I Love You Emmy

Dear [Emmy],

You know I love you and I hope you never forget that. We’ve been through a lot over the past six years that’s brought us closer together emotionally than I’ve ever felt with anyone else. I love all your long backrubs and how you’re always asking how my day was. Whenever I started the DJ business, you were so behind me. I loved how you’d get more excited than me whenever I’d get a gig. You’ve supported me through the years it took to get my writing efforts off the ground, always there to encourage as well as console whenever things didn’t go so well. You’re among the most caring people I know. I’ve never had anyone take more interest in me than you, and believe me; I cherish that more than I can say, and more than you’ll ever know.

I’ve enjoyed helping you too. I, along with my brother-in-law, relocated you from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh in 2006, and we enjoyed doing it. It gave us a chance to get some exercise and to enjoy the views along the PA turnpike as well. Then, remember when you had the carpel tunnel surgery in 2007? You couldn’t use your right hand for a couple weeks afterward, and I had to help you dress and bathe. I’d never had someone need me so much before and I must admit that at first, I got the jitters over it. But once I realized that you were indeed my way of giving back to the universe, I really started enjoying the giving; and now, I wouldn’t have it any other way. My family and I love providing things you need for your apartment (furniture, kitchen wares, bedding, and the like), and I hope we’re always able to assist you like this because it’s good for us to do so.

So after all our time, I’m now deeply vested in your life. I want you to succeed and I’ll help where I can. It makes me proud when you do well; like a father feels about a great daughter I suppose.

You know, I was always so thankful for the generosity of my grandparents. I felt grateful yet so indebted to them and a few others like my electronics teacher, who constantly gave of themselves for me. Without them and their relentless, unconditional kindness, I would not have made it. Sometimes I’d feel guilty about accepting so much help and free stuff, and I’d ask them, “How am I ever going to pay you back for all this?” They’d shrug it off and tell me not to worry about it. They just told me to “pass it on.”

But who would I pass it on to? Who would ever need me in ways that I could immediately fulfill without too much difficulty, and yet still make a meaningfully positive difference? Whose needs were I best suited to fill? For years, I searched for people who needed me so that I could prove to myself and the rest of the world that I had in fact, become a giver, and not so much the taker that I was in the 70s. Back then as a teen-ager, I felt bad that I did more taking than giving, and I didn’t know how to change. I wanted to. But I just didn’t know where to apply myself. So my desire to serve grew as I entered my middle ages. I longed more to pass to another as I’d been instructed to do, the love that had so graciously been given to me. I wanted to honor my grandparents Jewell and Jim K, that wonderful electronics teacher who was just like them. I wanted to make sure that their loving traditions survived them, and be like them myself.

As these desires ripened in my 42 year-old spirit, you came along at a time when I needed to give badly. So during our first week as friends, not only was I dazzled by your beauty, but I also understood that here was a chance to make my deceased loved ones live again; to become them myself and take care of you a little; the same way they took care of me some thirty years earlier. You were my chance to square up with the universe, to pay it back in some small way, for all it had done for me. I wanted to be the same positive force in your life as Jim K the electronics teacher had been in mine.

Of course, it didn’t hurt either that you were the sexiest female camper at Beacon Lodge. I took perhaps too much pride in the fact that you were mine that session. We went on all the activities together, and I loved “showing you off” to the other guys. Not that I enjoyed seeing them without dates. I didn’t want to rub it in their faces. But I’d been in those ranks for a lot of summers prior, and I knew how they felt. But I was so grateful that this summer of 2003 would be different for me. I’d have a cute girl to escort to the dinner dance, and in no summer since 2005 have I ever been forced to rejoin the lines of the men without girlfriends. I had you.

We sure had lots of fun that summer too, didn’t we? We couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. Well, that was more me than you. I mean, I couldn’t believe how good the universe was treating me. For the first time in several years, I found someone to whom I was very much attracted, and who responded warmly to me. And man, I took full advantage. I liked our 22-year age difference. That heightened the novelty of the whole thing.

Sure, those initial, fiery days came to an end eventually. But as the heat cooled, my love for you grew; that physical lust replaced with a more permanent heart-felt bond. I came to care very much about what happens to you and would be devastated if one day, you weren’t around anymore. I would (and have) come to you in times of need, many times to help you get your computer going again, or to be by your side at your wisdom tooth extractions. When that doctor made you cry out so, I was ready to storm in there and make him stop. No, I can’t stand to see you hurt in any way, by anyone, and I miss you sometimes when we’re apart.

Sometimes being separated as we are scares me. I have nightmares of the two of us riding a bus together. You get off to hit the restroom but don’t return before the bus pulls out. I plead with the driver to wait for you. But he won’t. He barks at me to go back to my seat, and he won’t stop to let me off the bus either. As I watch the building where you are shrink off into the distance, I feel so helpless and afraid that I’ll never see you again. Fortunately I wake before too much more happens. I would not want to see anymore of that scary movie play out. So I awake in a fright, with my heart beating fast and thumping inside my head. My ears ring and I’m all sweaty, yet so relieved to find that I was just dreaming. The thing is that I’d be very upset if you ever disappeared from my life. So I never want to lose you.

[Emmy], I love you, and I beg of you never to doubt that. But in my next letter, I’m going to ask something of you that might be difficult for you to grant. But I hope you’ll consider it seriously and that we can keep on relating as we have been. So, until then, take care.

Tom Hesley

Tom's Love Quest

Thomas J. Hesley's Account of his Quest for True Love

I Love You Emmy

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