A Letter to a Love Who Isn’t Mine

Dear one~

Every time I write a sentence of this letter I hit the delete button. I’m more than sure you understand. Every moment with us has been a whirlwind. It’s hard to know where to begin.

We still talk, albeit different than we ever did before. These days there is no fighting. I ask myself sometimes if it is simply because you have moved on. Maybe it is the nostalgia. Or it could be the remnants of a love. Not a stable or selfless love, but one filled with sharp and unparalleled passion.

Many problems we had between us were my own. Decision has long been my enemy and as I pick up the clutter from my life, I remember the moments it almost ruined me. The inability to eat. The panic attacks. But even more so, the violent confusion in my own mind. It cut you every time and I let it, until it started to break my own skin.

Upon first meeting you over coffee, the connection was immediate. Everything else was confusing to me. And while you felt love, I felt a heavy mind. The feelings were everything and nothing. The poison was really all mine.

I remember every day I loved you. I remember getting back on the bus and crying the whole way home. I remember dropping you off at the train and bursting into tears. I remember loving you when I hopped off a plane halfway across the country. For me, our love is like transit. Life takes us on a one way trip away from the other. Yet somehow, we always come back.

I also remember every day I didn’t love you. The hopeless feeling when you told me you loved me. The day you slept next to me and cried. The moment you left the state and I was happy you moved on. Those long, exhausting arguments and our unwillingness to let anything go.

But mostly I remember the times I didn’t know how I felt about you. My love with you was a roller coaster ride. We had exciting and beautiful highs only to turn into horrifying lows. There were a hundred reasons to quit speaking, but somehow we never did.

Society likes to label everything. I tell people you weren’t my boyfriend, but you were the longest romance of my life. A winding, still flowing friend-mance that finds itself beating again, but now in a new form. Like every day since we met, you exist differently. I still can’t tell you why.

There are times, like recently, I wonder if I missed out on you. If you were the one I let get away. But I remember every life has many great loves, and you were and still are one of them, the roles have only changed.

I know you’ll read this letter and as you said in yours long ago, “you’re my best friend and you will always have a place in my heart.” I still open your letters from time to time, but I never tell you. I see the same typos and I laugh. But often I wonder, what would you tell me now?

It’s funny, I think, that my life’s greatest romances have always been long distance. They never had labels and always involved letters. But one thing separates you from all of the rest.

You wear your heart on your sleeve. And I’m still looking for mine.

Much love,

Shorty.

—

Previously Published on Medium

***