For Laura

Content Warning: Depression is a major theme. There are mentions of suicidal ideation and sexual trauma. Please take care.

It was 2 a.m., at a beautiful farm estate in northern Germany, and the wedding was coming to an end.

I sat, shaky hands holding pages I just ripped out of a Gryffindor notebook. It was a present I had bought for the bride a year before, but never gave her. We both got Gryffindor on the Pottermore test.

Instead, I claimed the ruined notebook as my own and used the newly torn pages to write her a letter. I wrote feverishly. I had only five hours before I had to leave, and hadn’t gotten any sleep yet.

As I scribbled, she slept, or perhaps made love with her husband. Anxiety and urgency vibrated within me. I was tired and desperate to tell her the truth. We were one hundred feet or so apart. Her room was in the adjacent townhouse, but it felt like we were living in two different worlds. I consciously held myself back from knocking on her door right then. It was one of the happiest nights of her life.

The bride was — or had been? — one of my closest friends. I remembered the moment ten hours before; my tears fell as she walked down the aisle. Grief swelled for the time missed between us, while deep love and happiness for her, her groom, and the baby in her stomach enveloped me.

Two years had passed, and I had missed the building of her relationship with her fiancé, now-husband, most of her pregnancy, and her wedding preparations. She didn’t think I was going to show up.

In that moment, she turned at the altar to face the crowd. When her eyes met mine and the smallest look of surprise crossed her face at my tears, my heart was set.

Now, I was writing an apology, an explanation, and well-wishes, deeply honest and loving. Words that stayed buried in my psyche for years, poured into scribbles on thick, yellow pages. Honesty, fear, and a need to explain why I left, and where I was during that time, flowed messily down the page. I flipped to the opposite side.

My heart felt heavy as I recalled her words from the days before.

“Oh, you made it,” She remarked at my arrival before walking back into the house. She left me with her to-be in-laws. Her disregard and physical distance left me unmoored.

The next day, she told me that her bridesmaid was her lifesaver. She had organized everything on the German side, while my friend juggled work, pregnancy, school, and wedding preparations back in Canada. Was it my shame or her anger that made the animosity behind her words so striking?

I pulled away from the pages so that my tears would miss the paper. They landed on my lap instead. How much did she care for me? How much did she want me to be part of her life? Would I have been a bridesmaid too if I had never pulled away? Thoughts of a timeline that could have been haunted me.

Instead of being an integral part of her life, I gave her a pencil case. It was a stuffed plushy pig with a zippered pouch. The zipper opened up along the pig's back. Inside, I placed some snacks and another letter. It was a promise to help her as a babysitter when I returned to the city we shared, our chosen home. The promise was empty, and the words shallow in comparison to the pages in front of me now.

Possessed, I kept writing, and the night passed. I told her of my failures, about who I was behind the mask I wore when we were roommates two years ago. It was during the time I collapsed under the pressure of university. I explained why I couldn’t be there for her and expressed how much it hurt that my inabilities affected her.

I wrote about the eight months of my life before I arrived at her wedding. A season of numbness that made time disappear into nothing, only to resurface in sudden and intense anxiety if something interrupted my stupor. I told her that her invitation brought me back into reality. For some reason, her wedding was the only thing I couldn’t turn away from.

My pen stopped as the thoughts resurfaced.

Only four months ago, I was lying on the floor of my bedroom. Dirty clothing was strewn around me. I stared at the dust-covered light on the roof. I had just finished looking up the conditions of life insurance. The answer was two years. I was imagining myself lying in the snow, falling asleep.

In that moment, her wedding invitation was still push-pinned into the corkboard next to my desk. It was still sealed in the envelope with my name written in her handwriting. It was a yellow envelope with her writing in blue ink.

The visuals stood out to me in that moment, as if they were the only things that existed in an otherwise empty world. Everything was grey, but at the thought of missing her wedding, I felt my breath leave me. I knew I wouldn’t make it, without a doubt, and in that certainty, my heart shattered.

