a love letter i will never send

i’m honestly sick of starting drafts and never finishing them whenever you're concerned, whenever you're the main topic. it's about time i stop, put these thoughts to rest… feel, feel these emotions. we hurt ourselves more with our thoughts than anything else, right? to pause, sit down and write is an exercise on vulnerability, i’m bending it, seeing how far i can go, if the shame doesn’t swallow me alive.

or so i thought for the past years, that writing would be enough exercise on feeling. suddenly it isn’t, i feel stuck, frozen in time these days.

sometimes i wonder when you'll get sick of me. if i am just a raindrop on your windowsill you'll wipe away, if i’m the skin on the side of your nail you pick on until you decide you'd like it to heal. this thought came to me once while we were together, laughing. i will miss you so much when you're gone.

i have been learning a lot from you, more than you probably are aware or can even imagine. they're breadcrumbs, small realizations, but i have also been lax, too relaxed, and hardly do i study or pay enough attention to retain what i learn

the problem is that life gets so much easier when you're around. i told you once that someone around you gets exactly what you give, and perhaps that's a peculiar comment and not exactly a compliment. you don't give hope, you don't entertain it in a way that misleads me. at least it's what i tell myself, as far as i am aware. you're all fun and all games and there's little risk.

yet that's the curious thing, i find myself still searching for it, as if i’m looking for trouble. looking for the risk. the line we could cross. it's fruitless because that's the whole point of you: it feels like there's no lines, no boundaries. the key word is feels. i do have boundaries, and you must have yours too. it's not so much we keep each other at bay, but we don't... throw ourselves. we are reasonable adults. sometimes.

you shone a light yet again to an old realization i avoid every now and then: changing what, who you love, won't make them become lovelier, won't make them someone you'll love more. fundamentally they'd becoming different from what and who you do love. sometimes our beliefs are misguided hopes, hidden prayers, instead of more practical guidelines. i’m not sure if my beliefs are true, if they really are keeping safe. perhaps all this need for caution, for perfection and clarity is a search of the worst in each other, a complete waste of time, since it ignores our inherent... humanity. the mess.

i feel embarrassed, to use fancier words, to sound anything close to eloquent and a know-it-all. it’s been so long since i have written like a dog digging a hole, going deeper, deeper, until i feel uncomfortable. you make me afraid. most of the time we spend together is so silly, it's been a while since i had someone to be so mindless with. you turn off the thinking part of my brain.

i can't quite put my finger on what i like so much about you. it's something about how you make me feel like i’m alive. which does come with it's own set of downturns as well. being alive, that is. i get to feel melancholic when you're gone, itchy when i miss you, electric when you're around. you make me feel alive the same way coffee will make me stay up until 3 am, and have me deal with the consequences afterwards (tummy aches, lack of sleep).

that day i couldn't hide nor outrun my disappointment and i came to you, your words broke me open. i cried so much i felt dry. i can probably point out the last time i had been that vulnerable (almost a year) but the magnitude of that moment makes me want to say its been years. you told me you wouldn't like me any less even if i became less entertaining. i don’t think you meant those words, and that's something i’m coming to terms with in life and trying to navigate: people speaking things they don't really mean. we should meet up sometime! i’ll call you later! i will never leave. we speak in tongues of faith.

and i hate promises, at least i thought i did, but i want them from you. maybe it's not so much that i hate promises but i sure am not a fan of how they will make me feel, on both ends — if they do or don’t become true. through you i have understood that it's not only that i bring possible disappointments to life by being pessimistic, it's that i wont allow myself to feel any prolonged joy... at all. i cut my happiness short, way shorter than i have to.

im stuck on the what ifs and what nots. on wanting to put my joy in your hands and telling you to do something with it. i never enjoy feeling helpless so i cant imagine why am i acting this way. why am i acting like a dog wanting to be leashed. i want you to put me on the line, and i want you to put me on the line too, but to do it unilaterally wouldn't be fair. i would just get disappointed.

