Dear Professor, I'm Engaged

An essay seven years in the making

*The following is a letter I’ve sent to a former professor. If/when I get a response, and with their permission, I’ll update to include.

Dear Professor Jones,

It’s been seven years since I took your class on how to get published in the Modern Love column for the NY Times, and I’m not sure you’d remember me. But I remember you and I still reflect on the class from time to time.

You were an exceptional teacher. Kind, curious, and encouraging. You genuinely seemed to believe everyone in the room had a love story worth hearing. You blended critical feedback about narrative with realistic advice about the publishing world. 

Sincerely, thank you for that. 

I thought of writing to you, not knowing if you still use this email, because I finally found a satisfying essay for that semester’s main assignment in 2017. We were asked to submit a real and true love story from our lives. I ended the semester without ever finding mine, and instead had to submit a piece about surrendering to that fact.

As you probably remember, in our class were some brilliant writers. Many of them would go on to have the very essays they worked on in your course be published in the New York Times. 

I, however, struggled all year long. I changed the subject of my essay multiple times. I felt deeply overwhelmed and confused on what I believed about love and what felt worth saying. And then halfway through the semester I broke up with my girlfriend of over two years, who I lived with and who at the time I was certain was the love of my life. 

Funny thing (but not really), we actually broke up right after attending a Modern Love Live event you invited our class to attend. David Harbour from Stranger Things read an essay in a theatre near Times Square. I remember his voice, I remember her walking out, and I for sure remember her crying. More than anything, I remember being full of fear. I felt it in the back of my throat and then this burning rising up from my hands to my arms to my chest. Then the impulse to run away. 

Here’s something worse that I especially don’t enjoy reflecting on. I remember thinking, “well maybe this could at least help me have something for class that could be published”. And not just a passing thought, you know? Like I really found deep satisfaction in writing from this indulgent romantic victim mindset even though I was the one who broke up with her and I was the one who refused to have hard conversations. 

Why did we break up? I can look back now and see that I wanted to be in an unrealistic relationship with no serious tension or conflict. I believed that when tension arose, it must’ve meant I wasn’t in a compatible relationship. And that night of your event, I could tell she wasn’t happy and I could feel the tension. I was overwhelmed with fear that I could be part of the reason and reflexively pulled away. I tried pushing past my feelings by creating a protective narrative. It must be her. It was time again to run and find someone else who would never cry and walk out of a show. 

Within only a week or two I felt regret, loneliness and sadness at her being gone. But I even more badly wanted some type of validation. When we were in class, I longed for this beautiful and timeless essay with my name at the top and edited by you, Professor. It would be heralded by your iconic newspaper - and it would also likely bring me the attention of some new perfect partner.

I can still access that yearning when I go back and think about how it all felt:

I’m missing something. I don’t feel appreciated or understood. If I can just write well enough, I’ll be seen and I’ll be loved. I just need a spark. To be published. And then maybe I’ll get an agent? A book-deal and then a never expiring pass for peace and purpose. Self-worth. Some goddamn sense of human worth.

This obsession with external validation to treat an internal issue meant I often couldn’t sustain space for others. I’d want to, I really wanted to. But looking back, left in my romantic wake was so much unnecessarily inflicted confusion and pain onto wonderful people who loved me.

And as far as the rest of our semester together? My final essay for your class was about not being able to find my perfect story for Modern Love. You were a compassionate reader but reminded me it wasn’t the kind of thing that works for the column. I was grateful the class was Pass/Fail.

I graduated shortly after with my MFA and promptly stopped writing. I think I was proud of myself for finishing the program for all of two weeks before it became clear I didn’t have anything I actually wanted to say.

The sense of self I had cultivated was badly missing self-acceptance, kindness and love. I had nothing left for writing. I felt lost and like the opening of every new google doc fizzled after the first paragraph, leading to second guessing myself and ultimately a sense of defeat. It was this hopeless feeling where my words didn’t matter. That same feeling of looking at my ex cry on that bench on Broadway and not knowing what to say. 

With writing on the shelf, I spent the next few years working mostly for my family business, which sells property and casualty insurance and then on a small business I co-founded that sold Florida citrus trees. 

I became depressed. Then I started having panic attacks. The first night that I had suicidal ideation, I was sweating though my sheets alone with my dog in downtown Brooklyn. Avoidance was catching up to me. That next morning I asked for help.

I’ve learned since then, the people around you are often ready to help the moment you ask for it. That’s what I share most now with others I meet who are struggling. But you have to ask for it. Everything good is on the other side of those three words: I need help.

I left NYC for Los Angeles. I invested in therapy. I committed to being curious about my blind spots and eventually, learned what it means to accept them.

