An ode to the love letter

How do we articulate love? 

When I was younger, I was, of course, obsessed with Taylor Swift. I would listen to her music for hours at every sleepover with my friends, watch her music videos on loop, edit photos on Picnik with her lyrics written across my face. When I had MSN, my little description read: “It’s just wrong enough to make it feel right” with a heart emoji, as if those lyrics could ever pertain to the life of an 11-year-old. I would find a way to apply every song she sang to all of my crushes, like my swim instructor Michael, to whom the song “Back to December” was definitely never applicable. It’s not that I believe Taylor Swift writes revolutionary, emotional song lyrics; rather, it’s that I have always, always, always relied on words to carry me through. 

Of course, we all rely on words in readings and writings, and in our everyday communications. But I have written before about how I fall in love with at least six people a day, and that is a hefty weight to carry around. Where I find solace, especially these days, is in my words and the words of others, as a means of guiding me through love and heartbreak. It is the most crucial, if not the only, way I cope with crowding emotions, as I am heavy with feelings most of the time.  

Romance isn’t for everyone, but I have found that it is for me. I seem to find romance in everything: it forms in my thoughts and imaginations. It is in my body and its movements, and it is in the things external to me. My favourite place to find it is in others, because it exists in them as it exists in me but yet also remains individual. Which is maybe why I fall in love so easily: each person brings to every relationship an individualism and a humanity that I am continually in awe of. Thoughts and feelings like these are hard to interpret and process within ourselves, which is where words come into play. 

You know when you’re listening to a song or reading a poem or book or some string of words and it’s just so good? It’s exactly what you needed to hear in that moment, and you’re hit right in the chest, struck by one perfect articulation. Someone has created that—they have put together their words to share with you and you have felt them. You have ingested and digested the thoughts and feelings of another and made them your own by applying your own histories to them. Words are relatable. To listen and feed off the words of another is sensuous—it’s erotic. Not necessarily in the sexual sense, but in the human connection breeding in the spaces where we come together to share words. 

So when I say I have always relied on words, I certainly don’t mean the words themselves. It seems to be the ability to form a connection with someone through our articulations. To feel the same and form a relationship based on shared experiences and empathy. Even the words that we can’t apply to our own stories carry with them the feelings that inspired them. The lost loves, the ones that stuck around, the ones that come and go, the crushes, the phases, the ones that are still there filling your beating heart.  

Words are the vehicles through which we communicate about all types of love, but there’s something about that classic love poem or song. Maybe it’s because when you’re in love, it feels fiery and passionate first, perhaps comfortable later. Maybe it’s that all-encompassing, body-heavy, indescribable something-or-other. I feel like speaking those words into existence releases what you’ve internalized about those feelings. What makes romantic love painful, the parts of it that cause suffering—the unreciprocated feelings, the long distance, the communication issues, sometimes even being so in love it just hurts. Writing through them is what can alleviate some of that pain. It can be so healing to articulate it and to share it for others who might feel the same.  

I guess all of this has been an ode to the love letter, in any form. An ode to the ability we have as humans to feel and feel hard, then share and connect and communicate through our feelings. Read and listen to the words about others that took minutes to write because it was easy, and the ones that took days because it was difficult. Read and listen, feel and write.