I Received an Email from My Dead Girlfriend

This is Not a Clickbait Title.

Back in the uneventful year of 2004, I was writing, mainly as a hopeless romantic, for Xanga. At 19 years old, poetry spills out of your being. Inspiration struck every couple of hours. I liked to think it was charming.

These poems would hit Xanga at least three times a day for months. It was great. The platform was still so fresh, people were interested in interacting because we hadn’t been burnt out by Facebook yet. The members were mostly young, like myself, and full of encouragement. What a change that is from the internet comment boards we know now.

It was one late Summer afternoon that I’d logged on to check comments when a profile picture of a girl caught my eye. Her name was Hart; her username, AbrokenHart. She was gorgeous and had gone through, commenting on nearly every poem I’d posted. AbrokenHart was a poet too and for weeks we shared comments and poems on Xanga.

I got up the courage one day to share my email and ask her if she’d prefer to communicate that way. Looking back, the nervous tension of that feels so ridiculous.

She accepted gladly. We must have emailed 50 times per day. I worked at RadioShack in those days and would leave my Hotmail account open behind the Point of Sale program, ready for the next sentences from Hart. It was exhilarating, new and alien to me.

Just Too Far

We had learned so much about one another that we’d decided a meetup was necessary. An actual date, in other words, was the plan.

I think she asked me first but we both responded with where we lived. Hart lived in San Antonio. An actual 1,000 miles from me. No rounding of numbers; just an even 1,000. I always found that odd.

Crushed, I replied that I just couldn’t make it happen. It’s hard to explain every avenue of why this was but I drove an S-10 with 298,000 miles on it. I’d never flown and was a broke college student from a podunk country town.

It was the worst feeling. She was upset but never offered to come to me. In her defense, I never recommended it either. Idiot.

Years Passed

Over the course of the next couple of years, we continued to email but the length in between each one grew longer. We had lives we had to continue to live. I didn’t expect a girl I’d never met to wait a couple more years on me just on the off-chance that we were a good match. That would be too unreasonable for me to assume, right?

Life got in the way. I got busier with school and work. I was a gigging musician for the Southern metal band, Lion of the Tribe, and started dating another girl along the way. It felt very wrong at first, me dating someone. But Hart and I would either reconnect later in life or it simply wasn’t meant to be. I didn’t forget her but I put her in the recesses of my mind when we finally lost connection through email and she didn’t respond back one day.

Thanksgiving Day

I remember the next event as clear as any memory.

Thanksgiving, 2008, as I prepared for my day at RadioShack (yes, I was still employed there), I saw a familiar name in my inbox…

Hart! After all this time, she still remembered? Of course, she remembered, I thought. My heart raced as I opened up the email. As what felt like a span of minutes on our slow DSL connection passed, the Hotmail inbox screen transformed into her words. I couldn’t believe she’d emailed me. Excitedly I read down the screen, tears welling up in my eyes, heart sinking, breaking like glass ornaments falling onto concrete.

Over the course of those distant years, Hart had been married and had two adorable twins; a boy and girl. Her husband, Ben, had been killed early that morning after his vehicle was crushed by a Semi at an intersection. He was gone. She lamented that she didn’t tell him bye because he was up and out earlier than normal. She was breaking and pleading for my prayers and support. A 23-year-old, now-single mother was Hart’s identity.

I was devastated. Hart always had a special place in me. It was one of those weird ‘what-ifs’ in life that stuck with me over those four years. Here she was broken, hurting, in need of a husband, a dad, an encourager, someone who would honor her for who she was.

Through the rest of November and December, we emailed like old times. I was anxious for every email. And finally, I had resolved that I would go to San Antonio. This was my calling. Everything happens for a reason and this was the reason we’d met on Xanga years prior.

When Hart was informed of my plans she reacted exactly like I knew she would. Hesitant but happy. Meek but needful. That was Hart; a pure-hearted young woman.

Plans Were Set

My plans were made. I had to save up a few extra dollars to get down there and get a hotel but I was ready to do it. At the time, I was working at a large automotive dealership and had persuaded them into letting me take one of their cars down to Texas to visit Hart and potentially not return.

All of this happened in the span of three weeks, when one Sunday afternoon after arriving home from church services, I received the most terrible news I thought I could receive.

“Matthew, I have leukemia. It’s bad. I haven’t told you about this. I’ve always had it. But it’s gotten worse”, her email read like a death pronouncement on the operating table. Vividly, I remember falling to my knees, weeping. Climbing up and out of the stupor, I walked into the kitchen where my mom sat.

Moms are wonderful. She knew exactly what I was feeling. Her mom had passed away when I was six from a similar type of Leukemia.

Hart and I would continue to email that January but the emails, once again, became sparse. She would explain the treatments and how it felt, what it did to her body. It was excruciating. I begged and pleaded to come and see her but she wouldn’t tell me what hospital she was in. The only information I had was that her grandmother, Linda, was caring for the twins. First her husband and now this!? This poor girl was dying. She knew it. I knew it.

The Looming Fear

Every day was truly a gift when I would see an email come across. We’d talk about new music; her favorite being the Vitamin String Quartet. We’d discuss books; her favorite author, Max Lucado.

But with every email I sent, there was a looming fear. I was terrified I wouldn’t hear back from her. That she’d be lost forever and I’d never know Hart in person.

It was on February 14th, Valentine’s Day, 2009, that I opened an email from Hart.

But it wasn’t from Hart. It was from Linda.

Hart had passed away that morning holding the twins in her arms.

She was gone. Gone from my inbox forever. Gone from ever being able to meet her.

I cried that entire night. And for months, I kept pictures of her and the twins taped to my monitor, sobbing at intervals. It wasn’t until June that my mom recommended taking her pictures down for a while and seeing if I could pull myself out of the deeper depression I was digging by reliving the same few things over and over.

It made me furious. But she was right as Moms usually are. And so I did.

The month of June and July brought new life and air to my mind and lungs. Tears had abated.

I’d written poems about Hart, told everyone her story. I honored her the best way I could. The pain had subsided and in its place was memories of her poetry and conversations through email and phone. Her voice was so quiet and lovely. I could remember it and smile.

A Rush of Emotion Returns

It all felt like a dream sequence. I wouldn’t forget her. I couldn’t. Out of the blue, one Tuesday evening in August, she emailed me.

Not Linda, but Hart.

Confusion, panic, hurt, anger was rifling through my mind.

Was it a dream, indeed?

No. Hart lied.

She lied to me. She made out the entire narrative so that I wouldn’t move to San Antonio. Well, that’s what she said. She was never sick — not physically, anyway.

My reply was one of both joy and anger. Honestly, I was happy she was alive but horribly angry that she would concoct such a despicable lie and put my life through turmoil for five months. I had been tossed about in one of the darkest depressions I’d experienced over this lie.

Some weird part of me just wanted to forget it all and resume where we left off. Could we act like it never happened? Could I ever actually forget that and if I did would I always wonder if there was another story on the horizon?

Was Ben even real? The kids? I really don’t know. I’m not sure that Hart is even real. I never spoke to her again after that reply.

And she never replied either.

Her pictures and any relic of that saga were discarded forever.

Maybe she’s out there regretting that decision. Maybe not. I don’t care.

What kind of person does that to another?

That isn’t love. That’s insanity.

And sometimes it still stings.