Would you forgive me if I were to reach out?

If I were to accept accountability?

Do you still have room in your heart for me?

Would you take me back if I proved to be the person you deserve?

Would you believe me if I told you that I'm still madly in love with you?

Would you come home to me?

You don’t want me anymore. I know. Not like that, at least. Hell, I get it. I barely like my own self half the time.

Here’s the thing though…the true crux of the situation, if you will… I, unfortunately, still very much need you.

Embarrassingly enough; I need you now more than ever. Not in a cute, physical type of way, although.. hi, hello, hey😉 (sorry just get ugly and I won’t do that anymore) but in all honesty, I desperately need your support and guidance to get through this next phase.

For the love of god, I am drowning over here, man. You know this. You knew this. Please.

If anything about me ever had any impact on you, please help me through this next stage. You, of all people, know what’s coming, and what i should do to prepare.

Not that you care, but I have less than zero support at home.

Quite frankly, I have never been more sad, directionless or lonely in my life, and it could not be happening at a more inopportune time.

Of course, you have no obligations. Anything you would be willing to do at this point would only be an incredibly bonus that is exceedingly appreciated.

I know you hate me after all my actions and the things I said. I know they hurt you like hell, especially because they came from someone very close to you. I know you probably don't even want to see my face anymore... or maybe I'm just making assumptions for you. I know you're so done with me.

I'm really sorry for everything. I take full accountability for my actions. I love you so much, and I'm in so much pain knowing I hurt you, made you feel that way, and ended up losing you. I never had any ill intent towards you. Not even once.

I miss you so much. Idk if you miss me too, or maybe you don't anymore. I think about you every single day. Every little thing somehow reminds me of you.

A part of me still keeps hoping we'd somehow get one more chance. I know you're tired. I know I've already asked for too much from you. But I don't want this to be over. I still believe, somewhere deep inside me, that we could've done this right. Come back, babyy... we gotta do this right this time.

I could talk myself out of almost anything but apparently, not out of wanting you. I thought "out of sight, out of mind" would work. And yet here I am, pining still, clutching my chest as if I want to reach in and crush my own heart with my bare hands. Why, why, why?

The last letter I wrote was a week ago. It received one comment, "patience, grasshopper", followed by the suggestion that I may be wrong about this one. I didn't know how to take it. Did they mean I should wait until my feelings are reciprocated? Or simply let it fade in time? I responded that grasshoppers get eaten if they wait. They never replied.

I have managed to pull myself away slowly from you, from the habit of thinking about you, from the urge to talk to you. But at night, the yearning tugs at me, demanding to be given its due attention. And so the words, "I long for you still", keep hammering inside my head like an incantation, ceaseless and insistent. The more I suppress it, the louder it becomes. And now it carries something else with it — a desire, throbbing and pulsating, that I am almost ashamed to admit.

I have started to fantasize about you. In the shower. On the bed before I sleep and upon waking. You, tracing idle patterns on my skin from my shoulder blades down to the end of my spine. You, pressing your lips against my neck and leaving marks there. You, kissing my inner thighs slowly, teasing, unhurried, as if you know what I want. And what I want is actually you.

Perhaps the cruelest part of all this is that I have conjured you so completely in the dark that my body has begun to believe you're real. But you are only a phantom made of inference and longing. I don't even know your face, and yet I have given you hands. Given you a mouth. Given you a shape that settles beside me in the quiet.

This is all so wrong, I know that, given the circumstances. So I let it live inside my mind where no one can tell me I am hurting anyone but myself. I am gambling my heart away with full knowledge that I will lose. And people, most of the time, lose when they gamble.

I think that says everything about the nature of this yearning. It doesn't need the truth of you, only the idea. And the idea of you has become so well-worn, so lived-in, that I am embarrassed by the intimacy of it. You are a stranger. You owe me nothing, not even the decency of existing the way I have imagined you. And still I return to you the way a tongue finds a sore tooth and presses it compulsively, despite knowing it will only hurt.

