To my unknown lover

Hey,

I know that I gave you a grand speech during the summer about how much you’ve changed me as a person, that I’m a different person than I was a year ago. I know that I told you how much I regretted leaving you and that I loved you. But I didn’t tell you everything. I didn’t tell you how much it was hurting me to see you everyday, just like I didn’t tell you how badly I wanted for you to give me a second chance.

I begged for your forgiveness and I begged for a chance at friendship with you. I begged for you to give me a shot to show you that I could be a good person, a good friend. But I bit my tongue when I wanted to say that I would do anything, bend over backwards just to get the shot to show you how much I love you. I didn’t tell you how much I wanted to be with you. How much I wanted to be the one that you called “baby” and held close in your arms. I didn’t tell you how much it hurt to see you happy with someone else, to see you with someone else period. I didn’t tell you because I knew that you were happy.

Your happiness has been my priority for as long as I can remember. That’s why I never reached out after you said you needed space. I stayed away and let you move on and be happy even though it was tearing me apart. I kept my distance until you said that it was okay for me to ride in the same car as you. After that I made small attempts at painfully awkward small talk just in order to communicate with you, just to be a part of your life. I was willing to play the part of the friend if it meant that I got to interact with you.

I poured my heart out in seven pages, hundreds of words, when I begged for a second chance at being in your life in any respect. I was so overwhelmingly happy and relieved when you texted me that night. I knew that you had more than every right to hate me, but the fact that you skipped to the end and got my number rather than just throwing that letter away meant the world to me. It meant everything to me that you read it. That you were willing to try.

Later in the summer it hurt more than I thought it would to see you every day. It felt as if I was ripping my heart out over and over again, but I kept doing it because it got your attention. A small smile here, a nervous joke there, most of which being met with acknowledgement from you. Everything was okay, until one day I realized that it felt almost as if I was the only one trying to keep the lines of communication open between us. I talked to my therapist and she called it transference when I said that I was attracted to another. She was right.

She saw it, our friends saw it, and most of all, you saw it. You tried to warn him and you looked out for him. You told me not to do to him what I did to you and I said I wouldn’t. I didn’t. Eventually he stopped being a distraction from my feelings for you and he became my boyfriend. But he wasn’t you. He didn’t listen when I talked. He didn’t mean it when he said he loved me. He loved my body, not my personality. Once I began to talk to friends about my lack of happiness with him I was told of how he treated others and I didn’t agree with it at all. But I had been sticking it out because I didn’t know what else to do.

I had been content to stay in an unhappy relationship until one Sunday night when I was on Snapchat. I had been viewing the story of a mutual friend of ours from work and he had a photo advertising the election of your girlfriend as homecoming princess. But I didn’t see her right away. The first face that I saw was yours. You were in the background playing your saxophone. I wasn’t looking for you but you jumped out at me. I wasn’t sure if she was your girl or not so I looked up her Instagram. Needless to say, she was. Seeing that photo with you in it sent me into a spiral and I didn’t know what to do other than to talk to my best friend. She said that when we were at camp you had talked to her and that you had been thinking of giving me another chance. A few days later I was talking to yet another mutual friend of ours and he told me a story similar to hers. It killed me just a little more to hear that I messed up yet again. To hear that if I hadn’t of been so careless, so selfish with my distraction, I could have had you back.

So I suppose that that is why I’m writing you this. A letter which you will never read. Words which will never be said. I just want for you to be happy, but you are my happiness. Yes, having you back would bring me so much more joy than anyone could ever imagine, but it would also bring me peace. I love you. I have loved you for a year and I will still love you months from now. I will just do so silently and hope that should you ever need someone or want someone, that you will choose me. I know that I don’t deserve you and I know that I probably won’t get you, but I would love to have the chance.

Thank you for reading this, or not I suppose, sincerely,

Your unknown lover

Bad Poetry

Your hands,

Hesitant and gentle,

respectful.

Never taking more than I was offering;

Never taking anything.

Your lips,

Soft, kind, sweet,

And inexperienced beyond belief.

They grazed mine with wonder and curiosity,

Leaving longing in their wake.

What I can’t say

She said that I didn’t fall in love with camp, I fell in love with you. 

I didn’t think that it could be possibly be true. I always fought to be the “cold” and “heartless” one, it has kept me safe. If you don’t let people in you can’t get hurt. But on the flip side, if you don’t let people in are you really living?

One of my most fond memories is in truth a collage of memories. They play through my mind like a flashback in a movie every time that your eyes meet mine. I look at you and I see countless nights under the stars, my head on your chest and your hoodie on my body. I see the way you would smile when we would look at each other during an embarrassing moment. The way that when you would speak to me you would lean down slightly, as if in a futile attempt to make me feel taller.

In retrospect, those moment and exchanges were what really started it for me. I was so caught up in living in the moment and not thinking that I never truly stopped to notice what life would be like without those exchanges. I didn’t cherish them as I should have. Those looks and smiles that didn’t just stop at your cheeks, but went on to reach your eyes are what made my day. I never realized just how lucky I was to get to not only see those smiles, but be the cause of some of them.

You’ve always had impeccable taste in music, even when it was shitty music. By this I mean that you could suggest something like Pink Guy and I would listen to it and grow to love it, just as I would with something like Andy Shauf. These two artists are so vastly different that it is hard to believe that you recommended them to me. In truth, I couldn’t stand Pink Guy, but I learned to like his music. I learned to like his music because you did. I wanted to understand why you found his music to be so humourous and I think that I finally did. It could go from terrible and offensive to serious so quickly that some people wouldn’t even notice.

