!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
Dear Mike,
It wasn’t that I didn’t try to answer you before (this summer), it was simply that I was congenitally unable. I started to write, but couldn’t finish it. But I shall try again.I guess my first feeling on reading your letter, after all the emotion, was something like —after waiting for you to express emotion for a year, all fo a sudden there it was – and a bit overwhelming. But
Where I am is still in Cambridge – for a while more. Looking for a job now – I was working as a research assistant at a Sleep & Dream lab but it was incredibly boring. I suppose the main reason I am staying here [is] because of someone I am going out with, or whatever the right expression is. It’s a bit strange sounding, I imagine, to hear that – me, so proud of my independence – but it is the way it is. My relationship with Howard is very different than my relationship with you—I suppose I really resented your comparing Lizzie & me, but it’s also true that it’s very different though I’m not sure how to compare it.And a lot of the difference has to do with my being out of school & us both being in Cambridge. I suppose I feel a lot more that I am on my own terms & stronger. And that probably has to do with therapy as well, which is now very intense & beneficial I think.Working things out about parents & emotions – I think what I want most is some way of figuring out trusting my feelings & living my own life — familiar themes to you I imagine. I suppose a good example would be — I knew perfectly well that it was upsetting that you were living with Liz this summer, but I really didn’t even know what I felt about it — all the feelings were much too “intellectualized”. I don’t have any firmer grasp on what “happened” between us, why we moved apart, and every once in a while I wake up late at night and remember things between us & get very sad and wonder what it all might have meant. And of course I don’t know. I suppose I still believe some of those things of being my own person—talking to my shrink, I suppose, that we could have done that together, I could have done it with you—like seeing other people that spring in Cambridge – but we were never strong enough, I never worked hard enough to do it together.
Sorry this is so garbled. I suppose what it is now is having a firmer sense of myself as a woman – both sexually and in terms of being adult. I don’t know how to talk to you about sex, I don’t think we ever did enough [talking about that], but for me it has been taken out of that ethereal, I-want-to-have-your-babies plane to a more real one, of letting sex be real & enjoyable simply for what it is. I was always too scared with you to ever let myself enjoy sleeping with you — that is not to discount it, but my joy was always at the removed place of “I’m so happy doing this with Mike” instead of “this feels so wonderful for me.” And I suppose that comes as much from unpleasant experiences & just growing up as from anything else. And But by now it certainly makes me feel better about myself, just as feeling more responsible for my self does — I pay my own bills & cook dinner for 6 & and all those kind of things you do too.
Is any of this coming through? You certainly still know me – the longing & insecurities – but there’s more too, I suppose. Maybe if we wrote we could get a better sense of each other – I would try. My mother said your mother had a stroke this fall – is she all right? I suppose I was pretty hurt you didn’t tell me, but it isn’t major. But please tell me about her. And how is Lizzie, & you&Liz? In other words, write. If you can call for free, call. My number here is 617 – 491 – ——, but most night’s I sleep at Howard’s & that is most likely where I am if my roommates say I’m not home; you can call me there, but I suppose that depends largely on your feelings. Anyway, the number there is 491 – ——. And I’ll be at 119 Oxford at least for awhile. And tell me about you & [I] shall try more, again.
Love,
Sarah
I feel this is very inadequate – there are many things to say, about first loves & what they mean and the feeling that maybe someday it will always workout – I guess I want you to know I still think about these things — and wondering if I’ll ever come to LA & see you again – but I’ll try to write about that again –
Janie
20 November 1971
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