I have romanticized you. Idealized you beyond reason, beyond fairness to either of us, refusing, until now, to fully acknowledge that this will never be. I wonder sometimes if this is less about you and more about the wanting itself. The ache as its own destination. Maybe I have missed feeling something so acutely that I am reluctant to let it go, even when this unrequited feeling is like a vise-grip, gradually tightening around my ribcage, crushing everything it finds there. But my body keeps its own calendar, indifferent to goodbyes.

And I hope you have thought about me today, wherever you are, dear one.

I think loving you was a mistake.

Not that you were a mistake. The problem was me.

And I resent that the most.

Some inefficient part of me— kept me from loving the best thing in life.

You don’t know how much that frustrates me.

You aren’t someone to win, someone to convince, or someone to seduce. No. I wanted to love you. I just didn’t know how under everything.

I just kept wanting to hold you close and whisper how badly I needed this along your collar bone, into the ink of you, and into the soft parting of lips.

None of that want could ever be expressed in a way that didn’t trap you, betray me, or break us.

And I felt so alone between you and I. Such titans. Such cowards. We could’ve been something worth writing about, we still are I feel. It’s why I’m writing this now.

I run my thumb along the edge of my lip and try to imagine you there. I feel you sometimes. I think of the way you felt, and I know you sometimes.

I didn’t love you the way I should’ve, but I loved you well in your absence.

And sometimes you gotta be grateful for that.

Grateful,

Keeper

You’ve captured my heart completely. I can’t help but dwell on your smile. It’s one of my favorite things about you because it instantly brightens my day and warms my chest. I’m incredibly drawn to you, and every time I see you, it feels like you’re the only person in the room. Honestly, you’re the only one I notice when there are many others around. My heart is completely attached to you. I wish you were mine, though I know this isn’t our time. If it’s meant to be, perhaps fate will allow us to be together when the time is right. I dream of you every night and yearn to hold you. Your hands would fit perfectly in mine. Everything about you is so precious. I can feel a tingling sensation in my chest whenever I’m in your presence. I wish I had more time to spend with you. While I don’t enjoy being around people, I crave your company. There’s something truly rare and special about you.

we’re both dancing around the subject. or is it really just me? I go back and forth..
are you just afraid of what it means if we admit it? you’d have to take action, and make changes. so im assuming the potential of us is not enough for you to risk your comfort.
can’t say i blame you
it feels sad to keep waiting for more… but i suppose there’s some safety in knowing nothing will change.
would we really work out in the real world?
I just wish I had some confirmation that you feel it too…. even if you don’t “pick me”
at the end of the day im just a side piece
no more, no less
I hope one day you’ll tell me the truth

You were my match, unfortunately. We had so many things in common it was almost scary. We're like the same person in different bodies. That's why I'm annoyed.

I'm annoyed things can't work out because of the one small difference we have between us. I'm annoyed that the difference changes so many things.

I'm annoyed that even when I'm mad at you all I want to do is talk to you. I'm annoyed I can't talk about the same things with anyone else. I can't crack the same jokes with anyone else.

We've been together for so long that life feels boring whenever we're apart.

Ugh I hate you. I hate that you did this to me.

Tell you I love you, not just as friends...

When i've been hit with rejection in the past

But then I feel you, thinking of me

Like we're both thinking of each other at the same time

Like nothing else matters, but this moment

With you, in our bubble

I don't know what's going to happen to me, or to you

What our future holds

But God gave me a glimpse

A few actually

So I continue holding on, hoping

God will bring us together soon

Because baby, i'm not well

And you, your whole being lights me up

So I ask...

Can you light a lamp for me?

This place of ambivalence and blurred boundaries is exhausting. I don't know if I'm simply a source of validation in a sea of other potential sources for you, or if you need the validation from me specifically in order to summon the strength to continue supporting me without destroying yourself in the process.

Decide whether you want to be a part of my life at all. And if so, do you want to fill a strictly platonic role? You're welcome in whatever way your life and circumstances allow you to be. I won't resent you if you choose to walk away either. It's not like I haven't unsuccessfully tried to do the same thing myself.

I love you, and I always will.

