Three Years Later: A Letter

Three Years Later: A Letter

By Elizabeth Hemp

To Enya

I met you in a different country than the one you call home. It was your second time going there, but my first, and I spent the whole trip trying not to compare my experiences to anyone else’s. You didn’t know anything about that, not then. Afterwards, we came back to your homeland, where I also lived, and suddenly, somehow, we were in a friend group. We hung out every day with Alicia, and your mother called us The Three Amigos, and I discovered being friends the American way involves copious amounts of food. That was the beginning.

In the middle you realized you liked me, and I realized I liked you, and everyone else thought it was an easy choice for us to start dating. They only thought that because they didn’t see my utter terror at the prospect of being tied down to a single place, trapped in a relationship that had the potential of being part of a forever small story. Nobody else thought of it that way, especially not you. When I tried to explain, you just looked sad. I remember how we lay on the hood of your car, warm metal under our skin, and we stared up into the evening sky while you asked me to please stay. I held your hand that night, but I didn’t make any promises.

Three months into our dating relationship, my heartland was lost to me. My parents decided to change continents, so we all went back one last time to pack up and say goodbye to the country we had loved for seventeen years, and you went too. To this day, I still don’t know why you agreed to go. But you did, and in our third country together you spent ten days drowning in the flood of my memories, holding my hand while I sobbed about things I couldn’t even hope to put into words. You were gentle, steady, calm, and kind. You were my stability in that time, the one piece of my life that stood still and was predictable. Even if I lost everything else (and it felt like I did), I knew you would still love me.

I didn’t know how to be loved, or how to stay, or how to be tethered to such a small story. You didn’t know how to wait for someone who was so clearly lost.

That trip with you changed my life. You entered into the complexity of my identity, held the shattered pieces of my history, and loved me all the same. You saw the things I had sworn to never let anyone see; you took all of my complicated emotions and held them with gentleness. You taught me it was okay to be myself. You were able to engage my history and my present simultaneously, acknowledging both as valid. No one had ever shown me that before, and even if they had, I wouldn’t have believed them. But because it was you, I believed it. There will never be enough words to make you understand what a precious gift that time with you was.

But I, of all people, know nothing lasts forever. Even the best times have an end, and in our case the best times became difficult times rather quickly. We didn’t understand each other anymore. I didn’t know how to be loved, or how to stay, or how to be tethered to such a small story. You didn’t know how to wait for someone who was so clearly lost. I went places in my mind where you couldn’t go, and I left you behind. We both said sorry, a lot of times. It wasn’t good enough.

And so it culminated on a frosty winter night, with you and me holding cups of hot chocolate in a diner, saying words we had never imagined we would say.

It is the curse of a third culture kid to know how to leave. In fact, I know how to leave even before I’ve left. I call it TCK Syndrome, the ability to let go and move on to the future before the present has even finished. Sometimes it feels like a gift, but mostly it just feels inevitable.

That night after you drove away, I stayed and kicked some snow in the parking lot. I screamed at the stars. I cried. I tried to be angry at you. I tried to be angry at myself. I tried to make sense out of everything. Mostly I packed up all the memories, shoved them into the attic with all the rest, and stored them safely for myself to remember later. I knew it was over.

Three days later I sat in my car watching the rain, staring blankly in the direction of your house. Three miles. The engine hummed quietly beneath me, headlights beaming into the darkness of the parking lot, and I kept my hands off the steering wheel. Three miles. Three minutes. Somehow, the distance was an uncrossable divide and I knew I would never make it any closer than that empty parking lot—not then, not ever again. So, I clenched my fists quietly in my lap and saw the memory of your tears as soft as the raindrops on the windshield, as tragic as my own tears dripping down onto the plastic seat. Three miles. Three days. Three words we would never say again. I whispered them into the darkness of the rain, and let you go.

It’s been three years now, and I’ve had three other relationships. Three other people I thought might last forever, three other people I have left behind. I’ve been to therapy. I’ve figured a lot of stuff out, and there is still a lot more I haven’t figured out. I’ve realized that my TCK Syndrome isn’t as impenetrable as I always thought it was. I’ve realized that I still miss you, even though I know you’re gone and you’ve moved on. I’ve realized I still miss a lot of people. And I know I’ve said sorry before, and that you already know pretty much everything I’ve written here, but I still want to say this again—thank you. Thank you for the time we had together, for the lessons you taught me, for the ways you loved me well. Maybe someday I will truly let you go, or maybe I won’t, but either way I am a better person for having known you. I definitely don’t regret it.

Elizabeth Hemp grew up in West Africa and North America. She currently resides in a small community in Pennsylvania and satisfies the travel bug by leaving the country at least once a year.