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.

Hi. How are you. Where are you. Who are you. Are you happy. Sad. None of the above. Do you think of me or is that over. Do you ever wish you could take it back. Do you miss my laugh or my legs or my lips or my hair or my humor or my willingness. Do you miss the way I looked at you, loved you, wanted to be yours. Sometimes I’m still her, that girl you might remember. And sometimes I like it, being her, being her and missing you. Like now, today.

I didn’t love everything about you but I loved you. And there were things about us that didn’t work but the parts that did were almost enough. So for now and probably a little longer I’ll be okay being her, the girl who stood before you on her tiptoes, that one day in the spring when your face was a smile and a question that looked back at her (me) and the expression you couldn’t read and she (I) couldn’t reveal. The expression was I love you. The easiest thing I ever could have known.

Today feels like the past. Like the home that was and my childhood bedroom when it stays light out later and the sidewalks are warm under my feet. Like coconut popsicles and my mom listening to music while she cooks us dinner. Like corn on the cob and water melon and the smoky smell of the grill and the sky is purpley pink. Like love and safety and family and something whole.

It’s disorienting. Trying to remember specifics but it all folding and collapsing in on itself, skipping and repeating and becoming one jumble of a memory that I can’t hold onto. Like the warm sidewalks. Like the grass that I water, alone in the front yard with the dirt under my feet, feeling happy and calm and a little grown up. The smell of water on the pavement in spring and then summer and then it all fading away. Laying on my stomach, on the quilt that I’d always had but have since forgotten, reading my favorite book, the one with the lime green cover and pages ever softening, summer after summer, there in my room—my small, beautiful, unfolding world. Laughing and dreaming and feeling it in my heart. IMing on my desktop computer and feeling lonely in the afternoon. Eating Kit Kats and watching A Walk To Remember everyday because it was promise, and hope was not in vain. Patience and faith and love and sincerity and self-confidence because everything was possible and everything was going to be okay. Afraid but not paralyzed by the future. I feel it now, frozen—at the thought of of losing my parents, of missing chances, of regretting so much and not being able to recover from it. Of aching to love and be loved.

She knew something, that girl who ran outside, warm sidewalk under her feet and eyes wide as she stared up at the purple sky and the V of geese painting across it. Everything is distant now. I feel old, not just older, and disconnected. A life that looks whole, with a job and with friends and experience and a gym membership, but somehow less. She was it. There was something steady in her, something knowing. Something imperfect and self-conscious and unsure but so breathtakingly ready for life. I want to know what she knew, to feel what she felt, to love like she loved, believe like she believed. In the future and in people and in love and in everything coming true. There, standing on the sidewalk, looking up at the sky, a dream in her heart.

I forgive you and didn’t realize until yesterday that I needed to.

I hurt you.

You hurt me.

I forgive you.

And if one day you find yourself in a situation that isn’t so clear cut, where you make a choice that forces you to question yourself and what you’re doing and what you want and who you love, and you’re not sure of anything, and regret and certainty teeter shakily, simultaneously at odds and in concert, maybe then you and I might have something in common again. Maybe I’ll be less of a villain and more of a human, like you, like all of us. Maybe then the letter I wrote you will make sense. And maybe not. Maybe we both are who were are, fully formed and certain of/set in our world views, our lines in the sand. From my own experience I don’t think that’s the case for me. I feel change in everything, swirling inside and sparking. Every day is a lesson, every second, every thought. It’s my walk home from the gym, when that one song plays at the exact right moment and the sky is beautiful. It’s the food I eat, the clothes I wear, the route I take to work. It’s being afraid of death and the anticipation of missing my parents. It’s procrastinating on my taxes, it’s my stomach aching from laugher, it’s feeling grateful and full of love. It’s the fear/excitement of what I hardly dare to hope for and it’s the look on his face. Renewal, regret, eyes wide and open and ready, bowed in humility, feeling awake and invincible. Proof that I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive and thank god for that. Thank god that everything is still hard and requires something of me. I’m alive. I’m living. Far from realized or certain or overcome with conviction. And far from lacking fault or blame or the space for derision. And all that’s okay with me. More than okay. I’m alive. I’m living. Constant and full of grace and something worth fighting for.

Kara,

Over the past few months I’ve written a few things to you, all left unsent. They were mostly for me anyway, and looking back I don’t think they would have made a difference in how things have turned out. From your silence I assume you have decided you don’t want anything to do with me anymore, and though I (obviously) can’t say with certainty that I know exactly what the issue is, I think I can make a pretty good guess. I had sex with Alex. I’m still having sex with Alex, and will probably continue to. I take full responsibly for the code I broke when I made that choice, and I am sorry that you were hurt by it. I have zero desire to evade responsibly, or to talk you out of your feelings, or to justify what I did and try to make it okay for you. It’s not okay for you. I slept with the guy you like(d) and who you were still healing from. This (below) is none of those things—evasion, attempted persuasion, justification. It is an explanation as to why for the sake of clarity alone.

Two reasons:

1) I was feeling insecure about our friendship. I had been reaching out and supplicating to you for months, trying to connect or understand or put the pieces together as to why you were suddenly so distant, so impersonal. I felt powerless and I took back the power by sleeping with the guy you had feelings for. I knew what I was doing and why, and I’m hardly falling all over myself with pride that this was the way I chose to cope with my feelings.

