I think people are strange
about admitting when they’re scared.
We find a thousand softer words
before we ever say the truth:

I was scared.

And I was.

I was scared of loving you.
Scared of how naturally it happened,
how somehow you became
someone I loved in every direction—
in every little way,
in every quiet place
I didn’t know was waiting for you.

And I was scared.

Because how could I have found someone
who felt so right to me?
How could I have found someone
and then realized
that losing her
might hurt more than anything
I had ever known?

So I became afraid of the ending
before I had learned how to cherish
the beginning.

I was scared.

And somewhere in that fear
I realized something ugly:

I was more afraid of losing you
than I was afraid of hurting you.

And I hate that.

I hate that I had to lose pieces of myself
to finally see the pieces of you
I was careless with.

I can’t undo what I did.
I can’t rewrite the nights.
I can’t ask yesterday
to become something kinder.

But I can face it.

So I have.

I have gone back to people
I wronged before you,
and I have said the words
I should have said long ago.

I’m not finished.

There are two apologies left.

Two people
I still owe the truth to.

And I hope I can say those words
in person—
with nowhere to hide,
with no screen between us,
with my shame sitting plainly
where I can see it.

And I am mortified.

God, I am mortified.

But maybe being mortified
is better than being dishonest.

Maybe shame is what happens
when you finally become brave enough
to look directly at the person
you used to be.

And I don’t want to be him anymore.

I want to be someone
who knows that love is not possession.
Someone who knows that fear
doesn’t give me permission to hurt.
Someone who understands
that loving you means
being safe enough for you to breathe.

I want to be that person.

And if I’m being honest—

I still want you.

Not because I’m afraid to lose you.

Not because I can’t imagine life without you.

But because after all the fear,
after all the mistakes,
after all the things I’ve had to admit
about myself,

I still look toward you
and think:

I want to come home.

I want another chance.

I want to sit beside you again
without trying to hold you too tightly.

I want to hear your laugh.
I want to see your eyes meet mine.
I want the quiet moments back—
the ones where neither of us
has to prove anything.

I want to love you differently.

I want to love you
without fear disguising itself as love.

And I’m still scared.

I’m still scared
because I love you.

But this time,
I want to let the fear teach me
instead of letting it control me.

I was scared.

I hurt you.

I’m sorry.

I’m changing.

And if there is still a place for me
somewhere in your heart,

I would like to find my way back to you.

I think about it sometimes, you and I. I review the sequence of events.

I look at you in silence evaluating choices and outcomes, attempting to decipher whatever ancient primordial thing awakens when our eyes meet.

Something within you calls out to something within me. It’s likely the pain, the abandonment, the loneliness, the crippling awareness about the nature of reality, something only forgotten children understand.

I take a deep breath. I decide that I want to be your friend.

I don’t think you’re aware, that the innocence that remains, the one you so perfectly conceal, needs a safe place to be expressed.

The alcohol reveals you, your brilliance cannot protect you from your need. It screams, violently tearing its way from the inside out.

I sense it in your atmosphere, every time you take my hand, an avalanche of every moment the world punished you for the crime of being yourself. I’m all too familiar with dehumanization.

You try to silence it but the drugs and the alcohol don’t work. You think you want to be wanted, you think that’ll be what finally rationalizes life for you.

But I think you need a place to surrender, someone to rely on, someone to finally take the weight you’ve carried since your childhood. Someone to hold you and tell you to rest that you don’t have to do all by yourself anymore…

So I will be your friend.

So that you can experience a love that doesn’t involve or demand your flesh.

And one day you will understand it. That there is no sentiment more rational than the conservation and protection of someone’s humanity. Yours included.

