Romance

by Scribes Stories · 7 min read · 1 view

Letters to No One Genre: Romance | Reading time: approx. 10 minutes For three years, Josephine had been writing letters to a stranger, though she had never once intended them to actually reach anyone, the practice beginning almost accidentally during a particularly difficult period following her father's death, when a grief counselor had suggested writing might help process emotions she was otherwise struggling to properly articulate. The letters, addressed simply to "Whoever Might Someday Read This," had become, over three years, a genuine repository of Josephine's private thoughts, hopes, fears, and gradual healing, written in a small leather journal she kept carefully hidden among her personal effects, never intended for actual delivery, existing purely as a private exercise in working through emotions considerably too complicated to properly share with anyone in her actual daily life. It was a moving mishap, considerably mundane in its actual cause, that finally changed the letters' intended anonymity. Josephine's journal, packed among numerous boxes during her relocation to a new apartment, was accidentally delivered to the wrong address entirely, a clerical error at the moving company sending an entire box, journal included, to an apartment three buildings down from her actual intended destination. She did not discover the error until nearly two weeks later, by which point the journal's actual recipient, a considerably bewildered young man named Theo who had received the misdirected box, had already, out of simple curiosity about the box's actual contents, discovered and read the entire three years of carefully private letters within. "I'm so sorry," Theo said, when he finally tracked down Josephine's correct address through the moving company's records, arriving at her door with the journal carefully wrapped and an expression of genuine mortification. "I opened the box thinking it was simply misdelivered mail, and I found the journal, and I know I should have simply closed it immediately once I realized what it actually was, but I confess I read considerably more of it than I should have before properly recognizing my mistake." Josephine felt a flush of genuine embarrassment at the thought of a complete stranger having read three years of her most private, unguarded thoughts, though something in Theo's evident sincerity and obvious discomfort tempered her initial impulse toward anger. "How much did you read?" she asked, bracing herself for his answer. "All of it," he admitted, wincing at his own confession. "I want to be honest with you, rather than pretending otherwise. Once I started, I found myself genuinely unable to stop. Your writing, Josephine, if I may say so, is remarkable. The way you worked through your grief, the honesty you brought to even your most difficult, unflattering thoughts, I found myself genuinely moved by considerably more of it than I probably should admit to a complete stranger standing at her own front door." "I wrote those letters believing absolutely no one would ever read them," Josephine said, still processing the strange violation of having her most private thoughts exposed to someone she had never previously met. "That was actually the entire point. I could be completely, unguardedly honest, precisely because I never expected an actual audience." "I understand if you're angry," Theo said. "I would probably feel exactly the same way, in your position. I only wanted to properly return your journal and offer whatever apology might actually be adequate for the circumstances, however inadequate I suspect any apology probably is." Josephine studied him for a long moment, recognizing something genuine in his evident discomfort, and found her initial anger gradually giving way to a curiosity she had not expected to feel. "What did you actually think," she finally asked, "reading three years of a stranger's private grief?" Theo considered this question with considerably more care than a simple polite response would have required. "I think," he said slowly, "I recognized considerably more of myself in your words than I expected to. I lost my own mother two years ago, and I've spent those two years struggling to properly process that loss in ways I've never quite managed to articulate, even to myself. Reading your journal, however much I shouldn't have, helped me understand my own grief considerably better than two years of my own private, unsuccessful attempts at processing it ever managed." Something in this admission shifted Josephine's remaining discomfort into something considerably more complicated, a strange kinship forming with this stranger who had, however inappropriately, found genuine comfort in her own private struggle. "I'm sorry about your mother," she said. "Thank you," Theo said. "And I'm genuinely sorry about your father, and about the invasion of privacy I've apparently caused you, however unintentional the original mistake actually was." They stood together at her doorway for a considerably longer moment than the situation strictly required, neither quite ready to properly conclude what had begun as a simple, mortifying apology but had gradually developed into something considerably more significant. "Would you like to come in?" Josephine finally asked, surprising herself with the invitation. "I think, given that you've apparently already read three years of my most private thoughts, we might as well have an actual conversation about them, rather than simply parting ways at my doorstep." Theo accepted, and they spent the following several hours in conversation considerably more intimate than two strangers meeting under any ordinary circumstances would typically manage, Josephine finding herself, despite her initial embarrassment, genuinely grateful for the opportunity to discuss her private letters with someone who had actually read and apparently deeply understood them, rather than continuing to process three years of accumulated grief in complete solitude. "I should probably ask," Theo said, near the end of that first extended conversation, "whether you'd be willing to see me again, under considerably less mortifying circumstances than an accidentally delivered journal. I recognize the situation that brought us together was genuinely inappropriate, and I don't want to compound that inappropriateness by presuming further familiarity than the circumstances actually warrant." Josephine considered this request, recognizing in herself a genuine desire to continue the connection that had formed, however unconventionally, from Theo's accidental discovery of her most private thoughts. "I think," she finally said, "three years of writing letters to no one in particular might have actually been preparing me for exactly this moment, strange as that probably sounds. I spent three years processing grief I couldn't properly share with anyone in my actual life. Perhaps it's not entirely coincidental that the person who finally, if accidentally, read those letters turned out to understand exactly what that particular grief actually feels like." They began seeing each other regularly following that first conversation, their relationship building on a foundation of unusual, unearned intimacy that gradually, properly developed into the kind of genuine, mutual understanding most couples typically require considerably longer to establish. Josephine found herself, over the following months, no longer needing her private journal quite as urgently, the grief she had spent three years processing in solitary letters now finding genuine expression in actual conversation with someone who had already, however inappropriately, witnessed her most vulnerable, unguarded thoughts. "I've been thinking," Theo told her, nearly a year after that first mortifying, ultimately fortuitous doorstep encounter, "about writing you an actual letter. Properly addressed this time, properly intended for you specifically, rather than accidentally discovered." "What would it say?" Josephine asked. "That I'm genuinely grateful for whatever clerical error at that moving company brought your journal to my door instead of properly reaching your new apartment," Theo said. "That reading your private grief, however I shouldn't have, showed me something about genuine vulnerability and genuine healing that I desperately needed to witness during my own difficult period of processing loss. And that I love you, considerably more than I ever expected to love anyone I met through such an entirely inappropriate, entirely unearned circumstance." Josephine felt tears gathering, considerably more moved by this admission than she had expected to be. "I think," she said, "I'd like to write you a proper letter back. Not for no one, this time. Specifically, deliberately, for you." She did write that letter, that same evening, addressed correctly and delivered properly, describing considerably more openly than she had managed even in their many months of conversation exactly how grateful she felt for the strange, unconventional circumstances that had brought them together, three years of private letters finally finding their genuine, intended reader in a man who had first encountered them entirely by accident, but who had, in the time since, become considerably more essential to her healing and her happiness than any properly delivered correspondence could have ever managed to accomplish on its own.