Dear Betsy

Dear Betsy,

I would like to tell you how much I need you. I have purposely held off writing to you and in doing so, I had turned over and over in my mind, all these past few days, why I am here and you are there- so far and so beyond my reach. It had always been that way, and I have always known it, better perhaps than you ever will. My perception of the world is different from yours; it is not just a matter of age, or of different geographies. It is just that you are up there and I am down here.

I do not want to say good-bye again, or to repeat what I have said, that in these two years, you have become a part of my life, and I feel for you what I feel for myself, these tissues, this skin. I have grown so familiar with you, the contour of your body, the smell of your breath, the soft warm crevices of your mouth, and the whole wonder of you. I know now how difficult it is to be alone, to be here in this senseless confine not only of my own being but of this wretched city, and to know that you are not here where I can glory not just in your nearness but in the thought that you did love me.

And at night, I lie awake, and I speak your name as if it were some incantation that would dispel this loneliness for now, I am really alone. I whisper to these cold, rusting walls, to the damp cement floor, to the emptiness around me, Betsy, Betsy�c but I can only hear the echo within me and so I wonder how you are, if you are happy as I hope you will be, and I pray that you be not tormented as I am, that your nights are slept and your days are bright, and if you remember, may they be those times that we shared, the coffee shop, the tawdry rooms and the sheet that was stained with red, the books that had to be read, and Tondo where I had tasted your sweat; yes, so many of these now crowd my mind, and they are all crystal clear, pictures, events, places- all of them important only because we knew them, lived them, and they have become us.

I did not want to write this letter, but it is one way by which I can escape this bleakness which now encompasses me. Now, too, I know how it is to be what I am and to remember what you are, life giver, my joy and my sorrow.

You will forget, not because you are young, but because you are far away, and having forgotten, it will all be over and you may, on some occasion, remember, perhaps, because this is the way things are and we can not change them. I don�ft know if I will forget; one can never be sure, but I know that you are now my wife, not because God or a priest has sanctified our union but because this is how I regard you. Though I may sleep with other women, I know there will always be you- separate from the rest, not just because I feel that you have given me yourself, or your faith and trust, all of which I do not deserve, but because I have given myself to you as I will never give myself to anyone.

I will be leaving Tondo now and I wish I knew my final destination- but I do not; the compulsions that we have talked about will take me to regions I will not recognize, but wherever they may be, there will be a light to guide me, a talisman which will make me endure and you are all of these.

But above all, you are the proof I will always hold precious and true. Thank you, dear Betsy, for being with us in thought and deed. There are a few like you, comfortable and secure, who have chosen to be with us; I will doubt them in a way I once doubted you and they must bear the burden of proving themselves as you have done. Only time will tell and time, alas, is fickle in a way I will never be, now that I know who I am, now that I know what to do.

So let me go away loving you, and losing you, for, in the end, we will lose all those we love.

Signed: JS

Taken from "Mass" by F. Sionil Jose, pp251-252. It hurts me reading this letter. Jose had always insisted that oil and water could never be one. You also think so?