u/fabulouslymundane

It’s a funny sensation: how every time you say the word, in relation to you and me…

In my chest, in my heart, it’s simultaneously both a warm soft glow, and an icy cold dagger

Friends

I don’t mourn the fact that friends is “all” we will ever be, by the way

It’s not lesser, it’s not insufficient; not a consolation prize, in the least — not the kind of friendship we have, anyway

What I mourn sometimes is the fact that we won’t ever have the possibility to even try out anything else

Because, wouldn’t it be fun?

Imagine, just to try… just once…

One of the reasons I’m so grateful to have met you…

It’s because you gave me the opportunity to feel again — to love again

And I don’t mean just falling in love with you (although, that happened too)

But somehow, loving you reminded me that I could love at all

I fell back in love with the other people in my life, as well, my family, my friends, even my pets

Feeling excitement and joy and wonder and desire for you and our relationship helped me recall and reclaim those emotions for life in general

Do you know, I hadn’t cried in years before I met you?

I genuinely thought that part of me, the emotional and sensitive part, was gone, grown out of

Turns out, it was just lying hidden and dormant…

Until you recognized it

Named it

Coaxed it out again…

So thank you

Thank you for being a safe place to feel, to express, to be myself

I will forever love and adore you for that

I get it now, okay? I do.

You’ve been perfectly clear, in your kind and polite way.

I know you well enough now to read between your words, and hear what is underneath your tone…

You like me, and you like that I like you. You like that I love you and crave you.

You like it when I slip up. You like knowing that I’m out here secretly obsessed with you.

But, you don’t want to be needed. You don’t want to prioritized. You don’t want to accidentally be put on a pedestal.

You don’t want obligations or real futures.

I’ve never intended to imply any of that, by the way. That isn’t what I want from you, and that isn’t the way I feel about you.

But I can see how my words and actions could be possibly misinterpreted. So I understand why you sometimes shut down and cool off and back away.

Just know… I get it.

I hear you, loud and clear.

And I accept it.

I am happy admiring you from afar.

I wish so badly, sometimes, that I could tell you how much you mean to me.

I feel the words bubbling up and screaming out from where they’re trapped inside my throat, my chest.

Because all the things I’ve said to you? The ways I have told you I like and appreciate you, and think about you?

That’s just the tiny, tippy top of the iceberg, my friend.

My love for you runs deep.

And I daydream about having you in my arms…

Do you want to know what I love most about you?

It’s that fact that in you, in many ways, I feel I’ve finally ‘met my match’.

Whenever I’m with you, I feel like you always keep me on my toes — in the best possible way.

I don’t know how it’s possible, but you continually surprise and fascinate me.

Every time you out-smart me. Out-nice me. Out-joke me. Out-gift me. Out-wit me. Out-flirt me. Out-psychoanalyse me. Out-dream me.

(Out-cool me? Out-healthy me? Out-thoughtful me? Out-sexy me?)

When you call me intelligent and kind and interesting and eloquent, what you don’t seem to get is that it’s YOU who are those things — I am those things in return because I feel impelled to rise to the occasion, and somehow do.

Even in the letters I’ve begun writing anonymously to you here, I’ve received compliments on my writing — it’s all because it’s you who are my muse.

Simply put, you bring out the best in me.

I like who I am when I’m with you.

I’ve never met anyone quite like that before… Anyone quite like you.

They come out of nowhere.

These waves of emotion, that just crash and sweep over me, relentlessly. Often accompanied by tears, and a tight ache in my chest, and throat.

Waves that cruelly remind me I feel so much more deeply for you than I let on, to you, to anyone, to even myself...

It occurred to me today that it sounds similar to how people describe grief, how waves of it randomly hit.

And maybe it is grief, of a sort.

Grief for the things I know can never be. The ways I’ll never have you. The times I’ll never get to experience with you. The feelings I’ll never get to tell you.

As well as the simpler grief of missing you, your presence beside me, your voice, your touch, your smell, all these months…

But know this — I love you much too much to ever make you into a secret. I respect you too much to make you into something that needs hiding, or deceit.

So that’s why I’m here, now, writing out my feelings, waiting for the wave to recede again.

So that you, and our friendship, can remain in the light. Mutual admiration and enjoyment and unadorned fondness. Beautiful, breezy, pure. Unblemished.

There, it’s gone again, the grief. Now, you’re the smile on my face. Laughter, and hugs.

