Shades of Love (In Letters)

© 2013 by Chris Adalikwu. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/03/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3829-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3830-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3828-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013906262

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

A baby is born with a need to be loved—and never outgrows it. Frank A. Clark

Introduction

Michael Bolton was only eleven during 9/11. He was not quite sure what was happening to his country when he returned from school a little early because his grandmother had picked him up. She looked shocked and her eyes were full of fear, confusion, anguish, anger, despair, and her hands on the wheel were shaking. He immediately promised himself to take revenge on whoever has caused this deep and heavy pain upon his grandmother. When he was told later what had happened and upon reading and after watching and reading about the event later that day and days later, he vowed he will do something about it, even as a young man. Half a dozen years shortly after an early graduation from high school and turning down a full scholarship to college, he enlisted in the US military and was shipped to Iraq, and later deployed to Afghanistan.

While in hostile combat, keeping safe and receiving communication from their loved ones, they also filled their youthful desires with correspondences from faceless females across the world. Following are a collection of love letters he and his friends received from countless girls they knew and the anonymous ones that kept them company while serving their nation.

These love letters are letters they received. Readers are welcome to draw their own conclusion as to the type of love these letters represented. It matters less whether they are perceived as fantasy love, impossible love, unattainable love, obsessed love, fanatical love, fleeting love, unrequited love, desperate love, and pie in the sky love or whatever.

Michael’s real name has been replaced and concealed to honor his request. So are those of his fellow combatants and the females that wrote to them. So are the dates, spellings or misspellings of the letters and other identifiable characteristics.

We thank Michael and our troops in combat as well as those in defense of peace, freedom and democracy across the world and in helping America to continue to remain a beacon and symbol of hope to all human kind.

Enjoy!

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. Bible—Ecclesiastes

Dear John,

I miss you more than you know and you haven’t even left in my heart yet. Our time together will remain timeless in my heart. Months (and I’m so afraid to even imagine years) without you is going to leave me broken. I know that there is so much left to say before you go but there isn’t enough time. I don’t know if there will ever be enough time for all the words that I need to say. You stole my heart with your laugh. That was all it took. We can’t ever be apart, even if it is just for a few months. I say this now, knowing that the next few months will be an eternity but I will be here when you come home. I will always be here. I love you with all that I have and I know you hate letters but this is a time that I think you’ll make an exception. I love you, you make me burn with your love, don’t ever put out the flames.

I will always love you and I will always be yours.

Forever, Ann

My sweet Joe,

Gorgeous boy. You don’t know how easy it is to love you. How quickly i fall back into the trap those dark haunted eyes, and that battered guitar, set in my heart and my mind every day. How much when anyone mentions you i want to tell an amazing love story of hope and glory and love. Now i can’t do all that, all i have is ours. And laid out on paper it doesn’t look much, it looks like a typical romance that lasted a while and although we loved each other, we should now be moving on. But what i can’t put down on paper is the way you make me feel. The way when you hug me, i wouldn’t trade places with the richest or happiest person alive because i am holding the most perfect right then. The way that i talk to you and instantly im a better person. And i describe these things, try to do them justice, and then i think people have a better understanding of why i can’t let you go just yet.

Love always, Liz

My Dear Husband,

I love you. I love that I can tell you anything and that you will always listen. I love that we can agree to disagree. I love how you can‚t stop giggling once you‚ve started. I love your passion and your sense of wonder. I love cuddling with you. I love your body. I love doing lewd things to your body. I love that we can be silly together. I love that we can be serious together. I love that we can be silent together. I love our son. I love figuring out parenting with you. I love your kind heart. I love you because you help me grow. I love you because you‚re my best friend.—Your Wife

Dear Dan,

I’ve tried to find someone else when you were gone. I didn’t admit to myself that I liked you back then, told the people who asked that it was just a second, a minute, a few hours worth of admiration. Told myself to move on. But everyone after that was a mistake. They weren’t like you, could never be like you, and I finally had to tell myself that whatever I do, whoever comes along, I’d still be hoping that it would be you. And it hurts because it will never be you. Yours, Sarah

