I wrote this, as you know, two months ago. Although almost everything in our lives have changed since then, to the point that we do not even speak to each other anymore, you should know every single word still rings true. Truer now than ever before. None of this is easy but I have to get better, I have to learn to love myself before I can ever love you. And I will, in due time. For now, I will keep fighting this fight within myself; before I left, you told me you believed in me, you believe that I will overcome all of this. I believe you. No one knows what the future holds for either us but I will always have that glimmer of hope that someday my life will lead me back to you. I’m eternally sorry. 

———————

MEMPHIS

Recently, my life has been a bit chaotic, to say the least. I have been through every dark and desperate place inside my self. And as I begin to come back from it all, and as my twenty-fifth birthday quickly approaches passes, I’ve finally realized how important love is. Loving myself, loving the people around me. family. friends. you.

I’ve been working on opening myself up to new people and with that; I’ve gotten a lot of questions about us (because even when I want to forget you, you are all I talk about). How did we meet and when and how I fell in love with you, pretty basic stuff; it gave me a chance to re-live moments. Wonderful, beautiful moments of our past. Then I got asked if I believed in fate. Destiny. God. Angels. The wheels in my head started turning and I started to put together some pieces of my past. I started to remember insignificant moments in my life, things I once thought didn’t matter, but for some reason never left me, suddenly starting to fit in the puzzle. The truth is, I fell in love with you years before I even met you. So here is our story, or at least my story, and the circumstances and events that led me to you. Sorry about my crappy journal entries, but they deemed fitting.

You are my soul mate, my destiny, my boomerang. Whether we still need more time apart to develop our souls or the time is now, my heart will always lead back to you. Our story is and continues to be unconventional; I will stop fighting for what I thought had to be conventional or normal because we certainly are everything but. I will let things play out from now on and enjoy it. Times between us are never better when we both just enjoy the ride and each other; no past nor future. I have never given up on you, not once in the last three and half years, why would I start now? I have enough fight and passion in me to go another hundred of years with you by my side. No matter what obstacles we come across, our love has always lasted the test of time. My life has and will always lead me back to you (and I think or a least I hope know you can say the same).

Please take this adventure with me, through my life, through our love and I hope this makes you smile as much as it is making me.


10:18am- Central Time- 03.01.2004

Home of the Blues
Birthplace of Rock N Roll
I’m moving to
Memphis, Tennessee
This place excites me.
Linda loves Memphis.
Between the Blues & soul
Playing on the radio and
The community and the
Atmosphere.
This city is a breath of
Fresh air.
Completely new and
Exciting to me.

Find cover in what you despise.
Make the love you wish to share bounce circles in the wind.
Sometimes you just must make do with what you have
And one day you will be returned to the atmosphere that you crave.
Wherever that might be - the world will wait.
Home will wait.
Memphis will wait for me.
This is my time.

In March 2004 I was in AmeriCorps and we were driving from Charleston, SC to our service project in Arkansas. We were driving through Memphis and my team members had to stop to use a restroom; for some odd reason I didn’t even get out of the van, not even to stretch my legs. I spent maybe a total of twenty-five minutes driving through/stopping in Memphis but I clearly remember, like it was yesterday, the feelings that overcame me. I felt excited and brand new, like I was five years old again waking up on Christmas morning to a pile of presents under the tree. My heart raced, my eyes were wide and my breathing sped up while my jaw nearly hit my knees. As we were leaving I wrote that journal entry above. I knew from that very moment where my destiny would take me but I had no idea what it truly meant, that is, until I met you.

For twenty-five minutes back in 2004 we shared the same air, we were merely minutes away from each other. I felt it. I felt our love. I never even planted my feet on the cement yet I felt this connection to a strange and distant city. For years I thought about Memphis, I thought about visiting, I tried to fabricate reasons why I was so connected with Tennessee. Why that one place was so mysterious and how it always jumped through hoops in my head at the most unexpected moments. That feeling was love. At that moment I had fallen in love with you. Almost three full years (to the day) before I actually met you.