You’re so special, and so special to me. I love you.

Sorry, did I come a little too close to crossing the line, what I said this afternoon?

Was that a little too…direct? In our indirect way?

To be fair, you started it. You set the stage, set the mood…

I just played along. Like I always do.

I don’t know what it is but I can’t help myself around you.

I think you know that. And I think you like it…

You like knowing you’re making me think about you in that way. You like knowing I want you.

And I kinda like knowing you know, too…

You know that I’m secretly in love with you, right?

Not just that I love you, as a person, as a friend. Actually ‘in love’, in that way. Or at least, I would be, and am, if/when I allow myself to go there, and indulge those feelings. My guilty pleasure. I know you’re not mine, and I’m not yours, and I have no right to you. But my heart says otherwise. It always has. And if the chance ever came, I’d uproot my life to be with you without hesitation.

You know that I’m thinking about you constantly, right?

If I want to focus on anything or anyone else, it takes conscious effort to peel my concentration off of you. I replay memories of you, of things you’ve said to me, times we’ve spent together, and especially of the times you’ve hugged me, over and over again. Your laugh in particular melts my heart, and is a constant refrain. I’m always seeing things that remind me of you, thinking of things I want to tell you about, things I want to do together one day, some realistic and others pure fantasy.

You know that I’ll never tell you any of this, right?

I love and respect and care for you and our friendship much too much. I’ve thought it thoroughly through, and I know that nothing good could ever come of me revealing the depth of my feelings, regardless of whether you feel the same way back. So I’ll continue to show up for you as much as I can, make as much space for you in my life as I can, appropriately and safely. And continue carry these thoughts secretly and quietly. For both of our sakes.

Je t’aime ~ mon secret précieux

Sometimes I get excited at the thought that we must have some kind of other-worldly psychic connection, because of how frequently you’ll somehow text me at the exact moment I was thinking about you.

But that’s stupid -

Because you could text me at ANY moment and there would be a 99% chance I’m thinking about you, anyway.

You’re never far from my mind…

You told me once that you felt uncomfortable and “used”, when people you thought were your friends expressed that they were actually romantically/sexually attracted to you.

I don’t blame you.

But I also don’t not understand.

Because you’re amazing. You’re a wonderful person. In a strangely beautiful way that would be appealing and resonant to people of any gender. (And in fact, that is precisely a commonality that, I think, we share.)

But, just so you know… I will not be that person.

No matter what I feel, in certain moments, after certain interactions.

Whatever comes up…. I’ll keep it to my own self.

I love you too much to do otherwise.

Friends, forever. <3

It’s ok. You don’t have to text me back.

Not soon, not days, not even weeks.

I know the pattern, your pattern, by this point.

Things get a bit too emotional, too vulnerable, too close, too revealing, too intimate, too real.

And, you leave.

But….

Not for long.

You always come back.

And I’m always waiting.

Can you just get back in the box, please?

(Or if not “back”, just in there, for the first time, finally?)

The box of acceptable.

The box of “friend”, friend, just friend.

“Penpal”, even, preferably…

But…you’re too big for that box.

You don’t fit.

Not matter how I try to squash you into it.

No matter how I try, how I pretend.

Not for long, that’s for sure.

I miss you

I love you

(Well, six words in total, then, I guess)

I want to say those things to you about a thousand times every day…

I’ve been feeling sad, lately, that I seem to be losing the memory of your face

Your body, our touches, those sensations remain with a bit more substance

But, somehow…

After all the minutes I spent staring at you, (as best I could without looking crazy), trying to memorize each of your features

And then replaying the image in my head, once you were gone

For all that, slowly, it’s fading…

What I wouldn’t give to look over, turn my head, and see you there

And just share a smile

The other day, when we said goodbye as you had to leave…

I can’t stop thinking about the way you not only accepted my hug but pulled me in properly tight

And then said ‘I love you’

Like it was so easy, but so true

That touched something really special in me

I honestly had trouble concentrating on the rest of the conversation after that!

But I just wanted to say thank you, and I’m glad I got to return the favor; I had been itching all this while to do so

It’s partly thanks to you that I’ve realized how much I value open and free expressions of love like that, and the people that give them; and it’s made my life better and brighter since I started giving them, too

You’re such an incredible person; I love you, and I look forward to the future, with you in it <3

I replay moments from the last time we were together over and over in my head.