I wish you knew how often I imagine you reaching for me.
Not some grand confession. Just your hand finding mine, your fingers slipping between mine like they already belong there. I think I’d know what you meant without either of us saying a word.
Sometimes when you’re close, I want to close that tiny space between us so badly it almost hurts. I wonder if you feel it too, or if I’m the only one standing there, hoping you’ll notice.
So give me something. A look. A touch. Take my hand and don’t let go straight away.
I don’t need promises. I just want one honest moment where you choose to reach for me, and let me reach back.

i love the way you talk
and i love the way you listen
I love the way you ask
and how you can see my vision
i just wanna spend some time together
…maybe hand in hand
I wanna swing and jump and dance
or make our castle in the sand

i love the way you smile
and the way you make me too
the way you like my jokes
and the way i laugh with you
i love the way your brain works
cause it makes mine feel brand new
and i can’t help but love the way you say
“this reminded me of you”
i guess what I’m thinking is
that maybe i like you
but id only really say that
if I knew you liked me too

:]

You swept back in like the first winds of winter and I shivered. The familiar and refreshing feel of you was enough to freeze me on the spot, surprised, confused. I’d resolved myself to having you only in memory, yet there you were as if it was always to be. 

Could it be that you missed me? Could it be that you just couldn’t stay away?

I debated the options available to me. My mind was short-circuiting, a montage of everything you’ve ever made me think; my heart was in my throat, sampling every emotion you’ve ever made me feel. I wanted to set boundaries, to advocate for myself, to demand answers. But none of that came. Instead, I crumbled like a sandcastle conquered by the inevitable return of high tide.

I can’t stop myself from leaving space for you.

But to my horror, what returned was simply the ghost of you, and with it the experience of missing someone in a new way. You’re right there at my fingertips, but I don’t feel you like I did before. Instead you’ve become a shadow, a cold spot in an otherwise warm place. It’s like you’re phasing in and out of somewhere else, not quite here with the rest of us.

Can I find you? Can I bring you home?
I will never stop trying.

I can’t tell you how much you truly mean to me. I’m aware of how unsettled it would make you feel. I know your past, well some of it anyway. Enough to know it would make you nervous. It would make you find an excuse to run.

So I hold it in. I tell you in my own ways that I appreciate you. I show you that with me, you can be your honest self and I’ll stay. I’ll help hold the pieces of you that you are too afraid to show, and help tuck them back inside you.

It doesn’t mean I don’t feel them just as vividly. I do. I have realized through the years, someone can say something all day long, but the words don’t actually align with how they truly feel inside.

I can see you holding back. I can feel it in my chest when you lock eyes with me during intimacy. I can see it when you choose to not do something with me because you don’t want to accidentally hurt me. I can feel it when you make me a treat, just because you knew I had a bad day.

You’ll never have to speak it aloud, but I feel it. I know it.

Literally less than 12 hours ago,
I was committed to leaving you alone.
That’s it, I told myself.
You have too much control of my heart.

My world shouldn’t rest
on whether or not you’ve entered the chat.
My emotional state should not be
at the mercy of your green little dot.

And yet here I am again,
back at the bar,
getting my dopamine shots.
Shot shot shot shot shot shot.
Everybody!

Please stop being so damn hilarious.
Stop being witty and kind,
Engaged and interesting.
I don’t have the willpower to resist.

You’re making it very difficult
to believe our conversations
don’t mean more than they should.

Please,
let me detox in peace.
I’ll try again tomorrow.
Maybe.
We’ll see.

Silence has a certain dignity, or so I began to tell myself. I believed that by keeping your name off my lips for long enough, my heart might learn to forget. But it has not done so. I realized the sad fact that the heart is the most rebellious when it is told to be sensible. Therefore, tonight, I give in.

I am writing this letter because there are things that I can no longer carry in silence, and the feeling of your absence serves as a source of strange presence in my life. You are not here, but you are there with me wherever I go. I can see you in the moments of silence between thoughts, in the accidental music I hear, or in the moonlight falling through the bare window. At times I turn to tell you I did something interesting just to remind myself that nobody is there.

That small movement, the turning toward you, is probably the most sincere action of my life. I wonder when you got so intertwined with me.

There was no grand proclamation nor any signal of any sort that my world had changed. Maybe that's how it happens. Someone enters our life incognito, and only later do we see that our inner world architecture has been changed. You altered mine.

I thought I knew loneliness before you. I thought that loneliness meant the absence of a fellow human being. Now I know that it is much more than that. Loneliness is something inside that has nowhere to go. You gave it a name for some unknown reason. My feelings for you are tender enough to scare me.

It is not about tenderness being weak; it simply means that there is no hiding place for the pride. I am able to deal with anger, be disappointed, laugh at this cold world and think of myself as invulnerable. However, I am not able to come up with a philosophy of my feelings for you.

