LETTER TO AUDREY - 3 (Not sent)

 

04.07.2024

Dear Audrey,

It has been almost four months since we last spoke - four interminable months.

This might sound like an exaggeration, but it's not: many mornings, I woke up thinking of you, with tormenting thoughts that are difficult to describe. I often wondered about you: whether you are happy, how you are generally doing.

Many times, I wanted to write to you directly, but I always thought it would interfere unreasonably, disrupting your new equilibrium, our plans, our progress, and our developments.

Nonetheless, I miss you, I terribly miss you, Audrey. I really do - more than I ever expected. 

I have been wanting to tell you that for months. I know it has been a long time, and to you, this might sound like a faint, fading echo...of the past.

I let time pass, in the hope that you might find your new equilibrium, get used to a new life, but I always nurtured the hope that you would write to me again, that you would seek me out.

I do not know who you are seeing, whether the sommelier of L'Enclume or somebody else, how you are, but what matters to me is that you are happy.

I have tried to force myself to limit, inhibit, and block myself from writing to you.

Yet, here I am. Why? Because I struggle to accept the idea of never seeing you again for the rest of my life.

I told you so when you called me that morning of October 30th as you desperately announced in tiers over the phone that you were about to leave Amsterdam for good and wanted to see me one last time. When we saw each other again, when we planned to do it again.

I would love to talk to you, to see you, to confront, discuss, resolve, amend, apologise, pacify, and cuddle. My words may seem disproportionate, inappropriate, perhaps empty and insubstantial, inconsistent, belated, weak, and circumstantial.

Yet, despite the passage of time, I am here again, at your bedside, with a thousand questions, doubts, and emotional earthquakes.

You will not believe me, but I have been struggling not to write to you - really, really, Audrey.

But something has changed. I will not go into further details, hoping for your feedback.

I am not begging, but I cannot hold myself back any longer. I miss you so much, Audrey.

I write these words under the influence, gripped by despair at the lack of you... of information about you and the void you left in my life, which contrasts with the constant presence of our memories together in my mind.

I would like to go back, rewind time, and look into your eyes. Remember how much we loved each other, what we said to each other, what we felt, and what we believed.

I apologise for sending you these words. I hope they do not shake you, as the thought of formulating them has often shaken me in recent weeks. I hope you are happy, and I hope you will answer me—whatever you tell me, whatever you feel, whatever you believe.

I wish you all the happiness in this world.

Sorry for not being able to restrain myself.

I miss you. And I begin to think that this feeling is destined never to leave me.

Yours sincerely