Dear You,

I’m going to come right out and say it: I’ve been having an affair.

For going on a year, we’ve been having a ball. And by ball, I mean blog. I’ve spilled speckles of self and you’ve lapped them up. And asked for more. You’ve left a trail of tender words here – seen and felt. And I’ve savored each one. Each day, I’ve kissed you good morning and good night. I’ve followed you home, holding your virtual hand, going where led. Skipping beside you. In your bloggy bed, we’ve cuddled, waxing poetic about the universe we shoulder and share. And each night, as we nod off, shutting down soul and self and psyche, you’ve whispered sweet nothings – and sweet everythings – into my ear. And I into yours.

There have been bloggy butterflies. Alighting, flying with purpose, landing softly and uncertainly on the edge of understanding. The precipice of discovery. Our bond has been at once fragile and foolproof, ragged and robust, full of affection and wonder and desire. I have come to need you. Your ideas. Your perspective. Your questions. I have come to crave your attention, your approval, your applause. My days are good because you are in them.

But last week something happened. I encountered a dark and brooding and beautiful ex.

The Novel.

And we’ve been spending some time together. Stolen moments. Late at night. Early in the day. Sometimes in the middle of it all; in the broad and boastful sunlight. And, during these times, I realized something I have known all this time.

I have missed him.

He is a bad boy. He broods and beckons. Define me, he says. Tell my story. I dare you. His blank pages are alluring and alarming. Into them, I dive and flail and come close to drowning. Time with him is less certain. I spend moments and hours and days in his presence and often have nothing to show for it. Just a confused heart. A mangled mind. And a blank page.

And yet. I need him. I crave his company. He captures me and challenges me and chides me. In his orbit, life grows murky. In his shadow, I see a surplus of stories. My stories. Your stories. Our stories. Impossible stories unfurling and unfolding. Of life and death. Of light and dark. Of salvation and struggle. When holding his hand, I feel safe and shaky. Clawed by confidence. Intoxicated by insecurity. Tangled in truth.

So, he’s back. And he needs me. And I need him too.

So here I am. Caught in the magical middle. Awash in anxiety that by being with both of you, I’m really with neither of you. That in splitting myself, I’m losing myself.

And you.

I write these words because I’ve been feeling a bit naughty and wanted to fess up. Here I am seeking your forgiveness for my wandering pen and heart and mind. Here I am telling you where I am when I am not with you, curled up, stroking your back, saying I love you.

But know this: I do love you. More deeply than you know. And I hope that you stay with me. Even though I’m not perfectly committed. Even though I am philandering with fiction.

Insecurely yours,

Aidan

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Are you monogamous when it comes to blogging or do you cheat on your blog and write elsewhere? How do you handle the split focus of affection? Do you find it difficult to juggle your loves? Do you ever feel like you are cheating on one aspect of your life (family, profession, etc) when you are spending time with another? Is this existential infidelity just part of life? Feel free to talk about actual affairs too. That would be very interesting and wonderful material for this blog. Oh, and for my next novel(s). (Don’t be jealous.)

***This post was inspired by my guilt about devoting time to something other than my blog and by my virtual sisters’ fabulous Love It Up challenge. Head on over to Momalom between now and Valentine’s Day to read some other love letters…***

Dear Mom,

Happy birthday. I hope you are having a good day. I look forward to celebrating with you tonight, to the controlled chaos that will erupt around that old wooden table where everything happened and continues to happen – big conversations and big fights, Halloween parties, family dinners, and birthdays. All those birthdays.

Recently, I have been thinking about something else that happened at that table. Writing. I remember sitting there with you, going over every single paper I wrote, discussing the ideas and the sentences and the words. As I recall this oft-repeating ritual, I realize something: You were my very first and very best writing teacher. You taught me to write with heart and purpose and economy. And you taught me how to edit, how to wrestle with sentences, how to butcher them to bits and piece them back together.

Mom, today was Toddler’s first parent-teacher conference at Preschool. Husband and I sat there, around a small child-sized table and listened. Her teachers told us about our girl. They told us some things we already knew: That she is social and happy and sometimes loses her words when she’s frustrated. They told us that she has a big imagination. And then they told us something I didn’t know and perhaps should have known: That she already has a correct pencil grip. At this little bit of information, I felt a stab of something. Whatever it was I felt, it wasn’t that simple maternal pride at a milestone met. No. It was far more complicated than that.

And something simple occurred to me in that not-so-simple moment: My girl will write one day. And one day soon. And I will teach her all I know. I will sit with her at our own table. Together, we will excavate her sentences, her ideas, her stories. One day, I will give her this gift, this incomparable gift, you gave me.