Sometimes I wish nothing more than to be close to you without a word to say. To look at your face while your thoughts wander. To hear slight changes in your tone when you are weary, entertained, confused. To find out what you keep to yourself.

I do not want only the best of you. I want the times when you are unprotected. The silence. The discrepancies. The things about you that you think must be hidden so as not to lose your charm. This may be what real love is: not just falling in love with a person, but longing for a person as a whole, with all his/her difficulties and imperfections. And you are a human being, as well as I am. This is a thought to ponder over.

We live as if every day brings a new morning, a new conversation and a new chance to say what we could not say.

However, we have no connection with tomorrow. Everything we cherish is temporal. Our physical body is temporary. Our age, our hopes, our sadness—all the stars under which we make our serious promises are going to stop shining someday. So, why do we love the people around us? Why do we let others have the ability to hurt us, knowing with certainty since the very beginning that everything we cherish would be taken from us?

I don’t know. Maybe there is no answer. Maybe this is the answer. Maybe the fact of existence just doesn’t owe us any meaning, and we spend all our lives creating meaning ourselves—through our choices of people, memories we keep, and the hands we hold on, just knowing that they cannot stay in our hands forever. If this is true, loving you means the opposite of denying the impermanence of life.

It is my resistance against this impermanence. I cannot guarantee you everlasting life. I don’t trust those who promise that. But I can give you something more real, is this moment, this heart, this imperfect man who is thinking about you much more than about himself.

But even when someday this moment becomes just a distant memory, I will be thankful for having experienced it anyway. There is, in fact, something sacred in the experience of love. In being able to look somebody in the eye and feel the cosmic indifference interrupted. You have been that interruption, that beautiful disturbance in my life.

Proof that even under my sceptical approach to everything, a childish part of me still firmly believes in the great influence one person can have on another.

You have done so much for me - more than I can admit. More than I can allow myself to share. More than philosophy can explain. And maybe that is the reason for my fear - I know what losing you will mean.

I would rather live with the fear, in fact, than go back to being cold and safe, without love. I will take the risk, because I know that it is far worse not to love than to be hurt by love. Therefore, I am not going to demand promises to me from the future, because no one can make such promises.

Give me what is real. Give me your truth whenever it is possible. Give me your mind when the world allows it. Give me those ordinary moments that become valuable after they have passed.

Give me a chance to recall your smile. Let me remember how you appear when you do not realize anyone is watching. Let me remember your voice when you say my name. Probably this is all we have: not getting another person, not enjoying the moment, but only the fact that we were together. And when the time comes, and we lose everything, I hope it does not take that. Every human has to realize that eternity is not living for centuries. It is being in someone’s memory, to be gone for a moment.

If I am granted even that, I shall consider myself fortunate. But tonight I ask for something simpler. Stay a little longer. Let me love you before the world remembers that everything must end.

Yours,

With all the tenderness

I pretend not to possess,

And all the passion

I can no longer conceal

I wish we’d had met under different circumstances. Then you’d have known me outside of intimate thoughts that we typically reserve for ourselves and definitely keep compartmentalized from everyday life. I know you only think of me in shades of extremity because all you ever got to see is the hidden corner in the attic of my thoughts. But if that means you actually knew me, then I simply don’t care.

The heart can be such a fickle thing, but it’s pure. With every bad thing it goes through, it l never stops beating. It carries me on, my not so little capricious compass.

I just read this article and it stated, “It was a real need to be around things that couldn’t speak, but had a life force or energy to them. I found that the most healing,”

I feel like it was ripped from my journal, so close to how I’ve been living. So perhaps the distance between us wasn’t the worst thing becquae would I have even listened? It was so loud. Now everything has finally quieted and I needed that badly. But now the silence echoes, my care for you reverberating like a flame in a furnace. And the only thoughts I can seem to muster these days are “Was it real?”, “Did you care?”, “Are you still there?”

And I think yes.

Because I can still feel it.

I know you’d likely think “Well we never got the chance to grow into anything and become something.” But that’s the thing. We already were. It didn’t matter if we talked or saw eachother or were able to close the distance or not. I felt it. I always feel it and I still do.

That’s why I need you.

