I’m not going to deny it any­more. It’s always been you. But I under­stand, you don’t need to explain, I get it. Work, our lives, we’re busy. You’re about to go off on a grand adven­ture. And I can see why you think that a rela­tion­ship with me and that adven­ture are mutu­al­ly exclu­sive but I just want to say my piece. Getting lost with each oth­er could be the great­est adven­ture we’ve yet to embark on and I just want to say that if you want to get lost with me I’ll always be here per­pet­u­al­ly lost with­out you.

I read his let­ters, some dat­ed, some titled with expres­sions of for­lorn hope. Familiar words that cut me to the bone.

They’re beau­ti­ful. I nev­er knew he was capa­ble of such poignan­cy, such emo­tion. It fills me with envy.

Sometimes I just want to be noticed. Not often, but some­times late at night when I’m think­ing about the “what-ifs” of the day. Being too obvi­ous would be dan­ger­ous though and so I slink away, back to my cave to think, rather than do. Such a cow­ard, I loathe myself. You’d say no, every ratio­nal sce­nario I’ve played out ends with that.

He’s trapped, per­pet­u­al­ly lost in the thought of anoth­er. This time, I’m on the out­side, look­ing in. It’s all new for him, and I can hear in his voice how much he detests it.

His angst is unbe­com­ing. He’s not a writer, but he writes these let­ters, hop­ing the cathar­sis will save him. I’ve been here enough times to know that it’ll be alright, but that there’s also noth­ing I can do to help, so I resign myself to help­less­ness.

And now I’ll be pre-occu­pied and jeal­ous for the rest of the week­end. Me, jeal­ous and not trust­ing myself to speak, me. Not me, any­more. This love is like lep­rosy, pieces of myself are falling away. It’s abla­tive.

Yet his tone is so unfa­mil­iar, so unlike him. Me, he writes, Not me, any­more. He does­n’t even believe it him­self. The san­guine friend, reduced to an enfee­bled state he wants des­per­ate­ly to cast aside. Even with the wis­dom I’ve gained, it still sur­pris­es me how attrac­tion, infat­u­a­tion, love can make one so irra­tional.

In these let­ters he shares his feel­ings, whol­ly, as if to say, “Here is my heart. Please hold it gen­tly”. The words would strip him bare if he spoke them to her, so he writes them where no one but me will read.

A pris­on­er, he lives in this cage, caught between the will and the risk of express­ing to her how he feels.