Yet, ten hours ago, I was at the ceremony. After the vows, we hugged for the first time since I arrived in Germany. She had just finished the wedding photos, and everyone was gathering around, marvelling at her beauty and congratulating her with hugs and small moments of connection.

I took the opportunity to reach out to her. “You are so beautiful.” My breath caught halfway through, and came out as a whisper, heavy with emotion.

“Thank you for coming, Sylvia.” She whispered back to me as we embraced. To me, her hug felt like forgiveness. I hesitated to believe it.

The ink pooled, and the period I stopped at had grown double its size. I refocused on the letter. Urgency cut short my reminiscing. I needed to finish soon, and there was still another story I needed to tell her.

It was a reciprocated story. My story for hers. A story she told me a few years ago that spoke of the things we don’t speak of, the shames that we bury in our vaginas.

Like a small drop of water flowing down a mountainside, her story had flowed into a river of my own experiences, and over the years, I accepted them. With gratitude for her vulnerability years ago, I finally echoed with my own. I told her of him. The summer house, and how he was trusted. How his name was peripheral and unspoken, until in the years following, I remembered.

I stared at his name. My breath quickened, my body screamed behind dissociation. I exhaled.

I left it in the yellow pages of the letter I was writing.

Calmness overtook the turmoil that imprinted truth into words, and I wrote of love.

I let the sacred love that grew from the wedding flow into the words I wrote. I waxed poetic about the wedding. Memories of our university life, although unwritten, infused the letter with adoration. I remembered my surprise on December 6th, Laura’s German Nikolaus candy in my Canadian shoes. I smelled wet leaves in the fall as we walked and talked, her worries falling into my heart. I smiled softly at collaborating for a pancake breakfast, dripping syrup, extravagant strawberries, and scrounging free oranges for homemade orange juice.

My friendship felt like a wish, a dream, a relationship that could have been, but instead balanced on a precipice of “old roommate” or “close friend,” and I hoped that what I felt at the ceremony was real for her too.

The ink was becoming lighter, but the pen managed to hold out to the end. All the thoughts and feelings that entranced me were imprinted and made timeless in a messy scrawl. I had finished at last. My body relaxed as exhaustion tempted me to sleep.

I folded the letter, tied it with a ribbon, and wrote a note for our mutual friend who was sharing my room. “Please make sure Laura gets this. It’s important.”

Leaving it there felt like throwing a bottle into the ocean. Writing the letter itself was transformative, but the process was only half finished. What I said was meant to be heard, but time was passing, and my eyes were closing on their own. I set my alarm for three-and-a-half hours later.

At 2:30 a.m., I fell deeply asleep, and at 6 a.m., before the rest of the wedding party woke up, I slipped out the door for my preplanned flight to Budapest. I left the letter on the counter, the bottle thrown, and prayed it would arrive where it was meant to.

Summer turned to Fall, and the letter was suspended in time. Read, lost, forgotten, ignored?

My life settled into a new routine. I volunteered as an English kindergarten teacher in a neighbourhood outside Budapest. My new roommate was a young facade of a bubbly extrovert. At home, she would lie on her bed with her headphones glued on, with disillusioned passivity and disinterest.

A familiarity with her dissonance made me uneasy. Despite that, I enjoyed hiking in the hills next to town and teaching the children was fulfilling, but in moments of uncertainty, I wondered about the letter.

This random girl showed symptoms of a life I dreaded, and it invaded my peace. I fell into a similar pattern, and the plans I made faded away. I waited for her to leave. When she did, I was alone. I lay in bed, dreading the days to come.

The past resurfaced, and I recalled the pivotal moment.

“If I were to die, what would I miss?” I had whispered to myself while sitting on the toilet months before. I returned to my bedroom, and the sunlight shone brightly, a juxtaposition that made everything more elegiac to me. In that mockingly happy sunlight, my answer resonated within me.

