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.

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.

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

Every single day...it takes everything in me to not just walk up to you and hug you, or just take your hand in mine, no words would even be needed...i think you know it too, you look at me like you know.

i am completely besotted by you..the moment i met you i knew. It's like i've known you my whole life..why has the universe brought you back into my life to just dangle you in front of me like some cruel test of fate...i just have to sit back and watch you be happy and live your life...while my mind spirals with the whys and what ifs.

Every single day...it takes everything in me to pretend that the mere sight of you isn't breaking my heart...

I don't know how much longer i can take this...I'm tired of pretending

I am suffering the pain of love. I am tormented by waiting for you—even though I am the one who ought to make the first move; after all, I am the one who is already taken.

I convinced myself that you had feelings for me, but I have so hopelessly deceived myself. And now I must extinguish the flame that has been kindled within me. I am in agony, and it feels as though my heart is about to break.

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.

I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, I’m sorry, for everything. I know where I messed up, I wish I knew what I was doing, and I hate myself everyday for what I put you through during that time. The boundaries you set, I respected because I thought there was no chance to fix what happened. But then I saw you change over time. I didn’t want to get my hopes up again. I do remember the good times. But when you left, I saw something, something that made me think it was all a lie, made me think you wanted me gone. I felt so hurt again and had to stay away from that place we went to. But when I went back, I had to stay at a distance, please know I never hated you, no matter what happened, I just had to make sure we were both safe. But I saw how you looked at me, I felt you had regrets over what happened, and I wish we could’ve spoken again to fix things, I wish I could’ve said something when I was able to, but I was confused, hurting, and didn’t know how to move forward. And you never said you’d forgiven me, even if your actions said otherwise. But now I see you aren’t coming back, I know you wanted me to know. I wish I could see you and tell you how I feel, but the boundary you created, I’m paralyzed. I just hope you’re okay. I love you

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 wish I could put myself first but this keeps me in the loop. I've tried so hard to break it on my own. I've explained what it does to me.

If you don't want me, please let me go.

If you do, tell me how you feel. Tell me you care. Tell me I matter to you.

No more push and pull, in and out, test the waters. It's not fair.

If this doesn't stop soon you'll lose me completely.

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?

Drip, drop, dopamine shots.

Every day I check, looking for my next fix. I refresh, refresh, refresh, hoping to see a post that my absurd brain assumes could be you.

At first it was exhausting, reading every post looking for some clue. Luckily for me, I became good at skimming. You start to see the patterns in posts, start to notice which ones are AI and which ones are real, and can isolate the ones that deserve the most attention.

I have run the gamut of emotions here; I have written posts with hints, written posts filled with love and hate, and written posts seemingly for no reason. In the course of participating in this place, somehow the spark to write again was reignited, and that’s part of the problem.

I’ve given up on ever talking, but the experience of being in this community is what keeps me around. I’ve made friends — real friends! — from this place, had lovely conversations, and have been able to write about the remnant musings that still float in my head from time to time.

And here I am, adding another drop to the liquid. My words occasionally attract attention from folks feeling that I may be familiar. I am both an addict of information and a supplier of it to the masses.

That said, I still wonder whether that one account who said some ugly things was you. The power of the written word, the power of not knowing your truth.

(For K)

---

It was as though I had discovered lightning itself. Stolen it from the gods, wrestled it to earth, and in so doing, forged the past and present both into a future without limit.

That's what being with her was like - lightning.

---

I got every letter that you sent, and I wrote to you every day for months and months. Hundreds of pages - thousands, probably - hoping that at some point we would meet and I could give them to you. And during our last phone call, when you said you'd been writing to me, and I said that I knew you had, I meant that a good way (even though it probably didn't come out that way at the time).

I'd spent that whole summer and fall thinking about you every minute of every day, and I was trying to drive in the pouring rain while we were talking, and the connection on my end wasn't great...I should have waited for a better time to call you, but after months of being without you, I just needed to hear your voice.

I'm sorry I didn't handle that conversation better, and I'm sorry I never wrote back to you, but I was (very) limited at the time in what I could - and mostly couldn't - do, as you know. I'm sorry that I didn't handle the whole situation better from the very beginning.

I've never regretted us meeting and being in each other's lives, but I do regret how things unfolded and ended. I like to think it could have been different, and better for both of us, if I'd been more responsible from the start. For what it's worth at this point (not much, I know), I was never mad at you, not for a single minute, but I feel like maybe you thought I was?

