Faelyn Ar'aphine's Letters to Valweld'mion Gi'ila, Letter 3: Response to Letter 7

Valweld’mion,
 
I will try to be as direct about this as I can: honest statements and evaluations. If it comes off as cold, it is because I am trying to lay things out cleanly and simply in a way that no matters of the heart can ever me. But I am clumsy with those matters, and I need to pretend I can find a logical structure here.
 
Trying to hold these conversations in jigsaw pieces is exhausting. I need a person’s face to see their heart. I need time spent, I need long conversations— passing notes will not suffice. This is not the first time this has happened, and so I have to ask you that before you ask me questions, begin complex lines of conversation, please consider if it will take me more than a handful of sending spells to answer in full.
 
Let me state this much before I go further: I have no desire to say goodbye. There is a rending in my chest at the thought. I am realizing now, less than three paragraphs in, that attempting to approach this pragmatically will not work. There isn’t rationale to be shared. There isn't a clean cause and effect I can defend. I cannot dissect my own actions and provide a reason behind each one in a way that either absolves me of guilt or declares it.
 
You wrote: why do you feel this way about me? It is a question regarding my accusation. I called you eager.
 
I do not feel that way about you. I did not see you off expecting you to fall into the arms of the first pretty face you deemed worthy of your attention. It was shock that made me say it — and that is not a defense, I only wish to explain as much as this can be explained. I do not want you believing that I’ve been watching you for a moment of unfaithfulness. I haven’t. When I heard you ask, I was shocked, and I was hurt, and I lashed out because of it. When I heard you ask, these were the thoughts in my head:
 
* You were asking me about seeing partners beyond each other.
* I had expressed no desire for another soul.
** Therefore, you could only be inquiring out of your own desires.
* You were asking me without precedent, over a sending spell.
** Therefore, there must have been someone you wanted at that moment.
 
In retrospect I see the other meanings, how the image can be turned to make something new, and I despise myself for thinking the worst of you, even if for a moment. I have never been foolish enough to think I could ever encompass all of your love, but I believed what you gave me was mine alone. And with that question I believed myself to have gone from being loved and being wanted by you, in a way that is unique and only for me, to abruptly being one of multiple.
 
I did not like being one of — two? Three? Five? More? Where did I fall, I wondered. Which number was I, in your heart? How much of it was divvied to me — was it less or was it more or was it perfectly equal to what you gave the imagined others?
 
I lashed out. I sought to hurt you with my words. I know that at my most basic level, I am a deeply unkind person. And you have a knack for stripping me bare.
 
I phrase that like it’s romantic — it isn’t, I hate it. I want to be my best self for you, even when broken down to the very core. You deserve someone who does not have to silence themself for hours, methodically biting back words, building phrases meant to cut to the bone and then disassembling them over, and over, and over just to ensure they do not escape his bleeding mouth. And there lies the explanation for my silence. I did not want to talk. I needed to think. I needed to find words that were not barbed.
 
Through that day, I tried to make myself comfortable with the thought of sharing. I could not. I know I would be bitter for it — Every kiss, every touch, every moment with you would be spent steeped in jealousy. I would cling to you for as long as I had you in the hope that somehow you would decide you only wanted me after all. I would seethe with hatred for your hypothetical partners.
 
But still, I tried to convince myself I could manage. Wouldn’t it be better to have some sliver of you than nothing at all? I never was able to reach an answer to that. I did not want to, as I could not find happiness at either end.
 
All that is to say, again, I have no desire to say goodbye. And that I am selfishly delighted to learn how terribly I’d been mistaken.
 
I apologize for calling this a pathetic codependence. It was the truth, what I said, that is how I once saw all such partnerships. When I spoke those words to you, they were entirely meant for me. I was aghast at how it weighed upon me. It felt embarrassing, truth be told. To have overestimated my value to you, and to fall to pieces alongside that shattered illusion. I am embarrassed now to have been corrected yet again.
 
I need to back up for a moment. I still worry about that ‘why do you feel this way about me’ you wrote. I do not. I have already said this, I need to say it again. I do not. I am not a kind person. I am not a trusting person. But I want to be kind to you, and I want to give you my trust. I have. It isn’t everything, I know. Please understand how much of this is new to me. I am new to having a home, and having a child, and having a lover. I am new to trying to be kind, and trying to be honest, and being dreadfully and terrifyingly helpless.
 
For all my life, I have had one person I genuinely trusted. There came a point where I pushed even her away, paranoia corroding the one good thing I’d managed to build with someone else.
 
You are number two. I will state plainly that I do not trust you with everything yet. Not all of me. But I want to. And I trust you as a person, I trust you when you say you love me, and when you write corrections about misinterpreted words, and I trust you to have you in my bed when I know my sleep is far too deep to notice if you were to take one of the many, many blades you carry and place it to my throat. There was not a moment where I did not trust you — only re-evaluated, only believed myself less in your heart, only felt wounded in this perceived excitement to have someone who was not me.
 
I am so sorry to have hurt you.
 
And I did like the joke. I thought I made one in turn but perhaps I was too forlorn to sell it.
 
When you come home, we can have a proper conversation. If that is what you would like. If that is still home.
 
Until then. I did miss hearing about your day, darling.
 
~ Faelyn