Let’s skip a head a few years: December 2006 - Februrary 2007

I had, six months before, got out of a shitty relationship or what I like to call my ‘divorce.’ It was long and drugged out and the relationship was over before it even began; yet some how lasted almost a year. I was emotionally beat up. I lived on my own for a while in Newport, RI, my life was not perfect but I had pieced it back together pretty nice. I had great friends, an awesome apartment, the ocean was only blocks away, lost a lot of weight, found my feminine side yet something was still missing.

A friend of mine, Lauren, moved to Atlanta during this time period in my life. Just as lightning strikes, the thought of Atlanta hit me and I couldn’t escape it, I started to feel this energy, an urge. Something in me, something I couldn’t control pulled me. I knew nothing about Atlanta and I do mean nothing. I found a culinary school to attend in Georgia because I knew everyone was going to think I was crazy, so I disguised my intentions. My plan back fired and everyone thought I was even crazier since I lived twenty minutes away from the best culinary school in the country.

As I hastily planned my move down south (in less than two months!), I joked with my friends about meeting a southern gentleman that would sweep me off my feet. At the same time, Lauren was filling my ears with this boy that she worked with, that she wanted to introduce me to in Atlanta. I entertained the idea but mostly wanted nothing to do with it because of the ‘divorce.’

Its mid-February now and I’m within days of leaving New England. As a going away present of sorts, my friend, Becky, decides to take me to see her clairvoyant. We drive deep into Fall River (which was once a thriving mill town; these days is decrepit at best) to this old Portuguese couple’s home. The house was very gaudy; everything was spray painted gold (like every other off-the-boat Italian/Portuguese home) and it smelled like dust. And because we couldn’t meet with her together (at her request) she had us split up. As one would sit in the family room with her husband and watch old British comedies on a thirty year old television, the other would step into her kitchen as she sprawled out the future right before our eyes.

This clairvoyant, who I unfortunately can’t remember her name, began to tell me what I now know as my past. As her tool, she used not what we all know as tarot cards, but an everyday regular set of playing cards. She explained how I was moving to the south to go to culinary school, follow in my dad’s foot steps and things of that nature; things I knew to be true. What came out of her mouth next as she scanned her hands over the cards bothered me. She told me I was going to meet the love of my life the day I arrived in Atlanta. At this point, I thought she was crazy, and I explained to her over and over how I was not in any shape to meet anyone new. The LAST thing I wanted at this point in my life was to fall in love again; it was they very last thing on my mind. As I fought with her, politely, she just grinned with her pruned lips and explained to me that there was just nothing I could do about it. It was going to happen. I remember the drive home, over bridges, back to my safe and beautiful island; Becky and I chuckled the whole way home. I thought she was crazy.


February 20, 2007

I touched down in Atlanta after the sun had set in; I was nervous. I didn’t have a place to live, I knew no one except Lauren and I had three very full suitcases, full of the most random junk, that at the time I considered mementos; but I had a job and I had finally, for the last time, kissed good bye that boy of my past and I was ready to start fresh. Stepping off the plane in gold four inch heels and my hunter green trench coat decorated with a sunny side up egg broach, I was ready for anything. I had a huge smile on my face the entire time I walked through the terminals, down to baggage claim and guess what was playing over the speakers?! Marc Cohn’s Walking In Memphis. Even still, at the moment, I knew not what it meant. The very mention of Memphis would light me up like your head baking in the sun, that many years later.

Lauren picks me up from the airport and our first stop is Starbucks. She knew you were working. You were even more nervous than I was; (Lauren, without my knowledge, was filling you ears about me the weeks leading up to my arrival too) you would barely look at me. I fought it tooth and nail those first few weeks but it was because I knew it all along; it was love at first sight. It was love before I even knew you existed. As much as I tried to talk myself out of it and even tried to talk you out of it! It was love. The only real love I have ever known. My Southern Gentleman. Born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. It was love all along.

You asked me to be your girlfriend (or did I ask you?! Haha) on March 01, 2007. Scroll up and take a look at the date of my journal entry from 2004.


This depicts my first few days in Atlanta. Please read carefully.

