From Gogol to Maxine, Essay Example

My Dear Maxine,

I hope you are fine and is in great health as you receive this.

I know it has been years and writing you suddenly right now might seem a little bit awkward. I know I feel awkward about this as well, but I do feel strongly about the need to talk to you again.

Several years have passed between us but the memories I have shared with you continue to linger in my mind. I have long been thinking of returning, hoping to see you and your family again and likely enjoying what life has to offer once again. Every time I look back to our memories, I feel that void that is in my heart and I long so much for it to be filled with more memories from you. I will never forget the way you and your family took me in when I was in America. I admit, everything about me as Nikhil back then was a mere pretention of who I hope to be, what I want to be and how I want to be known. Nevertheless, because of our family’s assistance, such pretention felt as if it was my real being. I learned to live like an American, I learned to enjoy life with freedom and I began embracing the culture that gave me the chance to be who I want to be.

At the back of such enjoyment though, I felt like as if I was putting a barricade between me, my parents and our culture. I have slowly realized that I have become a person who does not know and does not want to connect anyhow to the culture of my own people. Such separation from my family and my people made it easier for me to embrace a new life, the life that the American society offered. I did not think that this would do me any harm. All I thought back then was that I was enjoying what life has to offer at the time and that there is nothing wrong with embracing the fun that life offers then.

Our relationship though was never a part of my pretention. If there was anything real about me and my being during my stay in America, it was my love for you and the connection I wanted to share with you that I hoped would last for a lifetime. However, the turn of events made me realize that I had to stop dreaming and had to face reality as it presents itself. The death of my father pushed me to go back to Bengali. At first, I simply wanted to assist my mother and become more attached to her because of the guilt I carry in my heart.

All those years I spent with myself and filling my heart with happiness and all the make believe of a life that I hoped would be mine, I began killing whatever dream my parents had for me. Going back to Bengali was the least I could do to make up for such loss that my parents felt when I went away. So yes, somehow, I had to sacrifice our relationship just to be able to return to my reality. Did I like it? No, but I knew it was the right thing to do. It was then that I realized that not all the things we want need to be the things that we have to do. There are instances when we have to sacrifice what makes us happy to make way for the things that should really happen for the sake of others’ happiness.

My marriage in Bengali was an arranged one. Perhaps one of the truths about our culture that I specifically hated. Nevertheless, I had to live with it, I have to accept that this is the course of life I am bound to live. The failure of that marriage proves the repercussion I have for my culture. I knew it would end up this way, but I had to hope for the better. When it finally ended, I felt a sense of relief. She wanted another life apart from me and she deserved the freedom to choose whomever she loves. Something that I hope I still have the freedom of doing right now.

Oh how I pine for you Maxine. Every turn of time, I think of nothing but the hope of being with you again. I hope you’d hear me out, and I hope at some point, you could open your heart to be somehow.

Yours,

Gogol

Rationale:

This letter hopes to impose how much Gogol wants to get back with Maxine. Nevertheless, he hopes to explain himself, his past decisions and the condition of living that he is currently living. He wishes that these explanations would be suffice enough to provide Maxine an idea on what he has to go through just to be able to reach her again. In this letter, he points out that all the memories they have shared together in the past remains to be the best ones in his mind and he wishes for nothing but to return to them again.

He explains in the letter that he had to make a decision to go back to Bengali because of the guilt that has spurred in his heart. The rekindling of his connection to his culture brought him into a new sense of realizing what life and responsibility is all about. He began to accept the need to sacrifice some matters to give way to the realization of the matters that are more important than the desire of being happy. Nevertheless, he remains realistic in defining the desires of his heart of going back to Maxine if she would still open her heart to accepting the love he has to offer.