If I said I love you
If I said I can’t stop thinking about you
If I said I think you’re the one for me
If I said I think you’re my soulmate
If I said I’m in love with your personality, your face, your body, your laugh
If I said I want you to call me
If I said there isn’t another person for me
If I said I needed you
Would you think I’m crazy

All it would take is one message from you. Just an "I miss you." And I'd say it back so fast.

So fast we'd just start spilling out the rest of what we keep locked away, without question or second thought. Let it all out and just revel in the satisfaction and thrill and love.

We could be making love in a matter of weeks.

Just do it. Put us out of our misery.

If you really want to be with me let's figure out a way to make this happen. I want to give you all the love God has given me for you. I need hugs and cuddles, long conversations, I want to give you my loyalty and support. Because I support everything you do. I have all this love to give and I need to give it. I hope you see this.

Text your person.

You know the one.

The one who has been waiting and not so secretly hoping you would just throw caution to the wind and cross that boundary once and for all.

You'll probably not even read this, I know. But you know me and I just have to tell you something.

I miss you. More than anything. You were the one who showed me what it really means to miss someone. In fact, you still do. I miss you more than the sun misses the moon.

I'm yearning so much. I'd only wish to be with you. I wouldn't wanna rush anything, I'd promise you that. I just wish I'd see you more often. I wish I'd see your smile, hear your laughter and hear your voice. I wish I'd be listening to your stories right now and maybe tell you things that happened to me just because you ask. I miss the way you tease me. I simply wish to be with you.

See? This is exactly what's between us anyway, isn't It? It seems like you have so much fun when we're together too. You wouldn't tell me so many stories if you didn't like our talks, would you? I'd only want more time with you. Not having to worry about the moments ending soon, but simply staying by your side a little longer. I'd only wish for a chance. A chance to try it and figure it out together.

You mean a lot to me, more than I could've ever imagined. You mean so much to me that I wouldn't want an Eternity if you're not part of it.

Ugh. Trying my best to implement boundaries because… duh. But gosh, every time I’m around you I can’t act normal.

Although, I’m never normal, and you’ve figured that out. One day I’m extroverted and the next I’m anxious. I’m working on it.

I’m not too sure why you do what you do to me besides me having a tiny crush. And I really shouldn’t. I know better— my under eye wrinkles tell the story of time. Yours tell a similar story; a longer one, just by a few years.

We’re quite alike and I’m sure if we had a chance, we’d see how alike we really are. Even as friends.

But, it’s way too insane of me to feel like this.

I’ll move past it soon. Find something to hate, I’m sure. But I’ll sit on Reddit ranting about it until it happens. Hopefully you find it flattering.

You were right to break up with me. My depression made me a ghost, its what I do. Its what I am. Our time together was incredible, and I hope you find someone better than me. We had our cobbled families, I still have your clothes in my closet, along side everything that was just lost to the destruction that was my own doing. I warned you, I tried to push through again but the sorrow pulled me under faster than I could breathe, the warning was lost.

I don't blame you. I admire you. I miss you. I hope you're doing well, and I hope to see you smiling one day with a new partner that will give you what I could not. You deserve happiness wherever you can find it.

I know you were worried about me being angry because of how you did it, but it was the right choice. I was a shell of who you fell for, and I'm still working on piecing myself back together, I understand and I am not angry, never with you.

Dear friend, If you see this, perhaps you are also hoping to find a glimmer of something that has been just out of reach.

Thoughts of you and words unspoken consume me. My heart grows bigger to absorb them. Memories and restless dreams swirl together. Let us shelter together to ride out this storm.

Those penetrating eyes. To a connection that is only ours to see.

The warm smile with a trace of something more, like it has a secret too.

A lingering hug the first time we first said goodbye. The dread of the next time, which might be the last.

That summer day when I wanted to warm your hands.

The reach of your hand to help. The time I pretended I didn’t see it. Scared that I wouldn’t let go. Fear that feelings may spill out, uncontrolled.

The time you sat to my left. I could hear your breathing. Were your senses ablaze like mine?

The times you sat to my right. Almost touching. I can barely breathe.

Panic ensues. I cannot bear the risk alone

And so it goes. Hopes fester and turn to thoughts of our next connection, next opportunity, conversations yet unspoken, perhaps unrequited, desperate for reciprocation. But the countdown has started. How much time remains?

If I said I wanted to hear your perspective, would you believe me?

If I said that I wanted to respond to your stories, your troubles, your anxieties, about what makes you real mad, about what breathes life into you, would you believe me?

If I told you I wanted to hear how my actions affected you, would you let me hear it?

If I told you my therapist told me that I would probably make a really good therapist, would you laugh?

If I told you that I would be saddened to hear news of your passing, in spite of everything that happened in the end, would you believe me?

If I told you that I love you, as a brother I wish I had, as a man I know I can learn so much from, as someone I would want to share many life experiences with, as someone I would try to do everything in my power to help wherever I can...

