Pen Pals

I have a thing for pen pals. I love them. Like, literally, I have a weird tendency to fall in love with them. I have an uncanny and undoubtedly destructive ability to write my way into emotions. Since I was 21, I've had a string of male pen pals, with some of them I've exchanged long hand-written letters, with others long emails. And they have been, without question, my most satisfying romantic relationships. None of these relationships has worked out in real life. I have a long history of that too.

Some of them, most of them I destroyed. Without wanting to, helplessly watching from a distance as these men dared try to find a way to connect with me in some way that didn't involve the written word. I have snubbed my pen pals by phone and cold-shouldered them in person. Crushed the connection beneath my heel as soon as one of my pen pals ruined a perfectly satisfying and emotionally fulfilling relationship by wanting, like Pinocchio, to be a real boy. I think I've gotten over that. In fact, the last pen pal turned real person I actually gave a chance. It didn't work out either, but it failed in a healthy (um, maybe I should say healthier) way. In a real way. The real, non-written relationship didn't work, not because I wouldn't give it a chance, but because it didn't. And the real failure didn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it would all those times I was deliberately crushing budding romances. (I think, at 31, I'm finally getting over some of my heaviest romantic hang ups even as I've become enthralled with the idea of spinsterhood. What a . . . coincidence?)

Anyway, this is all to say that the original pen pal/love, the one to whom no other ever lived up, has gotten back in touch. And it's fabulous! He's hilarious and crass and he loves writing letters as much as I do. We could not be more different apart from our shared love of words. But after 10 years, we can still write pages and pages about nothing. And best of all, he's in love with a woman who desperately loves him back, so I can write my crazy, long, wackadoo letters to someone who actually WANTS to read them without fear of falling into that trap I've set myself time and time again. I hadn't even realized how much I missed having a person, as opposed to the internet, to write to, someone who will write me back.