Love Letters

I just found a box of old notes from a man I once loved, once upon a previous life.

We'd grown up together. Then a few years ago we realised we wanted completely different things. Our big love is over, but reading these beautifully hand-written notes, two and a half years and much water under the bridge later, still makes me smile.

It's not Shakespeare, but it was us. In amongst them, gems like "You're the best deckie I've ever had", and, "I miss you jumping out from behind corners like a five-year-old and scaring the living shit out of me"

They made me laugh. I love how he loved the stupid things I do and how he thought I made his life brighter.

It's funny how it's not the grand gestures or declarations of undying love you remember, it's the small acts of unprompted kindness that stick, like a handprint on your heart.

Now I'll say that despite being completely wrong for each other, you'd never have met two people who were more in love than me and this guy. Our bond was unparalleled, which is probably why we spent the better part of a decade killing ourselves wondering desperately why this just wasn't working. In the midst of all of this, he did things that broke through the frustration and crippling sadness to show me the man that he was. And he was good man.

I remember, whenever he used to pass our local shops, he'd stop and buy me a Redskin and a loveheart lollypop because he knew how much I loved them. It wasn't a big deal, and it probably only cost him a few dollars in all the years we were together, but it always made my heart sing, and it was his way of showing me he was thinking about me even when I wasn't there.

Never underestimate the unshakable power of a little token of kindness.