A few months ago, I wrote you a letter on your wedding anniversary, a day we will all celebrate every year even though Dad is now gone. In that letter, I wrote something that was true then and is even truer today:

I realized something recently. Or maybe it’s something I’ve always known. That something? Children do not just inherit genes from their parents, but so much more. From you, I’ve inherited a phrase, a brilliant phrase, something I say to my girls all the time. I love you to pieces. I always loved when you said this to me, or wrote it on the white expanse of a birthday card. But I never thought about why you said it or why I loved it. I never understood the layers within these simple words. Now, I get it. I get what it is to love something, someone, so much that you feel like that something, that someone, under the sheer force of your affection, might break into bits, shred to little pieces. I know what it is to love something, someone, with dizzying, suffocating might. I know because this is how much I love my man and my girls.

And this is how much I love you. So much that your pain is — in some complicated way — my pain. That your happiness is mine too. That your pieces are my pieces.

Now I will unplug and pack up and go buy you a last minute birthday gift. The easier kind. It will be something predictable and practical. A scarf or a sweater or something else you don’t need. But before I do that, I wanted to do this. I wanted to thank you for being a magical mother and an thoughtful teacher. For hovering over me while I learned how to grip a pencil and being there, always there, every day since.

Happy birthday, Mom. I love you to pieces.

Insecurely and forever yours,

Maids

Dear Mr. BigLaw,

How are you these days? We haven’t seen each other or spoken in a while, but I do hear about you from time to time. From friends and newspapers. Despite the recession and everything else, it sounds like you are surviving.

I know this letter is foolish. It will likely be lost in a big pile of paper on your polished marble desk. It is likely that you do not even remember me. That I was just one of the fungible young girls who flitted through your golden revolving door, a girl who never quite got your attention.

Truth be told, I think of you sometimes. In particular, about that day I left you. It was a Friday in late January and I really didn’t give you much warning. No, in many ways I blindsided you, spewing that cliched excuse-upon-exit: it’s not you, it’s me. But I assure you this was true. Not that you care.

You were plenty good to me. You shrouded me with things: money and benefits and contacts. I basked in the glow of your impersonal warmth. But, in time, in a short time, I realized that in your corporate company, I felt stifled and sluggish and even a bit sad. I decided that I didn’t want to spend many years in a relationship that was good and secure, but far less than thrilling.

It didn’t take long to find your replacement. Writing. And he’s a dodgy fellow, not always easy to live with, but he inspires me each and every day. He has taught me what love is. What laughter is. What learning is. Our romance is not stuffed with Town Cars and four-star lunches, but with words and ideas and most importantly, questions.

But sometimes, in this new relationship, I feel moments of loneliness. And, in these quiet moments, I long for our conference room banter and catered buffets.  For more predictable things. For pinstripes and power and prestige. For the brainstorming and business trips we used to enjoy. Or pretend to. And sometimes I miss being able to say that I am with you because I know that some people, too many people, were so impressed with that.

Maybe we didn’t have enough closure. Maybe I ran away too quickly because I could. Because I didn’t need you to support me. Maybe I fled fast because I was a bit scared. That I was being hasty. That I was making a profound mistake. Or maybe I escaped with little explanation because I knew even then the power you had over me. I knew that after everything, after all those years of courting and commitment, it wouldn’t be easy to quit you. And it wasn’t.

I sometimes wonder who replaced me. Is she good and honest? Does she work hard? Too hard? Does she treat you well? Does she treat herself well? Will she stick with you through thick and thin? Will she wait out the tough times and see if you will ask her to commit? And, someday, if you ask her that very important question, if you ask her to be your partner, will she say I do?

Sometimes I wonder what things would be like if I never left. Would we still be together? Or would I have found another reason to walk away? Or would you, faced with the grim reality of a rabid recession, have let me go? If I had stayed and you had let me, would we be happy? Or, would things be the same as they were back then when I put on a good face with my good suit and we floated through long days together, graceful pretenders?

This is tough to admit, but sometimes, late at night, I lie in bed and think of you and wonder whether you would take me back. If I begged and pleaded and tried harder this time? But then I wake up in the morning and I’m relieved and pleased with the way things are. I am exactly where I should be. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t miss you sometimes and think about you and talk about our time together. Even though our relationship was relatively brief, a mere blip on that resume radar, for me it was very real. In some small, but significant way, you made me who I am.

So, try as I might, I will not forget you. The things you showed me about myself and life and the enigma of happiness. About real risk and real reward.

Maybe we will meet again one day. Or maybe we won’t. Only time will tell.

