Bargain with god or the devil

Dear Hans,

I'm writing to you now without any hope or expectation of reciprocity.
I don't expect you to write back. I know that I will never be entitled
to look in on your life or to ask you to share anything back with me.

But the fact remains that you continue to be a very important person
to me. I can choose to push that back, tell myself that it is more
respectful to leave you alone. But I don't know if that's respectful
at all. I don't know what the right thing is. I can't tell if I've
left you alone because I thought it was better for you, or because I
thought it was punishment for me. I've often thought that it was a
rightful punishment for me if I never got to see you again, or reach
out to you. As I think about suffering and punishment, I would take
punishment, I realize, if it meant that you were spared a little bit.

I got a bad phone call at 4AM from my sister and it had me up the rest
of the night. So I started looking around and thinking about you. I
often think of you, but I don't often go digging because I'm afraid of
what I might find or how it will make me feel. There is really nothing
in my life that I regret more than what I have done to you, and this
keen sense of my own failing is very difficult to experience -
particularly when I'm tired or weak. When I sometimes look for your
pages, it isn't with the idea of pushing myself back into your life.
Instead, I'm hopeful that I will see that you are happy and well
because that would ease my mind about you. I always hope that you are.

I saw that you had taken your facebook page down and so I looked you
up on Flikr to see if that account was still active. I was pleased to
see that you have posted pictures recently - and taken a ski trip to
the Alps again. This made me feel a bit better. Then I saw a picture
you had posted of yourself on Flikr and it made my stomach sink. Hans,
you looked so miserable. I know that I am the one who made you
miserable. I am the person who showed you that your deepest and most
profound trust in another person could be terribly betrayed. I know
that I was always amazed and frightened by your love and trust. I
think I was always afraid that I would betray your trust, but I wish
with all the power of my soul, that I had not.

I wish that I had been made of better material than I am. As I get
older, make more mistakes, and I see more and more the cracks and
fissures in my character, I know that I was never good enough for you.
I'm a good person. I'm strong and I try to be honest and ethical - but
I'm not the "good to my core" person that you deserved to have. You
always made me feel like I was better than I am. I wish I could have
been. I know now that I never would have been able to be that person.

I am so so sorry that I did that to you - that I put that look on your
face that I saw on the picture. It was not a look of temporary
sadness. It was years of pain etched in the eyes and forehead and
around the mouth. If I could, I would take all the bad karma and
sadness and suffering that was allocated to your life, and I would
take it on me. I wish that I could make that bargain with the universe
because I would do it in a heartbeat. I would give anything to have
you happy and well - even if I never saw you again. As long as I knew.
I would trade anything to have you live a life that gives you joy. As
I consider all the suffering I have experienced in the past two
years, I do not believe that it comes close to the suffering I gave to
you.

Please don't feel that you ever have to write back to me. You never
do. This message is not an opening for anything. I don't ask or expect
anything from you. I don't write this to appease my own guilt or to
make my own soul feel better. I'm not so naieve to believe that
anything I say now will make a hill of beans worth of difference to
either of us in any real way. But maybe it will ease you a little to
know that someone half a world away cares whether you woke up happy
this morning, and prays to God and the universe for your wellbeing and
a satisfied life, and would make any bargain with god or the devil to
make that happen.