Category Archives: Love Letters and Other Related Things

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A Scene to the Girl Who Rides the Bus with Me as I’m Coming Home from Work

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To the girl who rides the bus with me as I’m coming home from work:

You are very beautiful. I feel like I shouldn’t lead with that. But if I ever talked to you, that’s what I would say. It might go south because you might be a super independent woman who doesn’t need the affirmation of a man to make you feel loved and you might overcompensate by refusing compliments. It would be a risk I was willing to make.

I would tell you to smile more. Or I would try to make you smile. I want to see what you look like with joy on.

I would ask you about the books you are reading. I love books. That’s something you should know about me.

I would explain to you that this is not something I normally do. The last time I talked to a random girl whom I found attractive was never. You wouldn’t believe me. That’s cool. I would revel in the idea that you think I’m a player.

I would be a good conversationalist. The sincere kind. I would flirt, but I wouldn’t do that thing where I put you down just so you think I’m an asshole and so therefore desirable. I would ask questions. And hopefully I could coax more than one-word responses from you.

I would tell you about this movie I just watched – TiMER – in which the main conflict is that everyone has these timers that go off when you meet your “one.” I would ask you your opinion. You would tell me that the “one” is bullshit. And I would mostly agree. But then I would argue that “the one” is mostly a tautology. Successful partnerships last forever so of course those people believe in “the one.” For them, it’s effectively true. You would scoff at my theorizing. I would wrinkle my nose and ask “What?”

I would ask if you have a boyfriend. You would say yes. I would ask if you smoked pot. You would say no. I would say, “That explains it.” You would ask, “That explains what?”

I would laugh a little and then tell you my theory about how there are two types of people in the world: those who smoke pot and those who don’t. I don’t want to date those who smoke pot and the ones who don’t smoke pot don’t want to date me. You would say, “I never said I didn’t want to date you.”

I would laugh again until you figured out I had tricked you. You would smile and look away. I would be glad that you smiled.

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A Confession About My Romantic Notions

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I need to level with you. All of my brain energy that is left over at the end of the week, after all my responsibilities have been met, goes towards thinking about and obsessing over romance. I don’t share that with a lot of people because it makes me sound like a fourteen-year-old girl. It’s not something I’m proud of or want to continue doing. And I want you to think more of me than that. But I’m on this kick where I am trying to be a little more honest about things so we are going to work through some things today.

I don’t know the first thing about love. I have no idea. I’ve had my share of relationships. I’ve used the l-word sometimes. But I have absolutely no clue.

A while back, I decided that love was a choice – that all of these ideas about “falling” for someone are romantic fantasies. That’s not to be mean or pessimistic. I don’t think that love is any less intense because of that. I just think it’s a choice.

I also don’t think there’s one person out there for everyone. Yes, usually you are in a committed relationship with one person at a time; that does not mean that person is the only person for you. I think we construct stories about people to deal with the horrifying reality that is “till death do us part.” It’s freakin’ scary.

I was working Interview Day for my college a couple of days ago. A mother of a prospective student asked me if my college was my first choice. I grimaced. It’s not a fair question. The answer is no. It wasn’t. I didn’t get in to my first choice. And had I gotten into my first choice, I would have gone there. I tell people that it would have been a hard decision, but I know it wouldn’t have been. I would have gone in a second to the school that rejected me. But if I was given that decision again and this time I did get into my first choice and I was told exactly what my life would look like had I picked the pathI am on now, perhaps the decision would have been harder. I like where I am now. I like what I am doing with my life. I like the people I know. And so when people ask me if this school was my first choice, I usually answer that I can’t imagine being anywhere else. Because I can’t. I love it here.

So we create a narrative in which fate brought me here or destiny picks our soul-mates. Because it’s comfortable to believe that. It’s horrifying to think that we could have made the wrong choice.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a terrifying moment where my idea of love as a choice and my idea that there wasn’t one person out there for me came crashing together. How, then, do you determine the person you spend the rest of your life with? I have annoyed many of my close friends with this question over and over again. “You just know,” they say. Or as my parents like to succinctly put it, “It’ll come when you aren’t looking for it.” I think these statements are little more than tautologies. They aren’t helpful. They don’t serve as practical advice.

But then I started thinking about these statements differently. I read something recently that compared finding a significant other to finding a career, a life-mission. I thought that was stupid at first. Finding a career is easy. You just do and work until you find something you love and then you do primarily that one thing. And when I took the time to write that thought out, I realized the comparison to romantic relationships wasn’t that stupid. Because how do you explain to someone what finding something you love looks like or feels like? You can’t. It’s impossible. It just happens.

That’s the difference, then. I have always assumed I will have a career. I assumed that I was going to college. And so when it came time to make that decision, I made it with the best options that were open to me. But sometimes, I don’t assume I am going to have a family. And I wrongly think that the best way to finding my future spouse is through a string of committed relationships. Committed relationships are good, I guess, but they’re kind of like spending your adolescent years spending time at different universities until you decide to commit to one. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. You need the information from high school before you can go to college. But when it comes, you are ready to make that decision.

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Why I Need (Not Want) My Mom

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My mother is an incredible human being. And I’m not just saying that because she’s my mother. I would still consider her an amazing human being if she was someone else’s mother.

Here’s the thing about my mom. She is a difficult person to buy gifts for.

I think when people hit the age of about 19, it just becomes easier to get gift cards. Everyone always talks about how gift cards aren’t meaningful and all that, but the truth of the matter is that by age 19, all you really want from life is some combination of clothes, electronics, music, movies, and books. And all of those things kind of require personal input. So we get each other gift cards, and we write each other nice little letters that say what we think the money should be spent on.

That’s what you do for most adults.

And most adults are more than happy to spend that money on themselves. I know I am.

Not my mom.

I don’t really have many memories of my mom spending money on something she wanted. She only spends money on things she needs, or, more accurately, things the humble Smith household needs. My grandmother got my mother a gift card to Kohl’s for Christmas. What was my mom excited to buy? New bath towels. No joke. She said our old ones were falling apart. She was right.

I think that’s a really cool skill to have – to be able to discern what it is you need from what it is you want.