i got your letter and it left me crying in the coffeeshop. i have thrown myself into this new life, a life alone and lacking you, with a gusto which is mostly unfeigned. i know it isn't the same for us, because i chose it and you had no option but to let me go, because i left and you were left behind with our memories, because nothing is ever the same for two people. i will admit that you are often far from my mind, that i do not brood and miss you as i did last summer; i know i haven't written you since i got home. but this is neither carelessness nor apathy - i love you still. it is that i have searched my heart and found you solid within it. you speak of this time of uncertainty, but i am not uncertain. my thoughts have not turned to questioning and doubt - i love you still. i expect to love you continuously, in an unbroken stream of care and wonder and passion and friendship, until i die. i want to live the dream we've dreamed together; i plan to fight for it. and i will admit that i may fall in love here, with someone who isn't you, but i do not believe that i won't return to you when the time comes. i believe in our dream. i believe in our love. they are the bedrocks of my changling life; i cannot change them without changing everything, and i do not plan to change. i know that when i do return to you, we will not be the people we were when i left. i know that life does not bend to our plans, nor hearts to wills, nor time to need. i miss you dearly. every moment that passes without you is a moment i would rather spend with you, except for this: when the time comes, i will want to spend the rest of all my moments with you, and i am not ready for that, yet. i think we are not. i know you aren't me and can't rest so easily upon the fickle certainty of emotion, even emotion such as this. i know that the future rears, implacable, untamable before you; it frightens me, too. some nights i wake, shaking, thinking that we may die before these things come to be. or worse, that circumstance may elude us and the years slip away while we prepare, and plan, and never take the action required. a hard winter could bring it all to naught. but here, now, in this seascented room far away from the perfect warmth of you, that can't be my worry. let me have this year; let me be stupid and irresponsible and inconsiderate, if that's what it takes. know i will come back to you - and i will love you still. absolutely.