“My voice.”

I found something to live for. And so, I chose to go to Europe.

In those months leading up to the wedding, I went to counselling, and after six sessions, I messaged Laura my RSVP. I said I would come… I made it, but…

Two months had passed since I left the wedding. I hadn’t heard back from Laura.

I tried to remember what I wrote in the letter, but only the emotions and vague notion of the words remained. I regretted leaving it, and hoped it was lost in a garbage can back on the farm.

The heating stopped working for days before my reverie was interrupted.

I touched my warm hands to my cold nose. I had pulled out my sleeping bag and was now hiding inside it. My room had the shades closed, the door locked, and a single lamp turned on.

It was the school founder, my host, who knocked on my locked door. My hair was greasy and messy, and I stunk of body odour and fear, but I was struck with anxiety and fell out of my sleeping bag to answer.

She was a short woman with a blonde bob cut, kind eyes, and a quiet, soft voice.

“Sylvia, we were worried. Your family said they couldn’t reach you. I thought something had happened.”

“I’m sorry.” My voice was subdued and apologetic. “I was feeling a little homesick.”

I felt my face grow hot with embarrassment. Her little dog tried to enter the room, and she intended to follow him. The mess behind me mirrored my bed kept visage in front of her, and I closed the door slightly.

She grasped the situation at a glance, but I saw no judgment in her eyes. Instead, I felt unbridled care. She saw me and hugged me. It was short, but gentle and sturdy. Emotion overcame apathy, and I pulled away before I felt too much.

“Would you like to come with us to see some horses and dogs?” She suggested.

It was perfect, a small trip, a way to connect without pressure, and a homemade version of animal therapy.

“Yes. That would be nice.” My voice was quiet and reserved, but she looked relieved at my response.

“Great. Meet me at my place at eleven, then you can stay for lunch if you like.” She left with her dog. It gave me forty-five minutes to clean up.

With certainty only a mother can possess, she took me in, and I found myself out for the rest of the day, staying until the sun was going down. Her kindness enveloped me, and my hope returned. I spent the rest of the school break returning to sanity.

When the break ended, the rhythm of work anchored me, and another international English-speaking teacher arrived. This time, I roomed with an adventurous and confident woman. During the daytime, the sun was bright, my heart was open, but at night, I still wondered.

Unease lingered in the periphery of my mind, like knowing there is something behind you in a dark room. I didn’t dare look back at the friendship I might have imagined. Instead, I laughed with kids and taught English.

It was 4 a.m. I woke up wrapped in a warm blanket on a November morning in this small town in Hungary. A text awaited me. The number was not in my contacts, but after the first word, I knew it was her. Laura had replied.

I opened up a text from my brother, leaving hers unread. I answered his, then closed the app and snuggled deeper into the blankets. The phone dinged. I felt myself close my eyes tightly in denial. The darkness in the room held my fears. The blanket was warm and all-consuming. I felt it in my periphery, the unease I didn’t dare turn to.

Then I turned. I opened the app, looked at the message, and read her response.

It was a simple message. An acknowledgement with an apologetic undertone, an invitation to return, and excitement for me to meet her newborn baby in Spring. My fear evaporated.

As if the life I was living suddenly fell into place, I felt tears well up and fall sideways down my cheek onto the pillow, this time in relief. I texted her back, and we chatted with familiar, though hesitant, banter.

The warmth of the covers cocooned me, but as our texting ended, I slid out of bed, washed my face, and dressed up a little more than usual. I felt a sense of purpose grow as I looked in the mirror.

The weather was cold and dreary. Yet, as I contemplated the next steps in my life, I watched the morning fog with a warm hot chocolate in my hands, content.

The months ahead became real, and I dreamed of returning to the city we shared.

Yellow pages and blue ink in a bottle in the ocean returned to shore.