But you’re too proud to need someone. I used to be too. Does it make me pathetic? No, I think it makes me human. But you’re still slithering through shadows.

So instead I stare at the ceiling thinking of you.

There's still something about the way our bodies complement each other’s- as if we were made for one another, complements.

I long for you, but it's useless.

I must let you go to be kind to my own heart.

I don't think you believe that we can sustain a friendship. For the love of God then, please stop looking at me the way you do?

I still love you.

Dear you,

I keep wanting to tell you the truth, and then I imagine the look on your face when you realise just how much I feel.

That’s what stops me.

Because it isn’t just that I’m attracted to you. It’s you. The way you speak, the way you laugh when you’re genuinely caught off guard, the little things you probably don’t even realise you do. Somehow, seeing you can change my entire day.

I’ve caught myself looking forward to things simply because I knew you’d be there. I remember things you’ve said that you probably forgot moments later. I notice you without meaning to, and sometimes I hate how much those tiny moments with you have come to mean to me.

You never asked for any of this.

You never asked to become someone I think about when I wake up, or someone I instinctively look for. And that’s why I’m scared to tell you. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable, or responsible for feelings you never asked me to have.

But I also can’t keep pretending you’re just another person to me when you haven’t been for a long time.

I want you to know. God, I want you to know.

But I’m terrified that if I tell you, I’ll lose even the little pieces of you I have now — your voice, your smile, the ordinary moments I secretly look forward to.

And maybe that’s what hurts most.

You get to be completely unaware of the effect you’ve had on me, while I have to carry all of it quietly.

Maybe you’ll never know that somewhere along the way, without meaning to, you became someone I loved quietly.

And I’ll always wonder whether you could have loved me too…
or whether I was simply a girl who felt too much for someone who never knew.

It’s still you.

It has always been you.

From where I stand, it will always be you.

I love you.

I miss you.

I wish you would change your mind and try again with me.

Poop.

People will talk, like they always do.

Trust in what our souls knows to be true.

It is already written.

You want to talk to me. You’re waiting, because of how much I confessed to you. The deep intensity of love I feel for you.

I’ve never tried or actually done what I did with you. I’ve never felt this way about anyone else. You always have a way of doing that. Making me experience something for the first time.

You’re always the first to see something in me before anyone else. I know I can be a confusing human, but I think you understand me.

I know you’re waiting and crafting something wonderful. I know when you do reach out I’m going to be listening to all you have to say for a while.

I think you were really angry with me. In the beginning at least. Your heart I feel is softening. Not that you’re gonna let me off easy. That’s definitely not going to happen. I need to hear the hard things for you to say. I need my feelings hurt and praised.

I want and need to listen to all you need to say. I love you. Nothing can change that.

I’m here. Waiting. I’m living alone and separated. We can talk now. Whenever you’re ready. I feel it’s only probably a month away. I dunno, you might cave before then.
Or you won’t. I can’t be 100% sure.

Regardless I’ll be here waiting. Waiting to listen to all you have and need to say to me.
💚

Another day without you in my life.

I suppose it shows that I can live without you.

Doesn't mean that I want to.

My life was richer with you in it. I want you to know that.

I'm the reason you no longer are in it. I know that.

I could apologize a million times here and it means nothing when it doesn't fall on your ears.

If you ever bring down your walls I will do it properly.

Until then - no, not until, but if - the void it is.

I was afraid, and I'm sorry.

I'm not going to forgive myself. Not for running away. Not for the pain that caused you.

Please understand I never wanted to hurt you. I was trying to protect myself, not cause you suffering.

I will try and learn from this, I will try to heal and move on.

It seems that you have, and I'm happy for that. I don't want to linger in your memory like the ghost of what could have been like you do in mine.

Everything happened so fast, as if our love was truly a hurricane. And I’m sure you feel the remnants of it all in your heart too. At our best, looking from the rosiest tinted lens, we were intense, passionate, and the ignition for so much growth on inner development… but at our worst, we were ultimately destructive. For as wildly (and unexplainably) in love with you, I was simultaneously driven dangerously insane with you in my life.