[GEORGIA PEACH].
+THE FIRST 48 HOURS

The engine
Exhales and inhales
Taking in the fresh air
Of the southern winds
0 to 70 in less than 60 seconds
The taste of tobacco
Still lining my lips
Wiping the dust off my shoes
“You aren’t Michelle, are you?”
“No sir, I am not.”
Leaving one of the many smiles
In his wake
One after another
They come to shake my hand
Immediate unknowns
Have never before
Made me feel this alive.
I only have the rest of my
Life to live
Give him a chance
They say?
I only miss the ocean
When it rains
And I only miss you
Almost never
My muscles still lined with
Agonizing knots
And the half circles
Still hang below my eyes
My heart fits into
Three suitcases
All serving its own purpose
A stuffed smiling tampon
A yellow duck umbrella
A large brown momentous wooden box
A set of sixty-four different colored crayons
A star shaped sunny side up egg maker
They all seemed to make the cut.
Another year,
Another girl named
Linda Marie.
Becoming the girl who has
No last name
Becoming the hidden gem
Of the longing south.
Stellar on tap
And mellow pizza
Inside my bottomless stomach
Diners that never sleep
Sitting in the passenger seat
Of a nineteen seventy nine
Camaro
“You don’t have to buy me things boy.”
“I want to girl.”
Hugs to break the ice
And men dressed in
Canadian tuxedos
Playing congas in the distant
You call this cold?
I have never felt warmer.
Don’t forget to
Take the pillows off the bed
And brush your teeth
Before you lay your head to rest
Curly hair
And borrowed sweaters
Still searching for the
Dirty streets of Atlanta.
I walk past a man
Silver hair, smiley eyes
“Wow.”
Into the quiet restroom I go
I return, to walk past
Once again.
“You are so beautiful.”
I smile.
And watch his face light up
My four inch heels
Keep my knees from buckling
I leave him in awe
I leave myself in ruins
The fifth time this week
I was called beautiful.
The first… was the boy
I called my distraction
The second… by the boy
I couldn’t get out of my head
For an entire year
The third… was he who
Once held the key to my heart
In his possession
The fourth… from my new
Partner in crime
It’s funny how once you chose
To let go
Everyone shows up to
The funeral.
And yet despite it all
This time, this time
My heart for a moment
Stop beating.
I have found comfort
In myself
Taste the wild honey
On the curb,
Listening to the wind
Slow and steady breaths
Take me by the hand
We will find our way
I have already found my way
New friendships evolving
In southern comfort
In southern shine
You are free to know me
My shell is fading
Acting like teenagers
Sneaking into backyards
After hours
The ink from my pen
Swallows my fingertips whole
I love this. And you.
I love clean skies
And purple streets
Magic is in the air
The unicorns are freed
My hot air balloon
Will never land
And my feet will never
Slow down
For I am, the new Georgia Peach.
For I, will never be forgotten.

[HOUR 36].

Hand wont stop
Ink to paper
Third place
Chinese for beginners
Hair so soft
Local dive bar
Established beating his drum
Shoe falls
And smiles to carry you home
Learned lessons
Things better left unsaid
Hopeless does not exist
I must have forgot
Even when you’re wrong
I think you’re great
Car giggles
Backseat blankets
Music just wont exist
To capture this moment
Higher than this time
Probably not, never
If you choose to hold me
You better not let go
For I will not fall.

[HOUR 72].

For I think I might have fallen
The ground- out of sight
Only gold-foiled cranes lay.

[HOUR 96].

Little five
Kicking broken glass out from my way
Healthy food
Turns into mellow eating and waffle jams
Napkins hang from the ceilings
I gained three points
He lost five.
Skulls lit up on the fronts
Of restaurants
Waiting to engulf
This old soul
Comfort only exists
And your arms wrapped around
Me tight; keep me flying
Honesty drips off of our lips
Like icicles melting in the sunlight
We take this slow
Goodnight my southern gentleman
Goodnight my lady.

I love you Christopher Michael Hearn. Now and forever. <3

111