Dear Miki,

The day I found out that you had moved on, was also the day I found out my heart hadn’t broken yet. I had been thinking this whole time that is was. But then when I read the message over and over again—he likes some chick—my heart broke. I hadn’t expected it. It was like the angel of sadness its self took over my body. I didn’t know what to do, say, think. My heart stopped beating, and then it hit me. Like a wave had just knocked me underwater in the ocean and I was being spun around and around. My shoulders hunched over and I started sobbing uncontrollably. I cried like I have never cried before. I felt like I was going to throw up. My whole head was spinning and my heart was throbbing. My breaths were quick and I felt like any moment I was going to scream—that’s when I ran to the bathroom, turned on the tap, grabbed my white fluffy towel and screamed into it… The sound of the hard running water drowning out my cries, the cries of the brokenhearted.

Saddest Sandra

My sweetest Philip,

That day, in your small town, those 15 minutes were enough to light my soul for days. On that busy little street in that tiny town people stared as they walked by—seeing two people standing too close to each other while they talked, embracing each other like lovers there on the sidewalk. I wish you could know (because I do) what it feels like when someone tells you that they saw you, and how happy you looked when you saw me that day, how you looked at me, and how we glow when we‚re together. Are we in love? Without any doubt. I am afraid, however, that we aren‚t in love with each other, but rather in love with how we look at each other and how that makes us feel; in love with the idea of an endless love, but a love that can never exist in the reality outside of that moment on that sidewalk in your small town.

That day, sitting too close on a park bench, you told me my eyelashes were beautiful when inside I felt nervous and ugly because I had spots on my face. Another day you told me I may be the strangest beauty you have ever known when I told you the story behind my first tattoo. On a quiet night alone in your apartment you held me tight when I told you my darkest and most painful secrets. How could I not fall in love with you? And when I‚m in your world I‚m safe. I am loved. I am accepted, and wanted. Looking into your eyes is like slipping into a warm bath and it is delicious.

But the world you live in is a world of mist and shadow and pen pals in distant lands and art and beauty that you create. It‚s all just a fantasy that you control. You choose to let the world believe you are mad, when we both know it‚s just easier for you to feel safe when others can‚t expect anything from you. The saddest part is that there is genuine love between us, and it exists in your world as well as mine. It’s the kind of love that we all dream of finding. But life pushes us forward, and I can‚t stay in there with you forever. And still, I am afraid to live forever without you.

Your Angel

Dear Rich,

Thank you for 3 good years. 3 Funny years. 3 happy years. I can’t look back and say thank god we made it, but i can look back and say thank god we tried. You were my life line, and now you are just a line on my page, in my story, a beautiful one i will never get tired of reading over. But thats what we are now, so, so over. I miss you and the way you made me smile, but at the same time i know there is nothing left of the old you to miss. We tried, my baby. We tried. I hope you come home safe!

Always, Christina

My big baby,

Baby i want you to know that:

In your arms is where i feel the safest In your heart is where i always want to be In your eyes i want to be complete, the one and only person you see

Love you for making me the way i feel.

Your honey pie

Dearest Nick,

Because I am all too keenly aware we cannot control the future, I fear time and its course. Fear itself has become the dominating emotion in me since we have met. It overcomes me in vast torrents. So much so I fail to sleep properly most nights. It is impossible to guess how the future should turn out ˆ one can make only the weakest of assumptions, for either better or worse and this in itself is what paralyses me so greatly. If only there was some way that I could guarantee my future with you. It has struck me that perhaps we met at the wrong time. If I could pray I would pray that I am wrong, but I come to doubt any God should hear it. Give us a chance. Allow me the opportunity to love you, as I know I can. I am so certain that we could be happy if you could set aside these awful fears and give us the chance I badly wish for. Life is so very short and I have learnt that there is little use in clinging to the past when it no longer has any bearing on the future. I wish I had it within my power to free you of all your many worries, that you would look at me in the way I so wish