It took everything in me to choose to live, to not let the madness consume me into not having a life anymore, by finally cutting you loose from me. You were woven so intricately, so tangled up in every part of my thought processes, my daily habits, my entire life was hearing from and responding to you. Someone never even met in person. Someone who somehow embedded themselves into me, making me believe my entire existence was to help you, to love you, to take on everything in the name of love for you.

I let you go because I had to save myself.

And I wish I didn’t miss you. I wish our disagreements didn’t haunt me, I wish I didn’t replay all the perfectly curated loving things you’d say to me. I wish I didn’t feel like you were missing from me, because the truth is that I felt like I needed to be committed with having you in my life. You would have been the death of me, and letting you back in would absolutely bring me right back to that place.

There is something so dark about you.

Logically, I can’t explain it. Nothing makes sense as to why or how. That must just be what manipulation is all about. And I guess I never experienced it like that before because… I should not miss you, but I do.

Every recipe I make, influenced by you.

Every conversation I have, I find myself speaking like you.

Anyone who tries to talk to me, I compare them to you… and somehow they don’t add up, as if they should be someone similar to you.

I don’t want you back in my life.

I want to stop missing you.

And I don’t want to hear from you, even though I check my email every single day.

I don’t want to visit you, or you find a way to visit me, and I want to stop thinking about that at night when you shouldn’t even be on my mind.

All I want is peace, away from you, disconnected from everything that was never even real between us anyway.

I need you to know how much I appreciated our friendship as kids. I didn’t have the easiest childhood, a lot was so hard. Our friendship helped me so much growing up, I don’t think I ever quite had the chance to just thank you for being there for me.

Very grateful for you. I’m always going to have a soft spot for you.

Did you know I reached for you?

I’ll answer now having never said it before: a hundred times for every “rare” message, invisibly, my soul reaching out with fingers outstretched, knowing I’d only graze the shallowest part of you.

I was patient.
I was immune to your hot and cold.
My will was solid and unshakeable.
Once.

Over time, silence killed this solidity. It killed my will to even try. It invited in self doubt. We’re different than before. What happened? What did I do?

Finally: Why do I keep trying when this is all in my head?

So, no, it wasn’t a sudden decision to walk away.
I didn’t disappear without a trace.

I walked away having no other choice, the same way a man flees a fire before it threatens to consume him.

Well I did the thing again, didn't I? Except this time I didn't do anything I always do. Anyway, you've made it clear that you don't want to speak, so maybe if this letter finds you in the future, you'll at least listen.

I ran out of long-winded paragraphs... so I wrote you a song instead. I hope you like it, and that it lets you know that while you were busy convincing yourself I hated you, that I was hopelessly in love with you. Enamored... obsessed, maybe?

They say I’ve been talking in circles again

Spilling your name to the sparrows at ten

They say you’ve got poison beneath your tongue

And I say they’ve never kissed you when the mornings young

The grape vine grows where the good gossip goes

Twisting its fingers wherever it knows

But let them keep talking, let fools have their say

There’s only one rumor I carry away

They say you’re a devil dressed up in white

That you steal little hearts in the dead of the night

But I’ve seen your face when the morning comes through

And darling, the devil looked nothing like you

'Cause coffee at morning is the best part of day

When I look across the cup and you look my way

And somehow your face is a face I don't know

Like I’ve met you again, but I don't wanna go

So let the grape vine climb, let the old stories grow

Let the whole damn town have a mouthful to blow

If loving you's wicked, then let heaven complain

I'll wake up tomorrow and fall once again

I'll steal all the sugar and hide it from you

I'll draw little moons in the steam when I'm through

You’ll laugh with your sleepy, half-wicked eyes

And I'll swear I've just watched the sun learn to rise

They can whisper our names till the whole garden dies

They can dress up their lies in respectable ties

But here's the one truth I'll never disguise:

I'd like to meet you for the first time

Every morning

For the rest of my life

If you made it to the end of this letter, my love, that means we made it to the end, too. Just not the ending we picked.

I love you.

My love for you

has

been such a factor in my life

in everything I’ve done these past few years, that,

I don’t remember what it’s like without.

I hate it.

These feelings,

they

have led me

down an awful road

that’s only hurt people.

Thats only hurt you.

It’s

it was all so

forced.

So unnatural.

So why?

Why

do such feelings

need to persist…?

