missing you. Even after all this time, I still reach out for you in my half-sleep, pulling awake with the realization that I’m here and you’re there.

I know I’m the one who walked away, not giving us a fair chance, leaving when the faint promise of something more exciting, more inviting, or just different called. I know that every time I did walk away, it made it that much easier for me to leave the next time. I know you think I turned my back on us and you. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love you or that I don’t cherish every one of the moments we had together.

I loved the quiet moments we shared, hiking through unexpected labyrinth of mountain trail overlooking your backyard on one side and the ocean on the other. I can still feel the way you’d kiss my eyelids, so gently, as I’d while away my Sundays on the stretches of hidden beaches. The burn that would travel down the exposed parts of my body, leaving me smarting for days afterwards. I loved the way you’d undo my hair as we drove down stretches of the PCH with the top rolled down, teasing and tangling it so that by the time we arrived, I looked like I’d already had a good time. I even loved your rare moodiness; the way you’d sometimes turn cool, especially after a stretch of the sunniest times, and I’d be left, unprepared for it every time, trying to wrap myself up in my own arms for warmth.

That I still think about you like this, after all this time apart, doesn’t it say something? I miss you. I’m sick with wanting to be with you. I’ve been in love all this time and didn’t recognize it for what it was. You’ve always been there for me, and I’m asking for you to be there for me one more time. Let me come back home. In return, I will promise you everything you asked of me and I couldn’t before. I’ll do it without any sense of sacrifice. Only love. And the faith that this time, I can uphold my end of the relationship.

I promise not to be emotionally unavailable, picking on your tiniest faults as an entryway to entertaining my own weaknesses. I will not storm off in front of Spaceland, shouting that only “fucking lame-ass hipster wannabes from the fucking OC” would still be hanging out in Silver Lake. I will not throw a temper tantrum, tearing flesh as we sit stalled on the 405 for an hour, trying to edge off onto the Sunset exit. I promise I will stop openly and loudly disparaging the company you sometimes keep—the girls with the disturbingly umber tans and painfully stretched breasts and the slack-jawed boys with the empty eyes and twitching fingers you keep inviting over. I know they’re part of the image you’re forced to portray, your industry; I swear that I will not bait them, openly mock them or discreetly aim the car at them. I also swear that I will not take you for granted, taking more and more without showing any gratitude, expecting our lives to be an unending expanse of blue skies and sunshine. I will tell you every day that I appreciate you. That I love you. And finally, I promise I will not walk away when our relationship gets rocky I will not leave you for days, weeks, months at a time, coming back only to take advantage of the comfort you offer me.

This time, I’ll make it work.