Love - In a Friendly Kind of Way

Love – In a Friendly Kind of Way

Quass is a word? Really? Use it in a sentence, please.

Um, why did the chicken quass the road?

Our nightly online Scrabble game, my daily refuge from the surreal monotony and isolation of the pandemic, was taking its usual silly turn.

You quack me up, I responded.

Stop using fowl language! was her retort.

It started innocently enough. She challenged me to an online game of Scrabble, one of several I was playing at the time, mostly with friends. Occasionally I would accept the invitation of some random, anonymous person. I would soon learn that this time it would be quite different.

Our games, at the beginning, were pure fun. A match of wits, each trying to outdo each other with clever rejoinders as we immersed ourselves in the game. She was silly, goofy, irreverent. And she was a very good player – easily my toughest opponent. I found her competitive zeal and obvious intelligence as attractive as her wonderful, zany sense of humor.

But as enjoyable as those games were the first few weeks, a welcome distraction from that strange, dark time, there was something missing, something that began to frustrate me. I felt as if I really didn’t know her; as the games with her became more and more addictive, I was no longer satisfied with just the witty repartee, I wanted to know who this brilliant, funny person really was. She revealed little about her life. I suppose I did the same.

I’m not sure just when things began to change. Gradually our online chats became more serious, more personal, less a contest of one-upmanship with witty retorts. Little by little, she opened up, and I began to understand how remarkably different, indeed how diametrically oppose, our backgrounds, our upbringing, our situations were. Indeed, it was almost as if we came from different planets. And yet, improbably, I felt a special connection, an extraordinary chemistry, that was lacking in my very mundane life.

She – I’m not revealing her name, to protect her privacy – was born in Australia some 42 years ago (at the time I met her), in the northwest part of the continent, to parents who were devout Jehovah’s Witnesses. Her father left the family when she was eight years old, and relocated in Canada. When she was 12 or 13, I forget which, she was sexually abused by one of the cult’s Elders. Her mother, when she complained, refused to believe her, or if she did, did nothing to protect her. The abuse went on for several years.

I was horrified. Nothing in our early communication signaled that she was the product of a traumatic childhood. Indeed, she always seemed upbeat, positive, remarkably well-adjusted.

I’ve never told this to anybody. You’re the only person who knows about this.

Her family (her mother and older sister) came to the United States when she was seventeen and settled in Maine, a small rural community not far from Portland. She tried running away from home several times, wound up having an affair with a man who was much older, got pregnant while still a teenager, and had a daughter who she raised as a single mother and is still very close to. Later, after apparently quite a few dalliances and a wild few years, she met another man, got married, and had a son, who was twelve years old when we first met online. Her husband later contracted a rare and debilitating lung disease, was unable to work, and was waiting for a lung transplant when we first met. She was now the breadwinner of the family, holding together a household with a son (who was having some problems at school at the time), a disabled husband, a dog, two cats, several birds, and two goats in the backyard.

I was blown away. How different from my own conventional, unremarkable background! I’m older than her by some twenty years, grew up in New York City, and now live in the suburbs. I have two children, both adults and living out of state. My wife divorced me some years back, for reasons that I’m still trying to process, but that’s another story. Pretty standard stuff.

We continued to confide in each other. Perhaps it was the relative anonymity, the knowledge that we would likely never meet in person, that made us feel safe in revealing our deepest secrets, our most personal feelings and thoughts. It was something of a paradox: it was the very distance and anonymity that allowed us to connect in ways that may never – make that would never – have happened in person.

Perhaps a month or two into our Scrabble games – who remembers time during that terribly disorienting period? – we were chatting about our day, or the game, or whatever – and suddenly I saw those words – I love you – on the screen. I was momentarily paralyzed, rendered mute – it had been a long time since I had heard those words, and wasn’t sure how to react. Perhaps she was disconcerted by my momentary silence, and she quickly added in a friendly kind of way. She had no idea how deeply those simple, powerful words affected me.

Me too, I said lamely. And no backsies.

That became our running joke – saying I love you – in a friendly kind of way.

But it was, of course, much more than that. It was a special kind of intimacy, one that, perhaps because of physical distance, allowed us to be who we are, and to reveal unfiltered our innermost thoughts and feelings.