Insecurely yours,
Aidan

Dear Lindsey,

Today you are thirty-five years old. And I know you are not a big fan of birthdays. I know that you are struggling to make this one a happy one. I know you are grappling with the passage of time, with the subterfuge of stolen years, with the fact that childhood, your childhood, seems at once painstakingly distant and mockingly close. I know these things because you have told me. And all of us. With words. And with the silence between them.

Today you are celebrating with your family, that set of souls from which you’ve sprung and continue to spring. Family that loves you fiercely and knows you deeply. People who get you. Your amazing angst, your magical melancholy, your irresistibly real breed of happiness.

I don’t pretend to know you. In many ways, in important ways, I am a stranger. In many ways, this letter is the picture of bizarre. It baffles me that we’ve never met “in real life.” It is so hard to believe that mere months ago, you bumped into me on an invisible road. And I, into you. And though separated by a few years and a few miles, we are united by conversation, and questions, and a shared urgency to be good parents and good people. Whatever that means. Moreover, we speak the same language. An imperfect language full of grays. A language where sentences shift, and question marks reign and words wander aimlessly and yet with inchoate purpose.

Ignore the Hallmark fever and the undue attention. Ignore the cracks about getting older. Ignore the wrinkles you think you see claiming purchase. Focus on the two little people who brighten your days and your blog posts, on the family that fuels you and surrounds you, suffocating you profoundly with unparalleled and authentic affection. Focus on the friends you have and the ones you’re making. Focus on your thoughts and their whimsical dance. Focus on your dreams and the lessons they teach. Focus on the vastness of the design and the design of the vastness. Focus on your words, your compelling words that flow freely like good wine and sadness and love. It is these words, whispered and written, that will save you. On birthdays. And all other days.

I will not say it because everyone else is, I imagine. But have a good day. A real one. Full of laughter and love. And plenty of Sauv.

Insecurely Yours,

Aidan

_____

Do you like birthdays or do you dread them? Why?

This morning, I sat on the hardwood floor between Toddler and Baby, brokering peace negotiations between the pajama-clad girls who are many long months away from receiving their Masters in Sharing. Mission accomplished. Within a few moments, Toddler was playing with her Mama Tape Measure and Baby was playing with her Baby Tape Measure. And I had a few fleeting, but delicious moments to go online before Baby pulled up on my back and yanked out a massive fistful of my hair. Maybe she wanted me to get off my computer. Or, maybe she’s envious because she’s bald.

Anyway, before snapping my laptop shut and giving my girls the absolute, unmarred attention they deserve, I was able to read this article. It’s the latest entry in Judith Warner’s NYT blog Domestic Disturbances. And I was sufficiently disturbed (in the best possible way) to forgo that much-needed shower and read it over a few times, read all of the comments it elicited, and then write my own comment. In that little comment box, I wrote one of my Insecurely Yours letters. I thanked Judith for her brave words, for speaking up, for defending those of us here on ILI and beyond who are educated and interested and insecure. If you are curious, you can read my letter below.

Now, off to analyze my infant-induced hair loss and take that much-needed shower. In case you are interested, while I am showering, I will be giving myself a very articulate pep-talk to prepare myself for the attacks I fear are headed my way. And if there is time left over, I will contemplate the symbolism of those tape measure “toys” with which my girls love to play. Cheerio.

Dear Judith,

Thank you. For daring to lift that proverbial lid on our society’s simmering stew of resentment of women with “major educations,” of women who are intellectually-curious and interested, of women who are unwilling to stay mum behind a lipstick smile just because their lives are charmed in some way.

In writing this post and triggering the comments that precede mine – many of which are unnecessarily snarky and collectively serve as a prime example of the very resentment you explore — you cast a light on profound and provocative topics of education and wealth and social perceptions. Many of your readers are missing the point here – and maybe willfully so. Patently, your article is not about the law of child endangerment, or what it means to be a responsible mother. Nor is your article truly about this one woman, a professor in Montana.

Rather, your article (bravely) points to an arguably wider phenomenon, namely our culture’s apparent desire to put a muzzle on women who are affluent and educated. There does seem to be a belief that because these women enjoy noteworthy privileges of elite educations and financial freedom, they should keep quiet. Often, it seems that acceptable stories – of struggle, of adversity, of that enigmatic “real world” that we all live in — can only be voiced by members of the more “normal” species of women. I recently started a blog called Ivy League Insecurities in an effort to give these women a voice, to combat the societal message to stay mum and enjoy my “good” life and I have been criticized and – shocker – told to keep quiet, that my story is not a story worth hearing, that my insecurities are inauthentic because of my objectively “privileged” life.

So as one of the well-educated women you write about who is simply unwilling to stay mute, I applaud you for writing this and for welcoming and weathering the very predictable and revealing maelstrom it has triggered.

Insecurely yours,

Aidan Donnelley Rowley