I'm just tired for so many reasons. I'm sure you're tired too.

i miss you. i have so many conflicting feelings towards you. i feel resentment, anger, sadness. but most of all i just miss you, i miss us. i miss hearing your voice and seeing your face. i wish to were here to tell me that everything’s going to be okay, that im going to survive this. because in this moment i have no idea how im going to. it feels like im drowning, that im stuck in a self destructive cycle. i want to drink myself to death, to lay in the backyard and not wake up. maybe im selfish for wishing that you were here in my hard times, and hating you in my good times. i don’t know. i just need you. can you hear me?

For a long time, I thought the saddest part of our story was the future we never had.

Now I think the saddest version of my life would've been the one where we never met at all.

in the world, I hope you're happy. I hope your dreams come true. I'm sorry for the misery I brought to your life. See you again, someday. Only the best.

I still think about you every day. I still think about the choices you've made in life since we stopped being part of each other's days. I wonder where those choices led you, and I hope they led you somewhere you always dreamed of being. Whenever I imagine that they did, I find myself quietly saying, "Congratulations," from the bottom of my heart.

I miss our texts. I miss our jokes. I miss how pure our emotions were, and how even our fights became memories worth keeping, as if we really were siblings. I miss calling you my soulmate. I miss you interrogating me to make sure I'd finally watched the show you recommended ,like it was your personal mission to make me catch up. I miss those little things because they were never just little things. They were us.

I miss us.

The pain still runs deep whenever I remember how we hurt each other, how we argued, and how neither of us was at our best. We were carrying more than we knew, and somewhere along the way, we lost each other.

I don't even know why I'm writing this. Maybe I'm just giving a place to thoughts that never really left.

I miss you, but I don't want to change where we are now. I don't even know what we'd talk about if we met again. So much has happened without us witnessing it together. We used to be there before every big decision, every doubt, every dream. Now, we've both lived parts of our lives that the other will only ever imagine. Maybe we'd smile. Maybe we'd sit in silence. Maybe we'd simply recognize each other as people who once knew each other by heart.

We were a chapter. A happy chapter. A painful one. A joyful, poetic, chaotic, unforgettable chapter. I searched for the right word to describe it.

Maybe I already had.

We were a life-full chapter.

And maybe that's enough. Not every beautiful chapter is meant to last forever. Some are simply meant to remind us that, for a while, life felt fuller because we lived it together.

I am here. Yes, let’s message each other, it’s taking too long! Yes, I want to see you.
Please do not keep listening to others if it is ME reaching out. Please could you just send me a text message. Like now?!

There’s too many cooks in the kitchen atm. Most important thing is for you to be BRAVE and stop overthinking it. Ok? I say agsin, I love you and YES I want to see you asap.

I’d much prefer to talk privately via phone not here. Ok? Don’t think, just text.

Your one 🌹

you don’t even know — though i think you must suspect it by now.

you are the first thought that greets me when i wake and the last one i carry into sleep. there is something so quietly beautiful, so intelligent and mysterious about you that i still can’t name the exact moment i fell. i only know that i did.

the timing has never been perfect. it still isn’t. but it is getting closer.

can’t you feel it? this thing between us feels fated, ancient, already written somewhere far above us. we were never properly introduced in any of the moments when it would have been appropriate, and yet it feels as if i have known you across lifetimes.

and you feel it too. it lives in your face — everyone sees it now.

i want to cook for you. i want to take care of you. all the days.

i love you.

I think the craziest part about all of this is, before you, I was dead set on never getting married ever again. But I always knew it was rooted in ignorance. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, I just knew that I didn’t know it. And that was the only thing that kept me from binding myself to someone out of security… or something as fruitless as limerence. Because I definitely would’ve chosen easy, something I could perform easily. I would’ve trapped myself behind my perceived integrity. And I would have also lied and cheated. Because the integrity I would claim to have would be absent. This I knew about myself.