I started dating with more openness and curiosity than ever before. I slowly let go of more and more fears. And well, not always to ideal results. In their own right, these could all be their own Modern Love submissions recounting what it’s like to try again and again in today’s world, even when you’ve “done the emotional work”.

I went on this one date in a very fancy Pasadena hotel where I got suckerpunched into paying $750 for 4 cocktails, a burger and fries (it turned out to be very expensive tequila she was ordering). But I now know it’s better to always ask what someone’s drinking before just saying “I’ll have what she’s having.” And that I could’ve insisted we split the bill instead of feeling embarrassed and prideful. And probably a dozen other lessons. 

Then I dated someone without abandon and fell hard in just under two months, only to then find they were also dating someone else for those same two months. I was bummed out but also not completely shocked given the more casual ramping up of dating I’ve seen evolve. It wasn’t like it was against any rule after all. 

She suggested that she continue to date both of us until she knew who was best for her. Dear Professor, we can celebrate that this was an area where I noticed growth. A younger version of me would have seen that proposal as an opportunity to prove my worth. I could win a competition. She’d end up choosing me, I just had to be stoic and non-fussed about the whole thing. 

But instead, I said fuck that. We’d spent enough time together to know one way or the other. If it wasn’t clear I was the dude, that’s all we both needed to know, and honestly, I was surprised with how at peace I felt about that. It hurt but it felt right.

And then I met Kat.

You've made it to the part of my letter that I wish I could have submitted back in 2017... the part where I tell you all the good stuff you’d want to read in a letter about love from a former student.

We didn’t fall passionately in love at first sight. We took our time. She didn’t feel like some piece that finally completed me. And I wasn’t her perfect missing companion.

God, we just enjoyed being around each other and learning more about how we each saw the world. Silliness came easy and with silliness came the sense of safety and calm. All the laughter wasn’t too bad either. 

I didn’t feel like I needed her and that was a newer feeling. But I sure as hell wanted to be around her.

Sometimes, she’ll just dance. Anywhere, at any time. She’ll make up a song about whatever it is we are interacting with and she does it with the most beautiful voice and the weirdest sense of humor. She’s super into kimchi and I’ve always hated the smell of kimchi and now I don’t hate the smell of kimchi anymore. She’s obsessed with puns and every time I roll my eyes at one I can feel myself falling a little more in love with her.  

She gets me out of the house and into life. All I have to do is say yes. She wants to try that new Italian spot but also she wants to see if we can recreate it in our own way in the kitchen. She found out about this new writing club that’s also a hiking club that’s also a meditation club, should we check it out? How about this singer songwriter event that is of course, about music, but is more about meeting new friends in your local neighborhood?

She wants to try every matcha in Southern California, and then maybe after that we’ll just open our own place for matcha that’s also a bookstore and also has board games and karaoke and hot yoga and so many plants surrounded by so many friends.

When we became exclusive, she suggested we read  The Course of Love together. And it was poetic, moving, pragmatic and impactful. We read the words of Alain De Botton together and reckoned with what it means to see conflict as an opportunity for real intimacy. It was an epiphany to hear that you can get upset without being mean. You can see a partner in pain and not get defensive. You can learn about who they once were, and how it’s impacted who they are now.

“Pronounce a lover 'perfect' can only be a sign that we have failed to understand them. We can claim to have begun to know someone only when they have substantially disappointed us.”

― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love

I finally understood what it means when they say attention is love. Attention to when she’s upset that I keep leaving out the same empty seltzer cans less than a foot from the trash can. My willingness to learn how to stop and be curious about what’s underneath that tension instead of scorekeeping and reminding her she keeps leaving her shoes in front of my side of the bed where I trip on them in the middle of the night. 

What if my empty-mindedness around the house could communicate to her something deeper, and what if she still loves me even when she’s upset?

I think back to when I said goodbye to my ex outside that Modern Love Live event. I saw frustration on her face. Confusion. I saw her sadness that she didn’t feel like she could talk to me about any of what she was feeling and worse, she knew man. She knew I didn’t want to hear any of it. Not because I was an intentionally insensitive asshole, but because I was afraid.

I didn’t know what love was. I didn’t know it was wanting to know what was wrong. I didn’t know it could be safe to do so. 

Now, I do.

I didn’t meet the perfect person that I always needed. I’ve met the person I most want to build the rest of my life with. 

So I wanted to write to you and say, we’re engaged. I surprised her the other morning and told her to pack a bag for the night. We ate her favorite breakfast, then went and got a dress from her favorite store. We rode bikes around Santa Barbara and eventually ended up at the beach, her favorite place. I wasn’t nervous until the last thirty seconds before I got on one knee.

To be fair, it was quite a long thirty seconds. 

The wedding will be next year. We’ll leave a seat for you and a plus one for somewhere warm, surrounded by friends in Southern California. 

I only ask you consider some leniency on this assignment, seven years late,

Charley