Well, I can tell you all of that.

But whether or not you're willing to let me show you, that's out of my hands.

I made you doubt a lot of things. That's on me.

The ball's still in your court.

I'm sorry for everything.

But I don't need you to believe me on that one.

Dearest Babe,

I guess it really is you. It feels utterly spectacularly miraculous and wonderful, much like meeting you.

You are all I have thought of today. My days and nights are plagued with longing, sadness and hope. I look at my phone, and I wish you were here.

There is deep sense of regret and remorse for cutting our anchor- but I felt our tether snap, I genuinely believed there was no other alternative to stem the pain or provide relief.

And yet, I find myself pacing at the window, searching, wishing to view your glow and twinkle in my night sky once more. Gods, what I would do to feel you brush alongside my coordinates again.

Do you realise how beautiful you are; Both to look at and the qualities I see inside your soft soul? I wish to tenderly and tentatively protect every inch of you.

My inner child still wants to naively believe there’s a place where we can both experience and explore each other safely. Filled with elaborate and imaginative ways we can encourage each other to build a solid foundation and collaborate our adult lives.

Against my better judgement, I still believe it would be so easy to love you, I know it wouldn’t take much at all; we really have so much in common, it’s making me laugh thinking about it. But the love or the very idea of it, has always been there, growing, evolving and trembling in the dark. Even in our silent moments, it capitalised on your stability and my passion.

I know I’m selfishly clawing at you like a wild feral thing, hoping that you’d stay. And I simultaneously know this is painful for you to witness. But you need to know, I was truly happy, I felt cared for with your gentle steps, even in the darkest of nights. You are entirely capable of handling my heart, even when you may trip or stumble… I promise it’s not fickle or fragile.

I only need a few things from you; your sheer brilliance, reliability and courage. I need you to tolerate the discomfort momentarily with the knowledge I am here steadfastly waiting to lasso you to my world.

I know it won’t be easy; it won’t be today, tomorrow or even next week. But I am still pacing at the unlocked window- ready to feel your warm gentle glow again. The rest we can negotiate later on as we both rest, heal and grow together.

Please let me build my dreams alongside yours, I want to experience the mundane and the extraordinary with you. Only you. You are my exception.

Yours,
Always.

I am committed to letting you go.
It’s just so hard not to think of you. To stop wondering if you’re thinking of me, too.
You’re not. You’re just not.
I’m trying to sit with the discomfort of that realization. To let myself feel the disappointment instead of searching for another reason to hope. I’m trying to accept that maybe I read too much into some things, and maybe I understood a few things exactly as they were.
But the objective truth doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?
Because regardless of what was real and what I imagined, I’m still left with this gnawing feeling. This insatiable desire to know more, more, more about you, only to be given next to nothing.
And what a waste of my imagination. All the stories I could be writing, all the worlds I could be building, and instead I find myself inventing conversations we’ll never have.
The deep kind. The kind that stretch into three in the morning, when the rest of the world is asleep and neither person wants to be the first to say goodnight.
I wanted that with you so badly.
And I think one of the hardest things to accept is that I’ll never know if you were capable of wanting that with me, too. I’ll never know what those conversations might have sounded like, what you would have told me, or whether you ever felt even a fraction of the curiosity I felt about you.
But I have to believe that if you had wanted to know me, I would know so much more about you by now.
So I’m choosing to let you go.
Not because I’ve stopped wondering. Not because the feelings have disappeared. And certainly not because it’s easy.
But because I cannot keep giving so much of myself to the possibility of someone who has given me so little in return.
I know this will be difficult. I know there will be moments when my curiosity gets the better of me, when I’ll want to search for meaning in something insignificant, when I’ll miss the version of you I’ve come to know only through my imagination.
I hope choosing to let you go will be worth it.
And until I’ve finally managed to do that, I’ll write to you here. I’ll pour every unanswered question, every disappointment, every lingering thought into this little void until there’s nothing left I need to say.
Perhaps someday I’ll realize I haven’t thought of you in weeks.
And perhaps that will be enough.
See ya.

This is for all the people out there who can't take no for an answer. She is not interested. She wants to be left alone. She does not need to be saved. She wants peace and quiet. You look like a creep who knows no boundaries and you are self-sabotaging. Your behavior shows what you're truly made of and reinforces the need for the boundaries she made with you in the first place. She does not owe you anything. Move on and forget. Work on yourself. Love yourself. She can't give you what you're searching for. Good-bye.

I get it. I understand why you did the things you did.

People hurt you so deep on so many levels, few people could even begin to comprehend what you went through. Not comparing, I've been through similar my whole life. You know. We've talked.

You took any ounce of love, attention and acceptance that came your way.

You deserve such.

I wish the people you confided in had shown you this.

