This letter was originally written in French.
I can’t understand nor explain the love I feel for you. After so many years and so much distance, I thought that this love would fade, soften, or simply end up being a vague memory of a crazy and passionate youth.
It is precisely the opposite that is happening. And to be very frank with you, I don’t even have enough words to describe what’s happening to me. What I feel goes far beyond simple emotions. I have very physical symptoms in my body. My breathing is disturbed, my chest has become too small for the size of my heart, and my blood is boiling in my arteries. Over the years, my love for you has grown instead of weakening, and has caught fire instead of cooling.
I did, however, scheme for a very long time. And how many times have I pretended to forget you, to no longer know you or to ignore you! I went much further, sometimes I even pretended to make fun of you. But no one believed my tricks, neither you nor I.
Every time, the few rare times we write each other, you surprise me, or I surprise myself, and I still find myself in front of you exposed. It’s even worse when I see you; I immediately transform into this shy and uncertain teenager who desperately wants to please you and be loved. I find myself patiently waiting for your gaze to plunge into mine, or for mine to plunge into yours. At this very moment, I always feel the strings of love vibrating very violently inside me.
It is especially thanks to you and through you that my love has never ceased to grow, to become stranger, infallible and unconditional. Since I loved you and realized with which strength and endurance you loved me too, I can no longer count the number of my lovers. You are for me the hidden source that makes love spill over into my entire universe. I sometimes allow myself, hidden from you, to reveal our secret. Sometimes I let some people see the source of my hidden treasure. But I always end up by telling you everything.
I must live with all those who have an aged, weak and wounded heart; all those who are no longer able to love, or who no longer even want to love, truly, in the most authentic and pure way. It is at that very moment that I reach out to them my hand, which is in reality your hand, and I open to them my heart, which is in reality your heart, and I love them as they are of a love that in reality comes from your love towards me.
You are and will always remain in me, the tender, loving and passionate child. I show it without hesitation to the entire world, so that through what they see, they realize that I am only their mirror as you are my mirror: a soul hungry for love and overflowing with love, the heart of a child who loves without any fear, without any restraint and without any modesty.
I’m very uncomfortable. I don’t know how to write love letters, and I don’t know how to end this one. My hands are shaking. My tears of happiness dried up, leaving behind the smile you know.
I hope this letter will never reach you. And if by any chance it comes to you, please don’t read it. I’ve already embarrassed myself enough as it is. I have to go hide. But since you’re everywhere, you hear me, you see me, I’m just going to pretend to hide. Just to play… with you and with all those who still love to play.
I don’t know what to say anymore. I don’t know where else to go. I suffer from an excess of happiness and I don’t know what to do with it anymore.
Nadim M. 