if i am being honest our relationship isn't normal. or at least one detail isn't. it's not as if we sign forms before meeting someone on how we're to act, on what to expect. but don't think im so oblivious i didn't notice how you'd use my when i’m not yours. my sunshine, my love, my cup with little strawberries (this is one of the most hurtful). i take it all in good fun, but i don’t think this is what friends do. but we don't do anything else. it's all.. good fun, isn't it?

my mother says that there are no friendships like the ones in the past. i'd say that's mostly nostalgia, sweet and sticky, though i have noticed just how little we know about each other, and not just regarding you, but my other friends too. how, as you grow older, the choice isn't "do i want to know this person?", it begins to be, "do i want to know them more? do i want to know them deeply?"

you came to me like an earthquake, fast, rocking my world with each word, with the innuendos and boundless humour, your easy way to not take yourself or others seriously, and your ability to not make me feel like a joke in spite of that (at least most of the time). if i had a door, you kicked it open and let yourself at home.

i hold back a lot, or at least did at the time i started this paragraph about two months ago. i hold back on being more carefree, more witty. i hold back on telling you the stories you never ask me about, afraid and eventually sure you wouldn't want to hear them. i hold back on tendencies that are borderline obsessive, even if the root of them is my excitement to have you around. you make me nervous to speak.

i tell you i take things too seriously, you let me know that's alright, and it feels as if for once less is more. you don't give me a long winded explanation as to why, it just is.

there is an ache when i talk to you sometimes. i cant comprehend how easily can you treat me this sweetly. it's so strange, where do you find it in yourself to be this way?

it's tempting to prepare myself for when we'll stop being friends. hell, on some days if i go without your good morning text my brain convinces me it's already over. it's crazy and i hate it, i hate how i think when i get mushy and down. i figured out this habit of mine recently: i grieve an end ahead of its time, convinced that will make it hurt less. even if it’s not worth it. it’s not worth it.

my tummy hurts, my chest clenches. i collapse onto myself. i’ll talk myself out of insecurity, talk myself out of wondering. i’ve been told before that my way with words was flowery, pretty, as an insult, as something meant to hurt. i ask myself just this once now, what you would feel if you were to read this, would you hate it too? would you hate me too?

i don’t plan to tell you how i felt, and i don’t want to find out how you feel about me. please don't hold it against me too badly. i mostly like the way we are right now, our play. it's a tug of war, a game of tag. even if it can't last forever, forever is but a feeling. you cut me open and i bleed, i had forgotten what it felt like to be so raw, so honest. i forget i can be this way anytime i wish to.

these days i’m trying to pause whenever i am happy, to linger on it. i breathe deeply, as if the air can make moments last longer, expand their existence. they come, the doubts and the urge to overthink every gesture and word, they call to me like sirens on the shore waiting for me to drown, and it's not like i get much of a choice. i let them be, let them pass by as they come. as much as they hurt me, they're trying not to. that's the whole irony of it all isn’t it?

let me be petty and tell you, it does bother me you leave messages behind, when conversations die after weeks with no replies. but what can i do besides telling you i get disappointed? especially when you too tell me about your capacity to catch up, your limits. it's one of those instances where love is not enough. where love can't save you from feeling so deeply human. i’m learning that's alright too. like i said before, your existence teaches me a lot.

all this has me thinking i’d be likely prone to become addicted to drugs if i had the curiosity to try them. i usually pride myself in my self control, in my resilience, but you make me feel so light, like a bigger fool than i already am.

i heard something somewhere about love being all about choosing the same person every day. i think i choose you every other day. maybe 4 out of 7 of the week (5 if i’m bluntly honest, but i don't want you to get cocky).

as much fun as i am having, i haven't felt like my life is mine in a while, because my brain runs on this vitamin you give. all this is so cheesy and it makes me feel pathetic and you know it. on a less than good day my brain will sound like this: do you miss me? does this mean as much to you as it does to me? can you rate how much it means to you on a scale on one to ten? do you miss me? does your heart skip when your phone lights up with a notification, thinking it could be me? do you miss me? do you share these moments with anyone? if you don't, is it because you want to keep them between us? because they're special? do you miss me? are you tired of me? am i too much? should i tune up the funny? does any of this matter to you? do you have moments like ours with anyone else? or am i just another person in your life? will we become memories to each other? will you miss me once i’m gone?