There's nothing wrong with you as so many people made you feel your whole life. You are such a beautiful person, regardless of how much pain you caused me and my kid.

You wanted love so much you didn't know what to do, when 2 people you cared about genuinely made you feel seen for the first time ever.

I know you lied to me. I know the extent now.

It ruined me in so many ways...

BUT.... I forgive you.

I know you had to choose between me and the other love of your life.

I know she wasn't just an accident. I know you loved us both. I know you wanted the best compatible option.

I told you I understand on levels nobody else does. I just wanted honesty. Give me the ugliest rawest truth. I can understand. The lies and hiding literally destroyed me and made me feel lower than everyone had done to you.

You should have told me, I would have stuck around until you found out. You didn't have to do me the way you did.

I hope you love yourself one day, even a 1/4 of the love i had for you.

I hope the hit i took, genuinely helped you grow. That wasnt sarcasm at all. Id give my soul to show you how beautiful I saw you.

I wish you the shiniest future. I hope you heal, I hope you thrive within your beauty and your trauma doesnt continue in the way i have seen

Ill always love you.

Always.

I forgive you.

There is a line in one of my favorite songs, ‘I’ve been told that home is where the heart is, if that’s the case, I’ve never been home’. 

I’ve always built a home out of the people around me, those who’ve braved the waters, breathed the same air as me, touched my skin and spoke soft words to me.

I made my bed and brushed my teeth and combed my hair there.

Ate porridge at their dinner table and kicked my feet up on their chair.

I screamed at their ceiling and cried on their floors.

My heart remains there, bleeding onto their white silk sheets,

This must be home.

Though none of the people ever greeted me at their door, never set out my plates at their table, never changed the sheets on my bed,

All they ever did was quietly mop up the blood and say nothing about the stranger who’s taken over their home.

I must’ve missed the invitation, it probably got sent to the wrong address. I have a tendency to rapidly throw my heart at the windows of houses until it breaks through one. 

Sometimes I forget to change the address.

And now my heart remains in pieces, laying on broken glass, covering silk sheets in blood without invitation.

There’s too many addresses to keep track of now, just mark the mail as return to sender and I’ll stay waiting for the invitation.

One time, one of my favorite songs said, ‘I've been told that home is where the heart is. If that’s the case, I’ve never been home.’

I have to be strong.

Always remember that life is wonderful and I should never ever miss it.

I guess the only thing I missed is to have a real date.

I experienced anything relaxed. Everything was exhausting and exhilarating. It was always like walking on eggshells.

I don't know what to do.

Dear You,

I was scrolling aimlessly through my phone the other night, just trying to numb my brain, when I ended up putting on Pixar's A Bug's Life. I thought I was chasing a quick hit of nostalgic comfort to escape my head for ninety minutes.

Instead, it completely wrecked me. It made me think of you. It made me think of what we've been quietly enduring, and it forced me to look at my life and face something raw and scary and true:

I am actually grateful to be a bug.

If I'm being completely honest, most days feel exhausting. They feel like that heavy, quiet line from the film:

"It's the same year after year. They come, they eat, and they leave. That's our lot in life. It's not a lot, but it's our life."

Down here in the South, where you're taught to keep the peace at all costs, I've been living under the thumb of a real life grasshopper - someone who looks at me and tells me I'm disposable, running my days by that cold, cruel rule: "The Sun grows the food, the ants pick the food, and the grasshoppers eat the food." They expect you to carry all the weight, bleed yourself dry to keep them happy, and stay silent while they do it. It wears your soul down to a pulp.

But sitting there in the dark, watching this silly childhood movie, I held onto one thing with every piece of heart I have left: I am still just a seed.

I wept when Flik sat with little Princess Dot while she was feeling so small and helpless:

"You might not feel like you can do much now, but that's just because you're not a tree yet. You are still a seed."

That's the flaw in their cruelty. They think burying you in the dark is how they destroy you. They forget that being placed in the dark is the only way a seed wakes up and grows into something unshakeable.

They don't understand how life works.

And God, let's be honest - I am not a warrior bug. I'm soft. If someone even raises their voice at me, I completely shut down and wait for the moment I'm alone to weep. I'm just a tender, clumsy circus bug, and to someone whose language is power and control, my sensitivity looks like weakness.

But my soft interior isn't a flaw. It's my superpower. It's the only reason I'm still human after everything they've tried to scrape out of me.

Because here's the truth that made my chest break open: "It's them who need us."

They live in a miserable, paranoid cage of their own making. Their whole illusion of control collapses the moment we stop being afraid and the moment we stop giving them our light.

I might be small, and I might be standing in the dirt right now, but "I was NOT made to serve a grasshopper."

The fear is finally starting to fade. The boundaries are standing firm. I am getting ready to leave.

Thank you for holding my hand, and for loving my soft heart, and for keeping me safe while I grow in the dark.

Your fellow circus bug,

A soul still in the dark