an imperfect love letter or i will miss him
When I sent my photographs to James, I told him I decided to keep some of them with me because I didn’t want the viewer to distort Charleen. I wanted to preserve the majestic woman she is, away from any improper curiosity. James told me it was up to me, but that our job as documentary photographers isn’t necessarily to tell a happy story, but to show reality through images.
Those words stayed with me. If I am about to tell you my story, what do I keep for you, and what do I hide from you? So, I let the photographs rest and went on with my day, carrying a heavy story inside me. It wasn’t Charleen’s story, but my own.
I could call it a love story, or maybe a story of a love that didn’t happen. Maybe it wasn’t even a love story, but a story of betrayal. In fact, it could be represented by a single meme. It was also a hilarious story, very funny indeed. The way we met was plain, almost anticlimactic: imagine a blue sweater, a jazz bar with loud music. You are a woman and he is a man. After a few beers, we shared the bill. We kissed, I don’t remember if it was in the Uber or at my place. Then fast-forward two years: between those years lies this immovable story that came to an end.
Like a photo album, my body holds this story. I can touch it now. We never took a single picture together, but every moment is imprinted on my body. And as James provoked me: if I face this story, my own body, as I would a photograph: what is real about those two years with this man?
As I move back through the scenes, through my body’s memories, each fragment reveals something different, impossible to grasp. His laughter cannot be reproduced, neither in images nor in words. Idiosyncratic laughter. The stories he told me in bed, how could I ever reproduce the particular way he managed to speak each syllable, that mysterious blend of air and tongue creating a voice? His voice.
From the top of his head to his toes, random yet precise genetics formed this particular man at this particular time. I’ve often wondered: if we were not made of bodies but only of energy, would we still be together? Being fifteen years older than him, a series of impediments were in between our never ending attraction.
This is not a story of two people from different ages who followed love and ignored the rest. It is not even a love story, perhaps, but a story of two people who could laugh together and hug in silence. A story of long massages, about choosing a burger instead of pizza. A story about learning about each other without a rush. Decoding silences and pleasures. A story about collected emojis. A story about super bad texting. A story about oversharing and also holding. A story about being Gods.
The culture might name it with Instagram posters — situationship, the explosion of avoidant attachment and anxious attachment. Psychology might call it a story of childhood patterns repeated. Or simply the loop, as we named it so many times, our repeated goodbyes, our many times returns.
But setting all that aside, there is still my body. And my body doesn’t know these labels or any explanations. The warmth of our skin, the way we shared ice cream, the way he spoke his languages: the silly ones, the serious one or how I fell asleep in the middle of movies. How we were strong within weakness. How we were safe together. But fragile apart. Too human, and too vulnerable maybe. For none of this marks or makes a complete or proper story.
But what is a proper love story, anyway? It didn’t happen so I couldn't tell it ended. But what happened in between, and what my body knows and feels, it’s something that photograph or words can’t surface. In the meantime, I will miss him. And badly. Him, and this story that was never written.