How wonderful it was to have met you.
I cherish our moments shared, as I do with all moments of mine. Needless to say, maybe. But I don't feel much like taking chances today.
I remember an evening I had, some nine or ten years ago.
I was in my bedroom in our old house - this was the one we had in my childhood.
I was sitting by my window. It was quite late in the night… It was a school night so I had to be discreet about my troubles that were keeping me awake.
Troubles… Of a thirteen year old. He had told me on the phone that night that I would laugh about it some ten years from then.
I had found it hard to believe.
He proved wiser than I'd given him credit for. An in-confidence of mine that remains problematic today, considering he was my best friend at the time.
But see I was mindless in all my judgements, as I was fully consumed by the belief that I had fallen in love with him. In retrospect, I certainly was not. But how do you explain that to a thirteen tear old?
They couldn't. And so I was troubled.
Troubled with the rejection. Troubled with my anger… How could he do this to me? How could he hurt me so? And not love me, the way I loved him?
A song began to play in my radio.
I used to like listening to the radio at night as I sat by my window, on the radiator, and watch the sky.
I loved watching the sky at night. In the oh-so-polluted air of a big city like Istanbul, you only get about four stars at night. Five if you are lucky. That night, there were about seven. I loved that.
The further the stars appeared to me, the smaller I became, the farther they seemed, the lighter my troubles got.
It was a love song, sung by a man in distress.
It said, "for certain things… being "good", is not enough".
Being good, he thought, was not enough to make her love him.
I wandered around the thought. He was right. Being "good" wasn't enough for my friend love me back. In fact, nothing was. No matter what I could do, or what I could say, I could never make him love me. I couldn't make anyone.
That was the moment I forgave him. That was the moment I let my anger go. That was the moment I learned never to blame anyone, or judge, for not feeling towards me what ever it was that I wanted them to.
Just as the way I have apologized to many - they too, could never force themselves to a feeling. Things, simply, do not work that way…
Today I am a fairly grown woman, much too mature comparatively.
I learned today a new thing: how we can't help but feel that anger sometimes, regardless of our awareness of its irrationality.
So today I forgave myself for behaving in ways surpassing my own reason.
My better knowledge failed to hold me back from being upset with you.
I was sad. And just as you can't help not loving me, how could I possibly help hating you?
I ask for your forgiveness, just as I grant you mine.
At the end of the day, my behavior was just as symptomatic of human nature as yours.
We are all slaves of our instincts, it seems.
What a shame.
Or a blessing, perhaps.
In the DC sky tonight, I count only two stars above me.
Perhaps Istanbul was not so bad after all.
How I miss it dearly.
Either that, or the window I used to sit by.
Or owning a radio.
Or .being thirteen.