I’m sorry I was so awkward and quiet. I was probably no fun at all.

There were a million and one things I wanted to say but didn’t, to do but didn’t. All because of stupid overthinking.

Truth is, I was still working through my feelings for you. And wondering about yours for me.

I wish I hadn’t been, hadn’t been so much in my head, so I could’ve just enjoying your presence, and our time together.

I think I’m in a good place with all that now, though.

Can we have a do-over? Please?

As we come upon the anniversary of our meeting, I find myself reflecting, on ‘us’.

Do you know, I’m being true and honest when I say that, from the first moment we crossed paths, from our first conversation, I knew that you would become someone important in my life?

I had no idea how or why or in what sense. But I knew that this was going to be ‘something’. And I think I chose in that moment to throw myself into it, and never stopped.

I was instantly taken with you. Attracted to you, in a very literal sense.

There was a deep-seated, inherent sense of both interest and connection I felt, which I think was borne out of the combination of both our extreme differences and odd similarities.

And then, the more I learned about you - the more you opened up and shared with me intentionally, the more I observed the things you shared unconsciously - I simply loved all of them.

I fell in love with the whole of you. All the things that might have put me off in another, somehow in you only make sense. The small things I would find difficult to handle in a relationship with someone else, with you, they seem, just, fine.

I somehow, crazily, love you without any conditions or hesitations.

The fact that our entire relationship has been more or less littered with synchronicities hasn’t done anything to help my obsession with the idea that there is something mythical at play between us.

I love the way that both of us have seemed to always agree that it feels we’ve known each other longer than we have, and that we also take it as just assumed that we’ll be in each other’s lives, in some way, forever.

I know our proper label is ‘friends’; but I think you’d agree with me that ‘lovers’ is more fitting. Because we are lovers, in the literal sense, of one another.

I love you. You love me. What else need there be?

You’ll never know…that sometimes I miss being near you so badly that I start crying right in the middle of whatever I’m doing.

It’ll come out of nowhere, maybe a flash of something that jolts a memory - not hard, since I see pieces of you everywhere - but then it hits me like a ton of bricks, and settles in my chest.

And I just want be near you, touching you - again, but also closer than ever before; missing the actual memory of you, but also somehow missing something I’ve never yet experienced.

I never knew that heart ache could be literal, physical like this.

You’ll never know…that I started writing letters like this nearly a year ago - mainly to you, and ALL because of you.

I’m no writer, you know that. But whatever it is about you, meeting you unlocked emotions and creativity and a desire to express. And this became one such outlet.

For that matter, you’ve unlocked a lot of characteristics and desires that I’d either forgotten, or never even knew, I had within me.

You’ll never know…the amount of time I’ve spent thinking about you, and us, and our relationship.

Wondering, analyzing, picking apart phrases and timing and patterns. Wondering if we’re both silently shouting things we can’t speak.

Half the time working deliberately to shove you into the safe box of “friendship” we have created for ourselves, to convince myself that’s all this is; the other half, letting you out and letting you run wild in my imagination.

You’ll never know…how close I came, how seriously I’ve considered blowing up my entire life for you. The measures and futures I have imagined.

And that’s saying a lot, because I LOVE my life, as it is. I’m not missing or lacking anything.

Or at least, I wasn’t…until I learned of you.

I can’t keep thinking of you this much, missing you this much, feeling this much

Knowing that nothing can ever happen, not really

Knowing that I can never even know if you feel, even slightly, the same way

I need to take just a little space for myself… stop checking for your messages quite so often, stop replying quite so quickly… stop engaging quite so thoroughly and emotionally…

Just for a little while, until my reactions to you settle down into more normal, appropriate “friend” level

Sometimes it’s beautiful, but sometimes it hurts too much; and either way, it’s taking over my life, and my heart, crowding out other things; it’s destroying me from inside out

I doubt you’ll even notice; and if you do, you’ll probably be relieved; I can tell I’ve been annoying you lately

And I still remember you told me once that you hated when people who started out being friendly started hitting on you, or when supposed friends admitted they’d actually fallen for you

So I’m sorry

I thought I could do this - and not do that - but apparently not, not very well…

None of this is at all your fault or responsibility, so I’ll deal with it quietly, secretly, unobtrusively…

I’m so sorry; I never meant for this to happen

I never expected this, never wanted this

I never chose to feel this way

I love you.

But can I just make you a nice memory, now?

Please?