Soon we began texting and emailing. The dam had broken. There was no going back.

August 22, 2021

My dearest ________

I’m reading a book called Normal People, by Sally Rooney, a young Irish writer, and came across a wonderful scene where two young lovers are in bed, holding each other. There was a sentence at the end of the scene that really struck me: Most people go through their lives, Marianne thought, without ever feeling that close with anyone.

That line stayed with me.

Good writing has a way of cutting through defenses; a good novelist lets us know things we already know and feel, and are unable to articulate coherently.

Most people go through their whole lives…without ever feeling that close with anyone.

Simple, sad, yet very true. Perhaps that’s what motivates most people…not money or status or material things, but finding someone to feel close to, to be able to communicate with on a different level than with everyone else, to feel a profound sense of intimacy.

Reading that passage, simple as it may be, resonated with me in a visceral way. I read it over and over.

When you opened up to me last week about your horrific childhood abuse, I felt ever so close to you. I just wanted to hug and hold you, to protect you. Since that conversation you seem to have retreated somewhat emotionally, as if you got too close to the fire and were afraid of getting burned. You have your defenses, your shields, your armor. Sometimes I feel I have to pierce that armor so we can relate on that oh so comfortable, so magical way when we’re really connecting.

You told me that night that you told me things you haven’t told anyone else. I want you to feel comfortable with me. I want you to know you can tell me anything. We all live with our carefully guarded secrets, our curated memories. You’ve been remarkable in overcoming your childhood trauma, though I sometimes worry about what you keep hidden. We all have filters, we all try to present our most appealing selves. Just remember that I will always be here for you, no matter the circumstances.

I love you (in a friendly kind of way).

As always,

______________

August 24, 2021

Dearest _________,

I would have to agree. That line is simple yet makes you stop right in your tracks. Most would pause and carry on, but not you. That’s what I Iove about you, my deep thinker.

I always feel close to you, ___________, even when there are days when life seems to overwhelm. It is pure coincidence that communication dwindled after I confided in you. Was I raw? Absolutely! The following day I felt a sense of relief. I would even say this sense of relief is directly related to knowing I have someone that passes no judgment and accepts me for who I am. I love you, ____________.

I would also like to add that work has been crazy! I have been very tired. __________starts school on Monday and I have been spending extra time with him in the evenings.

Thank you for caring about me and our relationship. It is incredibly important to me.

Love,

____________

And so it went, for much of the pandemic. The intensity varied, and there were times that I didn’t hear from her for days. We spoke on the phone a couple of times, but the conversations were a bit stilted, a certain shyness creeping in. Somehow talking in person, hearing our voices, created a distance, a wariness, that was different from the way we related online. I have often wondered, both then and now, what would have happened if we had actually met. Of course, she was still married, though now more caretaker than wife, but she remained loyal to her husband. Perhaps the intensity of our relationship scared her, given how much she had been burned in the past. Life was overwhelming for her; she started going for therapy, which I heartily encouraged. Perhaps in therapy she concluded that our relationship was a dead end, and not all that healthy for her. She eventually changed her email address, and wouldn’t give me her new one. Her husband, apparently, had access to her email, and may have suspected what was going on. She stopped playing Scrabble – with me, anyway. Oh, how I miss those games, and the early carefree days of our relationship!

Recently I was vacationing in Maine with a couple of friends, and drove past the exit to her town. My heart skipped a few beats. Later, I texted her:

I drove by your exit on the interstate, and I waved. Did you see me?

I resisted repeating my lame joke about all the Mainiacs who live there.

She quickly responded:

Oh! So that was YOU??

We still occasionally text, holiday greetings, newsy kinds of things. She now has two grandchildren from her daughter, and sends me pictures, a proud grandma. I send her pictures of my two grandchildren. I guess that’s what grandparents do.

Maybe our relationship was a product of the pandemic, how disconnected and disoriented we all were, how we longed for human connection. Maybe it was just a fantasy. Can there be true love between two people who never meet, and never would meet? Was it real? We probably both knew, in our hearts, that the relationship couldn’t be sustained.

But it was wonderful while it lasted, and gave me joy during the dark days of the pandemic. Maybe it wasn't true love, maybe it wasn't real, but it certainly felt real at the time.

In a friendly kind of way.