For the record, in case you look back at your signs:

Had my feelings for you been purely platonic, I wouldn’t have tried so hard to Heisman them/you away that night. Which is an evasive way of saying yes I liked you on the pilot and I liked you, slowly, with chipmunks and the name of your car and surviving paddle boarding so you could see me again. Did I want to get married, pop out five kids, see sixty years go by? No. But not not no. Because we’d known each other for three weeks and I wasn’t thinking anything beyond who knows. I saw the possibility in you like I do with the other things I don’t always say (but maybe should).

There’s nothing wrong with knowing what you want for your life and in the person you choose to share it with. But maybe you being so quick to put a label (a label of no) on people and their potential to be/not be that person has less to do with them and more to do with you and the fear of what it could mean to be as open as it’s going to take to have the kind of relationship you want. And if you were to be that open, that vulnerable, that happy, and it didn’t work out, what that would mean for you too.

Maybe. Possibly.

Regardless, I don’t think you’re fucked up, super or otherwise.

And also for the record: I have never had a conversation like that. 2 AM, in the dark, and everything was buzzing. I knew I was tired but I was so so awake. The kind of awake that is a reminder and a promise, of what’s to come, of what’s possible, of what matters. And that is a feeling worth remembering.

My heart broke today and you weren’t there to see.

I can’t talk to you anymore and that is so so sad because I had just started to think maybe, just maybe, you were back, you were accessible, you were mine and we knew each other again and had never stopped. And it wasn’t romantic, wasn’t platonic. It was just us and I didn’t have or need to know why. That’s over now and I can barely look at you.

And to be clear, you’re right: you shouldn’t have to go on feeling guilty or regretful or bad about your choices. You should walk in the sun and smile and live your life looking ahead, looking up. But I wonder if it crossed your mind, if I crossed your mind, if you ever thought about how I would feel about this. And it’s fine if you didn’t. We’re done with our bonding, our reconciliation. You’re released. Forgiven. Free. Free to do this, to flirt and text and go on dates and fall in love and do it all without the burden of the past nipping at your heels. I hope you do. But I can’t be close to it. I’m the girl you left. I’m the girl you loved, for a moment, maybe, before you didn’t, before you changed your mind. And a year and a half later, after talking all the bitterness and regret and resentment away until the good, until the part that was love, shone through, you still didn’t choose me. And that’s okay. I just can’t be anywhere near it. I can’t talk to you. I can’t look at look at you. I can’t be your friend and I don’t want to be. But I do want your happiness, and beyond my own hurt—because make no mistake I am deeply, deeply hurt by this—I am crossing my fingers for you, for this, for wide awake nights and hearts skipping a beat and everything seeming new and for the pure possibility of what this could bring. I want that for you. I always did, always will. And maybe that will start today, with a girl in glasses, a cup of coffee, and a place I’ve never been to, never will.