My name is Amanda, and I'm a ...

loveaholic. It has been 61 days since my last love-based emotional delusion and last emotional close call. My addition to love started late but ferociously. One hit, and I was hooked. I was eighteen. In all sorts of ways, the details don’t matter. What matters is that I closed my eyes, leapt, and had six months of raw, heart-singing beauty before I landed. Hard. After the high wore off, I was a complete wreck. I was unfit for social interaction for at least the next year, probably more. I was jonesing so hard for a fix, I would do almost anything to convince myself that it was right around the corner while also continuing to destroy myself by hanging out in the crack den of my dearly departed’s company. Well, virtual company.

Until I hit what I thought was bottom. Then I wrote her off, devoted myself to the next wonderful woman in my life who brought me up from my low to a place somewhere close to human again. In fact, she resuscitated me enough so that I felt centered enough to find that original object of affection. To find out how she was. To allow myself to love her in a newly changed way. To be her friend if she’d have me.

That was nine years ago. Since then, we have had almost a decade of epistolary friendship broken by rare visits and even more rare phone calls. She has had two major relationships—one on-going. I have had three—also one on-going. We have both lived with our loves and our friends. And we have done nothing but grow closer, more comfortable.

Every afternoon, as I near my mailbox, I think one of three things:
“I just got a letter from her; it’s too soon for another.”
“I haven’t gotten a letter in a while; maybe there’s one there.”
“It’s been ages since I’ve gotten a letter; I’m a fool for looking for one every day”

Sometimes I’m rewarded with an envelope with my name in neat writing, a pretty stamp, and folded papers of thoughts and phrasing so hers it makes me sigh in recognition and relief that I still know her, that she is still mine, in a sense.

Then.

Yes, then. There’s always a then in these stories of destruction and redemption. Then she visited my home. The home I have made with my on-going love. The home that has contained both incredible love and too much strife. She came, still beautiful even without her long, curly locks, even without her slightly crooked teeth. And I let myself fall into her. And I let myself hold out hope that one day, one eventual day, that part of our relationship she excised all those years ago might reflower. I let myself think of this despite knowing she feels she has found her soulmate in her new love. Despite knowing things between us stopped being mutual on May 3, 1994. Despite the untold number of times I’ve struggled with our current reality and beaten my longing into submission. Despite how much I cherish our friendship and how devastated I would be to lose it.

Before this visit, I thought I had made peace with the reality of my two loves: the unrequited one and the on-going one. I thought they could coincide. But there was such ease in her presence, such understanding at a time of dischord in my daily life. It was too much. I was a breath away from ending things with my other, moving into a room of my own somewhere, and surrendering myself to the certain brand of satisfaction I’ve always gotten from my unrequited love.

And then.

Yes, then. Isn’t there always another then in these stories? The then when the bottom has been hit, and we addicted souls realize it? Realize that taking that next drink, that next hit will actually not make things better. That we are bound to repeat ourselves as we have already done a few times. That we are going to hurt people we love before we hurt ourselves.

So I stopped. And I realized for the first time that no matter how inevitable my love for the unattainable one has felt through the years (and, believe me, it felt very unbelievably inevitable), my actions are under my control. I could choose to devote myself to turning around my 4+ year relationship to a woman so amazing falling in love with her obliterated—for more than a short while—the lurking love that has kept me company through the years. I could choose to open myself up to someone emotionally available instead of unavailable. I could stop trying to get the unrequited one to understand me enough so that I could feel her crawl under my skin like I did when we first met. That I could find peace of heart in what I had instead of what I thought I wanted.

And so began the road to recovery. Patching my current love. Saying a painful good-bye to the embarrassing hope that love would spring again between my letter-writing friend and me, that we would be together again in a way more intimate than the incredible intimacy of reading each other’s thoughts a dozen times a year, than knowing each other for 12 years, than knowing the person who taught me about requited love, real exception-making love still exists in the world and my life.

Still, I have chosen to walk the dangerous line of friendship with her, of living with temptation and the risk that the next time I see her, look in her lovely brown eyes, I will have to scramble out of a hole again and start over. My current sweetheart worries, too, I know. I feel sure that I will be able to make it through, but I don’t expect it to be easy. The pull of memory is strong, but I have a choice in the matter. Who knew that would be such a powerful thing? Choice.