2) I liked him. I really, really liked him. It was confusing because of you and the built in “fuck you for fucking over my friend” that he and I had been operating under (and that only after I finally got past my initial impression that he was a total idiot), but when I think back on it, it was there even before San Diego. It was there on the May movie, even as you were still in the midst of dealing with what had happened between the two of you, even as I was still trying to move on from Mark. At the time it didn’t present itself in a real way, in a way that I could articulate let alone acknowledge. I didn’t think about it. I just hired him and kept hiring him. I liked sparring with him. The night of the wrap party I went after him but it wasn’t about you at all and I knew it. I finally realized I might be in trouble when I ended up having to send him to our second site on the commercial job, the one where I wasn’t, and I didn’t like that. But I kept pushing it away, kept making excuses, making it into a game, framing it solely as having to do with you and way I was going to strike back against you for being so passive aggressive, manipulative in your withholding, just plain cold (this, of course, meant grossly overplaying my own pettiness, which was much more comfortable than admitting what was actually happening). But the truth was and is that I had feelings for him and it was scaring me to death. It still does.

Our relationship (his and mine) is a strange one. We spend most of our time battling for supremacy. I keep him at arm’s length. The fact that I hire him for work complicates what for me is already complicated (and that for reasons that will be familiar to you—what he wants and what I want are probably not the same, and I am all too aware that I am more than likely setting myself up for something that could go really, really badly for me).

With all that said, the point is simply this: I am sorry you were hurt by my actions. I truly am. It would be easy to say I regretted what I did, that if I could go back and do things differently I would, but I don’t and I wouldn’t. I have learned from it—an obvious lesson about friendships and love and the choices we make—and I do wish there was a way to repair what was broken and start anew. But I wouldn’t take it back, and for that I am sorry too. I won’t forget anything (like dancing to Harlem on the street corner, driving to Bumfuck, Nowhere blasting Motorcycle Drive By, or looking up at you on the second story of those terrible stages while Shane played music into the walkie and you kept watch from above). And for all the birthdays and milestones and moments that have passed and will continue to pass in silence, you will never receive anything but my highest hopes, my most sincere wishes, my best.

C

I try and picture you here but I can’t. I know you were. I know you walked and laughed and ate and scoffed and maybe even stood in wonder and felt grateful. I just can’t see it. I think you know I’m here. Can you picture it?

There you are.

I can imagine a life with you. Your hand in mine, eyes smiling up, trusting, feeling safe. Your cheeks. Every inch.

It’s a strange and terrible power to have, the one which will ensure that this life, the could-have-been life—imagined and considered and ultimately rejected—will never happen. Not for me, for us, for you. You, who will become nothing. You, who will never smile or swim or breathe or fall crazily, hopelessly, deliriously in love and be forever changed as a result. You, my darling.

And him. He will never know how real you are and were and almost were (could have been, should have been, might have been). I won’t tell him and I know that that’s unfair, I know that it’s selfish. But I will keep you for myself, now/forever/always, long after you’re gone. I will hold onto you, to you and me, to your hand in mine, and to the love that was activated like thunder, as if it had been there my whole life, growing and solidifying and just waiting to bloom, now rushing in like the ocean.

And I know. I know that this sounds counter and arrogant and maybe (possibly, probably) even cruel given what I’m about to do but I will tell you this so that you know it, even if you don’t believe it: I love you. With all that I am or ever could be, I love you. Everything has led to you, to you and this imagined life that I have decided I do not want.

I will do this. And it’s neither selfish nor selfless, shortsighted nor imbued with perspective, fear based nor wise. It’s just a choice. My choice. And for a thousand reasons that I will probably never be able to express or understand, I will go through with it, despite the horrifying, paralyzing, screaming ache, despite the doubt and the anticipation of doubt, and most of all despite the part of me, a thousand years old and carved into every cell of my body, that rises up in your defense and roars. I will end what little you are and in doing so everything you could have become if only I had let you. It will be my choice and mine only, and I will live with it in the place beside me where you would have been.

I will think of you, and pray for you though I do not pray and would not know where to begin/middle/end. I will keep safe whatever part of you you don’t take back.

You who I choose never to know.

You with your hand in mine.

You with your eyes smiling up.

You, my darling.

You.

Hi. So I did some Facebook stalking yesterday, which for you requires both stealth and commitment since basically everything on your page is blocked as a result of your anti-FB vow (or whatever). I looked at your sisters’ pages, Darren’s page, and Luke’s page. (Like I said, commitment.) The boys weren’t much help but the sisters’ photos turned out to be very compelling. First of all you are adorable. The shorter hair, the glasses, the V-necks… Good choices. Okay, great choices. You look tan and happy and calmcenteredsteady, and even though my stomach didn’t do flip flips like it used to, seeing you was like oxygen. I saw photos of you with a girl at a concert, she beautiful, natural, an artist maybe, leaning back into you with her eyes closed and a smile on her face, and then with another, this one fun and fearless and always in the sunshine, your arm draped around her shoulder, fingers intertwined loosely with hers. I looked at this last one for a long while, this photo of you and a girl my age. Your hands. Your fingers. It’s hard to explain the jealously, a marker of all the things I like to believe are long faded. This, I said to myself when I was thinking about it again this morning, is why you can’t be friends with him. Because that pang, that ache, that longing will never go away. I may forget it for a second or a minute or a month or six but it will never not be there. It lingers, just below the surface, a layer like skin. And that’s fine. It just helps to have a reminder every now and then—like fingers laced together and bodies leaning in—that I am not your friend. Never was.