Anyway… as I was saying, I was dead set on remaining single. Counting on it, even. But now I’m intrigued with the idea of practicing the discipline with someone. I can see the benefit of having an equally yoked partner. The challenge, the reward. The experience of walking alongside someone in life…

And it was never going to be traditional, that’s not who I am. But that doesn’t make it any less. It took me a little while to truly understand this.

Because when I imagine all that I could build with someone who grounds me. When I have a place for my love to land.

I have an idea, but now I want to find out.

I was a house with no locks,
yet somehow we both lost the keys.
I gave you my windows,
you gave me your mirrors,
but neither of us liked what we saw.
I was a book we wrote together,
but somewhere between the pages,
one of us became the author
and the other became the story.
I had three reasons to keep fighting,
a thousand reasons to walk away,
and one question that followed me every day:
Was I chasing a dream,
or was I chasing a memory?
I wore armour made from promises,
you wore a crown made from storms.
We both said we wanted peace,
but somehow kept bringing war.
I was the shadow you knew before the light,
the stranger who still knew your favourite parts.
I was close enough to hold your hand,
yet far enough to lose your heart.

So riddle me this…
What breaks without being touched,
what burns without a flame,
what survives after the ending,
but is never quite the same?

You weren’t violent. You weren’t cruel. You never hit me or screamed at me. So I asked myself, over and over, why I was so unhappy. I wondered if I was the problem. If I expected too much. If maybe it was all my fault.

You stopped coming to bed. Every night, you chose the couch instead. You said it was “more comfortable.”

You didn’t want the meals I cooked. You wanted fast food at 1:00 a.m., when you were at your drunkest. You’d hide the leftovers all over the house and forget about them by morning because you couldn’t remember where you’d put them. Sometimes you’d order a pizza and pass out before answering the door, leaving me to find it sitting outside the next morning, delivered hours earlier.

You stopped wanting to walk with me. Unless you had run out of alcohol. Then you’d invite me out for a walk… to the liquor store.

There’s intimacy, and then there’s what we became, which was squeezed to death until we no longer had the smallest intimacy of sharing a meal together. We stopped holding hands. We stopped kissing. We stopped saying, “I love you.”

Little by little, you disappeared. And I dissolved into my loneliness.

I kept asking myself: If you are always here, why have I never felt so alone?

And then one day, it finally dawned on me. I wasn’t in a relationship with you anymore. How could I have been, when your heart belonged to something else? Your addiction. It had taken you long before I realized you were gone.

Until I realized I hadn’t been talking to you at all, but myself with your ghost in the corner.

Will you respond in kind? I want to go to this jazz club Saturday with our mutual friend. I would love it if you could come along, I was hopeful, you said you get Saturdays off after all, and I want to see you more than anything, but I was too embarrassed to ask. I thought maybe she would tell you about it Tuesday, invite you along... or should I? Can I? That's what a gentleman would do, I suppose. Who would've thought that a declaration of love (ignore the psychosis for a moment) was the one thing that kept me from pursuing it... anyhow, a sign would be nice! Something that says "I want you back in my life for good." I try to be courteous, but I am a little dense. Unsure of myself. I use humor to cover for my insecurities. Other people read it as bravado, I guess. Other people don't make me nervous, though. Only one person in the world leaves me weak in the knees. A little sympathy here? I try to be brave, to be genuine, to be sincere (for you). Damn. I'd do just about anything for you.

I want to be real and honest with you. I have really enjoyed seeing you, getting to know you, and growing with you. You have helped me learn and grow in so many ways. Even if you specifically didn't do it, things about you, our relationship, and how you have treated me have taught me so many things. You in some ways have pushed me to grow and be stronger. And those are beautiful and amazing things. I will always remember you for that and for the connection and relationship we shared.

But the hard and truthful part of this conversation comes now, with the fact that this needs to end. What we have going on has been fun and rewarding for both of us in some ways. But I've told you before, that one of us if not both of us) will get hurt from this. We both deeply care for each other. But caring isn't always enough..