maybe that's another lesson i’ll have to learn form you. to cling less to things, to learn how to hold love with an open hand. closed fists are what i’m used to, and with mine i keep hitting on this nail that i don’t know you. keep pressing replay on the belief you're holding yourself back too. if we both hold back, won't we naturally drift apart? we don’t love someone in the what ifs, we don’t love in the doubt and uncertainty. we love despite it, yes, but as i write all this i remember this phrase i heard: trying to figure out what someone is feeling toward you without them actually communicating that to you is like asking what the weather is going to be like in berlin tomorrow if you life in la. i won’t be there to experience it anyway. it can apply that to the future too, trying to see what comes next when the next is always in the future, never in a now. of course, i could just ask you, and risk… changing us. hey, there’s that risk i wanted. i tell myself this is not that serious. tell myself, you’re doing too much with all this. to calm down. that i have so much to work on myself. that we don’t even know each other that much anyway. that i don’t mean that much to you probably. that you are not on this, not fully.

i don’t know what it is about me, i keep hitting on this ‘you are holding yourself back’ nail, i carried it in another friendship of mine and when it changed, when we did drift apart, i was very resentful. i don’t want to be that way, not with you. people aren’t disposable, i’m not, you aren’t, no one is. we aren’t using each other. this belief it's not even true, you do open up. you have opened up to me, and it made me feel honored, to think you turned my way for solace, for a moment of relief, that i was a choice. i’m out of use with being a helpful ear, so i’m not sure if i was much of a help. i’m starting to suspect the belief is more of a mirror, or a double edged knife, or this conviction that opening up has to be a big, singular moment. life's teaching me more and more that yes, you do get some moments like that, but you will know the person much more in the in-between spaces, the ones you may dismiss looking back as nothing special. life's mostly made of the ordinary stuff really.

so, what am i to do now? what are we to do? what even are we? there's no us. you have never called me best friend, your best friend. i don’t have the gull to give the title to myself either. you're the person i think about every day, and talk to everyday, and you're the one i’m trying to become kinder, calmer, funnier, sweeter, stronger.. not for, but.. in the hopes you'll see. you don't have to do anything. i’m not sure i want you to do anything.

you're not at fault, and i’m responsible of what to do with my emotions and my life. i have been stalling in writing a cohesive letter, in letting this see the light of the sun. maybe i’m scared it will work, this limbo i’m in is rather nice… but i cant stay here. i don’t want to stay here. i want my life back.

i don’t think i can love-love you, i like you so much that i fear i might one day. being in your orbit has me in this primordial state where all my defenses get mellow, my sensitivities get sharper, and i hurt myself. i don't want to hurt you. there is a lot of work, i like but i don't love myself, and maybe i could. if i can love someone with no reason, perhaps i get a chance too. i may sound shallow or self-centered, even just reading in passive i find so many is and mes. does love make us unabashed?

i don't like the doubts, the obsession, the way my brain wants to believe love is a way of ownership of sorts. i love with so much doubt, so much control, especially when i feel insecure, like love’s a game and i’m on the loosing side. i hate it. so i’ll change it, the mindset, my own heart. what i don’t want i will get rid off. i will change. you will probably change too.

this letter won’t make a gigantic, undeniable change in the big scheme of things, but it means something to me. i’m being honest with myself, as honest as i can in front of a crowd. it’s been so embarrassing, holding on to the thought that i might have a crush. it’s blissful to admit that i do. i love you, no matter the shape of our friendship. as much as i hope the limbo stays this way forever, it won’t, and when it does end… that’s a worry for another time, for another me. so i’ll just hope you’ll be happy no matter what happens. maybe i’m being too serious again, you’d probably tell me i’m not. i hope i get to feel this happy again, and again, and again. i trust that i will.