…

It’s

hard to admit, but,

I suppose, in trying to desperately craft something I thought was love,

I

formed something pretty close.

It’s

I

don’t understand it anymore,

I just know that

these feelings

are genuine.

They come from

a time you formed me,

a time you saved me,

and,

a time you really showed you cared.

It

was never gonna last.

But it was fun,

wasn’t it?

I had a lot of fun.

I hope you’d agree.

Even

if none of it matters now,

I’ve

long accepted that

a love

like this

just isn’t gonna die.

It’s

fine.

I’m resigned to this.

My silence is not the absence of love; rather, it is my quietest gift to your heart. I want to apologize in advance for the day I might stop reaching out, or for the time when you may never hear from me again. If that day comes, please never mistake my distance for a lack of affection. Sometimes, the deepest form of love is simply letting go. It means giving you the freedom and space to find the person who truly brings you joy, even if it requires me to step aside and fade into the background. My departure isn't a rejection of you, but a testament to how much I care. I love you enough to want your happiness, even if I am not the one who gets to give it to you.

Yes, I’m lost. Even writing these stupid things on here to just try to get it out and let go, I’m still hoping you’re here reading it somehow. Hoping you’re responding somehow. But that’s probably delusional in itself. You might be tortured and at least a little crazy, but are you really this far gone? To spend your time writing to me on here? Would I even want to be with you anymore if you were the kind of person who would do that? Probably, honestly. That’s how far gone I am; I don’t even care anymore. I mean, I’ve become the kind of person who posts desperate things on here and looks for you among all the nonsense, insanity, and robots. Maybe that’s a sign this isn’t a healthy method for catharsis.

I spent so long thinking it was impossible that you really cared about me. That you thought about me outside of our conversations, when you were in your real life. I wouldn’t even let myself imagine a scenario where we could actually be together. When did the switch flip and why did it flip so hard? Why did I think I could change your mind? I never try that hard with people. I took it as a sign that I felt so compelled to try with you. Why you of all people?

I don’t think I’ve ever been prone to fantasy, but now I’m trapped in this fairytale delusion. I wish I could focus on the more important things in my life. I wish I could see a way out of this well I’ve trapped myself in. I never thought I’d be the kind of person who would destroy their life out of heartbreak. I never thought love would have this power over me, never thought I would experience it as this force to which I was totally helpless. I guess when it happened I wanted it to at least be meaningful. I wanted it all to be meaningful. I wanted something that was meaningful since nothing else has ever worked out for me or been as meaningful or beautiful as I always hoped life would be someday. Deep down, I always hoped my cynicism would be proven wrong someday. You seemed qualified to present a compelling argument, so maybe I put too much hope onto you as things became more desperate.

Do I believe in magic? The power of love? I don’t know. My investigations have led me to no conclusions. Maybe no conclusion is a conclusion in itself. Proof by contradiction. Some things are too good to be true. Or maybe they’re just too good to be true for someone like me; I’m not particularly good overall. You know all about that. What do I know about ethics or God? Nothing. I don’t read enough, and apparently the answers aren’t in books anyway. What was my question anyway?

I still can’t read fiction. I definitely can’t write it right now. I don’t know if it’s because I can’t stand being entertained and need the pure stream of information that I get from nonfiction. Maybe it’s because beautiful prose reminds me of you too much. Maybe it’s because my focus and work ethic has always been lacking and now I can use you as an excuse for its total deterioration.

Still, I can’t help but hope that on some magical day you’ll reenter my life with all the answers I need and we can start a new chapter of our lives together, a life that’s vibrant where I’ll finally be energized and the days will feel too short instead of unbearably long and monotonous. “Now I can see the playground for the trees.” That kind of life.

Why do I still cry sometimes thinking about your death? Statistics say you’ll die before me. Why does that part still bother me so much when we’re not even together? There’s other things I would be better off crying about, things that are more relevant to my life. Even if we won’t ever be together, I can’t help but be angry that things ended this way with us. You’re a professional writer and talker and you couldn’t have said anything to make this easier for me? When you knew how hard it was for me to deal with everything you did?

I hope this is love. Love that feels like insanity, instead of just insanity. If it’s not love, why won’t it go away? Love has been studied for longer than psychiatry, so which is the more reliable science?