Flash forward a year and I have finally come to understand just how awesome of a human being you are. You are multifaceted, brilliant, beautiful on the inside and out, and patient; you never cease to amaze me. You have overcome so many things and I am so unbelievably grateful that you have given me a chance to be a friend. I left you when you needed me and I was so fucking stupid. I should have never picked up that drink, much less my phone. I should have listened to you when you told me that he was bad news. You were right. Leaving you is my single biggest regret in life. It fucked us both up and I still love you. I was drunk when I dumped you and I know it is so ridiculously selfish of me to want you back, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t. I won’t say those words to you. I started to, but I stopped myself because we were out of time. I told you that I love you. Or at least that I loved you. You’ve got someone new and I don’t want to ruin that. If changing my feelings to past tense will help you, then I will do it in a heartbeat.

I have come to learn that love is not just giving something up and if it comes back to you it is yours, but if it doesn’t it was never yours to begin with. It is being willing to not chase after whatever it is that was let go in the first place. Love is giving that thing or person space and time to grow and be happy without intruding, but still letting them know that you are there if they need anything. I may have kept my heart closed off to love, but you opened it. Even though I fought you and didn’t tell you when it mattered the most, I did love you. I still love you.

It breaks my heart just a little more every time that I see you and have to make the conscious decision not to sit right next to you. It sends a shock of pain through me every time that we meet eyes and yours don’t hold the same admiration that I am fighting to keep from mine.

Yesterday you were going to sit with me at dinner and I told you that you didn’t have to, because I knew that you were just doing it because you felt bad for me. I didn’t want for you to feel obligated to sit with me, but that doesn’t mean that I wanted you to leave. You did though. And when you did I had to leave because it hurt so bad. I had to walk away and conceal the tears in my eyes with a look filled with hate in order not to concern you.

I am trying to right my wrongs and fix my short comings, but I can’t fix everything. I can’t say sorry and suddenly make it so that there isn’t an awkward moment when we look at each other because we know exactly what is going through the mind of the other. I can’t bring myself to sit with you when there are a lot of people all vying for your attention because I would have a panic attack. I can’t adequately articulate my true feelings to you because it would hurt you and complicate things. I can’t look you in your eyes in broad daylight or at our spot and say “I love you” because those aren’t my words to say to you anymore. I refuse to take someone else’s words and make them my own when I am no longer deserving of them. I can’t say these things to you so instead I write them in a document that you will never read and I listen to the music that I associate with you. I can’t say these things to you, so instead I quickly look away when we meet eyes across the room and I keep to my side of the cafeteria. I don’t try to fit in with your friends because they aren’t my person, you are and that is why I don’t walk alone with you because I would tell you that.

You may not always see it and you may think that I am trying to ignore you or be rude to you, but in truth when I don’t speak I am protecting you. I am protecting you from the drama and needless pain that comes with everything that I wish I could say to you. I am truly doing my best not to slip up and hug you when I am having a bad day or when you look like you could use a hug, not because I don’t want to be held in your arms just one more time, but because I know that if I did get to be in your arms again I would never want to let go. I don’t get close to you because I don’t want to break down and cry and tell you everything because that wouldn’t be good for anybody. I don’t walk next to you when we are in a group because my hand would subconsciously reach for yours and that could have irreversible consequences. I don’t hold your eye contact for long periods of time like I would with anyone else to see how long it takes them to walk away because I know that I would fold and show my cards. I have a good poker face, but you make me crumble. A single look from you and I would practically be handing you my cards, much less showing a tell.

So please, don’t take my defensive words to heart. I am just trying to protect not only myself, but you as well. Now you know that, or at least you would if it wouldn’t do damage to tell you.

A message to my father…

As children we are conditioned an raised to believe that our parents are the strongest, most amazing people in the universe. That they are like superheroes and that nothing can hurt them. Or at least I was raised that way.

My dad was never really around for more than six months at a time before he was being sent on deployments when I was younger. I looked up to him and thought “This is my dad, nobody can hurt him. He wouldn’t let them.” and up until about two years ago, I still thought that way.

The first time that I remember seeing my dad cry was when I was about seven or so. My parents fought a lot and I never really thought they were happy. And one day my dad and I were watching tv or something in his room and all of a sudden I looked over and he was crying. I had never seen my dad cry before and I didn’t know what to do..

He asked me if he was a good dad and a good husband. I don’t remember what I told him. And perhaps that is for the better. I always knew that my parents weren’t really happy. So me being me, I probably told him, “No. You’re not.”

But that’s me and I was a jerk when I was a kid. But back to the point…

My dad was always the strong one. He yelled and screamed and threw things, but he never cried. But he did cry.. We just never saw it.

I love my dad, but I don’t tell him that. Mainly because I don’t tell anyone that I love them. I haven’t in a while. But when your father, the man you know to be the strong and unbreakable one, comes into your room at 4:30 in the morning because he had a nightmare and he’s crying, you tell him you love him. Its the right thing to do.

I know that my dad will hopefully never have the misfortune of reading this blog that I keep and occasionally post to. mainly because, he has his own problems to deal with and I wouldn’t ever want to add to that more than I already have. But if he ever does, I love you, Dad. And there’s nobody like you in the world. I know that you get hurt and you hide it, but you can show us these things.. Your family, we love you. Its just hard to show sometimes.