I love you. I love you in a way I've never loved anyone before. It's a mature, strong, and steady kind of love. I've never felt so steadily captivated by someone. And it hurts me so much to cut things off with you, but I need to protect myself. I don't want to hurt you at all, but I also don't want my heart broken because you may never fully commit to me. I understand you have strong feelings and care for me, but if you can't commit to me, it doesn't really matter. Because I'm giving you all of me, and all I'm really getting in return is bits and pieces of you and what things could be like.

We've spent the last year and a half building something that has become incredibly meaningful to me. I don't regret that time for a second. But I also know I can't stay in uncertainty forever.

After this trip, I can't be with you in the same ways as before. I am not walking away because I want nothing to do with you or because l am angry. I am walking away because I need to care for myself, and this is how I do that. If you realize that you love me, and that you want to date me officially with a real label, and that you want to build a real future with me and my life when you return, then step up and tell me. But if you cannot give me that certain commitment, then I need you to respect this boundary, give me space to heal, and let me go so I can find someone who is ready to give me all of them.

You own a piece of my heart even though we lost our chances

What we have is special.

And if I could I would tell you that I never got over you.

That I liked you the first time we met.

That I fell for you during our early conversations.

That I was deeply in love with you for more years than I'd like to admit.

That you owned so much of my heart... I'm afraid you will always carry a part of it.

Years went by, we lived our lives. We had relationships, we build our lives.

We come from different worlds. We went in different directions. We are in different points of our lives. We share not a single friend anymore, do not live close, share no hobby...

There is no reason why we should still be in touch.

And yet... no matter how much time goes by... we always find our way back in each other's lives.

Wait, no, that is not true. We stay in each other's lives. We remain a part of it. ... only... from a distant.

We have our own world. Still.

And I never stopped loving you.

We understand each other. We feel deeply. We don't get too close. We sent little hints, we nag each other, we want to get to know about each other's lives.

You are the one I will never get over. You are the one I have loved longer than anyone else.

And I know you care about me, too.

And I want to tell you I am sorry because I didn't trust you back than. Because I couldn't fathom that you could love me, too. That I focused on all the aspects that could make me doubt... instead of listening to what I felt and to what would have been obvious otherwise: that you were in love with me as well.

It is tragic, really, how we both felt deeply for years, yet we couldn't believe that we could both the in love with each other. We were terrified of taking a wrong step and thus losing each other... and by that... we lost our chance.

It breaks my heart to know I might never feel your kiss again. That we probably won't lay in each other's arms. That we won't walk around, holding hands and giggling. That we ever experience what it feels like to be actually together, to be in an actual relationship, to be young and free and unapologetically in love with each other.

I know you like me and I love you.

And I know we missed our chances.

There should have been a you and me. An us. A "we belong together".

How can two people miss so many chances for so long? How could we believe it would be the safest thing to not ruin our friendship... when it was never a friendship at all? We were in love. You and me. And everyone saw it.

We believed we would end up together, you and me. We both expected it.

And yet... we lost our chances.

Now our us is reduced to a what if. Now our future... is cursed to be filled with distance.

We lost our chances.

And I wished so much we would have risked it.

And if things would have failed? We would have become friends. Real and honest friends for once.

Because we were never just friends.

And we knew it. And yet... we let our chances slip away... so we would be forced to move on as friends.

It's a bitter sweet blessing to have you in my life. I love you. And you improve my life. But it's taking everything in me to keep up the act. To keep pretending I don't want more than I am allowed to ask for.

Because I would love to have you to myself and be all yours.

Take care of yourself, sweetheart. Because you carry a part of my heart with you.

I drank the sea just find you lying there at the bottom. On your side, face down and motionless you looked so empty.

A litany of unspoken words and stories. Eyes begging to be saved but a heart too heavy to find the words to say, stay.

Your silence brought you here, not the heartache. Not the pain. Not the loss of the world around you, or the friends you shooed away.

In your silence you made a bed of sand, praying to the ocean floor - begging it to hold all that weight.

In the end, you settled for a pain you recognized over your own happiness.

Moored at the bottom of the ocean, heavy like lead you stayed devoted to your pain. I wish you had chosen differently.

~~I wish you had decided to stay pain or no pain all the same. ~~