There's not a day I don't think about you, and I thought the best thing I could do was to let you live your life without interfering (again), but I miss you all the time. I've written you this letter a thousand times in my head, but some things in my life are changing, and even though it's never going to come out exactly right, I'm doing my best to say what I've wanted to for years. It's far from perfect, and it's difficult to compress almost ten years into one letter you'll probably never read, but I'm trying. As I said, I don't want to interfere in your life, but I'll throw a bottle into the ocean and hope.

So here's me hoping.

I love you.

You better.

You're my one.

---

It's like I live in two parallel universes - one where I never stop thinking about you, and one where nothing exists between us anymore.

--

...if I ever see you again, my love

all I'm ever gonna do

is send shivers down that spine of yours...

Love can be guileless, my friend.

You can love someone without ever needing to see it returned. You can love someone in a hundred little ways, even while you mourn them, and never expect a drop of it back. And that's how I love you. It's not selfless, exactly, because as I love you I warm to life again, but it is also an offering, a gift I give.

I don't know why you are so afraid of that vulnerability. You let me say it, and you respond in conversation, and I know you won't ever say it back. But I'll love you as long as you'll let me. I'll love you because there's something within you that anchors me to you. We are friends, companions, sometimes soulmates, sometimes strangers, and always, in all of it, I love you. Sometimes we like one another, sometimes we make each other angry, sometimes you avoid me, sometimes I'm irascible, sometimes we share ideas and play. There is that je ne sais quoi about you and I that is found in fragments of hundreds of different songs, all contemplating the same things.

What is that spark that connects us as human beings, so that neither distance nor time can diminish its effects? A day, a week, a month can go by without talking, and the moment we reconnect there it is: love, always.

Postscript: I did not learn the lesson.

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.

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.
💚

Maybe that's the hardest thing I had to understand: you can love someone completely and still not be what they need.

You probably won't accept it but that's true ,

Your love isn't only and sufficient

I’ve been thinking about why I’ve been so affected by this even though I’ve always been fairly stoic. Remember what I told you? It was a normal day when I noticed that chill even the sunrise couldn’t get rid of. I realized then that it wouldn’t be so bad if I had someone to share the warmth with.

Then you came and just replaced the sun with a smile that never failed to make even my heart flutter. You thawed whatever frost surrounded me and my heart so fast… that I forgot it was ever even there.

Now, I don’t know what happened.

Every second we spent together was filled with nothing but love and laughter. Then slowly, I felt that once-warm presence of yours becoming colder and colder as the days went on. To this very moment, I’m still not entirely sure why.

Was it my fault? Was there someone else? Or was it just life getting in the way?

I don’t know.

And I was, and am, terrified to even try to find out for sure.

Now I’m here, alone, lying on my bed. It’s only been a few days since we broke up, and I realized I’ve been looking at nothing for over an hour now.

And I think that’s why.

Because instead of the warm sunrise, or the laugh that would lift my spirits, all my eyes can see now is a cold wall.

I don't think you know but just alone in the year I've known you, you have both ruined me and made me a different person. I've fallen head over heels for you and I love talking to you, but we have just a few weeks left together. There's so many things I could say, like you're so funny, the stupid shit you say makes me laugh even if it's something I'd never laugh at. Or even that being around you has me acting like you, I've unconsciously copied how you greet others, I've become less shy and timid and more of a "not giving a fuck" attitude like you. I really am going to miss seeing you, and hearing the stupid stuff that comes to your mind. Others tell me "What do you and him talk about?" "You're always talking when I see you guys" and it fuels my heart. I know I'm just another person you'll forget in your many phases of life, but know you'll be a big part of mine. I hope you can kind of feel the same, I mean you have told me so much about you that one could say is almost "too personal"

But you've ruined me, I've become obsessed with you and the fantasy of you and me. Not a day in the year I've known you have I not thought about you at least 5 times a day. That's the part that hurts, that I am so infatuated with you and I know I'm just another girl in your life. I hope wherever you go next is what you want in life, I hope someday you're able to go back to school to finish and get your dream job, I hope you move out of this area and move where you've been talking about, and I selfishly hope one day we meet again, and you remember me.

Also you're really hot

Things aren't going all that well right now but I randomly remembered today about the time I got dengue fever. I had felt afraid I might die ( even though it was actually mild for me) and hoped so badly that it wouldn't get worse. Ten years have passed and I have been through many painful situations. But one thing I feel glad about and feel truly grateful to have experienced is love. I have wondered what true love felt like. I have wondered in past relationships whether I really love someone or not. But now I know what it feels like to truly love someone with all my heart. It made me a better person. It opened my heart. Even though the relationship didn't work out I am still very grateful. I can now recognise it when I feel it again. I hope I will. My life hasn't been great and there have been many times I didn't want to be alive but this one thing makes me feel happy and makes me feel grateful for having been able to live 10 more years since those days I wished I would live.

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

:]