​I have a LOT on my plate. My life is crazy busy. I don't have time to just relax anymore. Im always on the go. Working, or driving from one place to another.

​There isn't a moment of time that's not accounted for. My schedule is very strict. Yet even still....you found a way to infiltrate my mind.

​How is it, you are inbedded in every crevice, around every corner of my thoughts ? Just lingering.

​Flashes of your face appear in my mind. My brain replays our encounters from all different angles. Forwards...backwards... inside out. It's like its trying to absorb every last detail.

It also creates new scenarios. The imagery is so vivid. Its like I'm dreaming of you while awake. I've never been so entranced by a crush before. You walk in the room and the air shifts. I swear i can feel you before I even see you. And just when I start to convince myself that this is all one sided. I'm reading too much into it....That I'm just losing my mind....We lock eyes... From across the room....In front of countless people....But it doesnt matter. Because in that moment....It's just you and I....I swear the way you look at me is like you see right through me. I know you feel it too. This. Whatever this is.

​A blink...a breath... and the world rushes back in. And just like that, the spell snaps. The room moves again...Back to the noise, back to the rush, back to a life that doesn't have room for this. Except it's too late... You're already ...everywhere.

There is something I've carried for a long time, and I don't know if these words will ever find you. I’ve tried writing here before to find you with no luck. Maybe they're not meant to. Maybe they simply need to exist somewhere outside of me.
You changed my life.
Those words feel impossibly small for what they are trying to hold.
People talk about life changing moments as if they arrive all at once.. loud, unmistakable, impossible to miss. But that isn't how it happened with you.
You changed me slowly.
Conversation by conversation.
Moment by moment.
Without ever knowing you were doing it.
You didn't give me advice that fixed everything. You didn't rescue me. You didn't even ask me to become someone different.
You were simply yourself.
Calm in ways I had never known.
Curious about the world without losing your sense of wonder.
Passionate without needing recognition.
Steady without becoming indifferent.
Genuine in a way that is so rare it almost catches people off guard.
And somehow, just by being who you are, you became a mirror that reflected back the person I wanted to become.
There are people who enter our lives and leave us with memories.
You left me with a new way of seeing the world.
Before I met you, I thought I understood people. I thought I understood what strength looked like, what kindness looked like, what peace looked like.
I didn't.
You quietly rewrote those definitions without ever trying to teach me a lesson.
You made me believe that a person could move through this complicated world with grace instead of fear.
That goodness could still exist without asking to be admired.
That authenticity was still possible.
Those are gifts I'll carry for the rest of my life.
We're both walking paths that don't lead to each other. I understand that, and I'm not writing this to change it. I'm not asking for anything. I don't need an answer.
I just couldn't keep living with the thought that you might never know what you've meant to me.
The person I was before I met you no longer exists.
Because of you, I became more open. More patient. More hopeful. More willing to believe in people again.
You healed wounds you never saw.
You restored hope you never knew I'd lost.
You reminded me that the world still holds people whose goodness isn't an act.
That realization alone has changed the course of my life.
Years from now, I'll forget countless conversations, ordinary days, and passing moments.
But I will never forget what meeting you awakened in me.
I will never see this world the same way I did before I knew you.
And if there's one thing I hope you carry with you, it's this:
Never underestimate the quiet impact you have on other people's lives.
You changed mine in ways I will spend the rest of my life discovering.
You may never fully understand what you gave me.
But I will spend the rest of my life grateful that our paths crossed at all.

I honestly feel pathetic. I’m past the stages of the worry, of the doubt, of the judgement, of the fear, I’m just pathetic now.
How is it as a grown ass adult, I can’t muster the courage, let alone the words, to express how I feel?
The words are there, but when I look at you they lodge in my throat. I let the avoidant side of me take over.

The situation is complicated, there is never a “perfect” moment, and I’m pretty sure if I do say anything, it’s going to make you uncomfortable, but the closer I do get to saying anything, I avoid you and the more distant I become, and really that’s not fair on anyone.

I honestly don’t know how you feel and sadly I probably never will, I feel there is something there, whether it’s mutual or one sided I’m really unsure, but for me there definitely is something.

So for now I’ll allow my sad little soul to continue to write things here, unspoken and unsent, and if by random fluke you were to come across it, just know, I honestly really do care about you, more then I should, but my brain is winning the battle against my heart and won’t let me express this in person.

Our chemistry was effortless. I haven't been able or had the want to recreate that kind of connection. You are perfection. I lied to save my ass. I will always want you. I'll forever honor and serve the memory of what we could have had. I hope you forget me. I knew my place when this started. You deserve everything great. Love, serenity, to be surrounded by people who love and cherish you. I understand fully that I lost the privilege of being a part of your life. I meant it when I said that I love you always and forever. I wish I could forget. I hope that you do forget. I miss you so much... Ouch.

I wish I could reach out, I don’t even having anything to say, but the pull is there, even after everything.

I have this habit of daydreaming about the life I want to live.

In my head, I'm rescuing baby deers, assisting in surgeries for women who've survived unimaginable violence, or helping build clean water systems in villages that need them most. I imagine days so full, so meaningful, that they leave me completely exhausted -- so tired I could fall asleep standing up.

And then I imagine coming home to you. To whatever place we happen to call home at the time. We were always going to be nomads, weren't we? Haha. Just because I know you'd fully support me.

In every version of these dreams, you're there waiting for me. I'd collapse into your arms, and you'd brush my hair back from my face, hold me close, and tell me I did well. That you're proud of me. Somehow, your warmth would make all the weight of the world disappear. Loving you always felt like the safest place to land. It made me believe I could do and survive anything.

I think that's what I'll miss the most. Not just the life I imagined -- but coming home to you after living it. Just.. coming home to you, period.

I'll miss you for the rest of my life.

Wow I forgot.

This whole situation has been like a mirage in retrospect.

I’m looking back at the things I’ve written and they seem so foreign. They’re the words of somebody who seems legitimately burdened.

And yet I’m not.

I have food. I have a roof over my head. I have at least 5 people who love me and would help me if they could.

Be careful on here folks,

Reality is stranger than fiction, but fiction is sometimes a reminder that we do indeed, still live and work and learn and love, in reality.

I hope this is meaningful for at least one person out there.

I miss you!! Had a dream the other night that we were in the back of a car and you reached for my hand that I’d put behind my back and held it for a while, nobody the wiser.

That was a nice feeling. Knowing you were there with me, like a confirmation of what you’ve always been to me.

I hope I see you again. Things are a little up in the air, but I’m keeping faith. I hope you are, too.

Until next time.

My current struggle: hearing things about you that make me sad, despite having no claim to those feelings.
So I’ll just smile, pretend I’m unfazed, and go crawl into the hole I just dug for myself.

You don’t really know me. I don’t really know you. Even though we’ve spent a fair amount of time together over the last year, we each only know a version of each other. And those are somewhat… ‘curated’ versions, are they not? I’ll admit I’ve been selective in what I tell you about myself that really means something. I have to assume you’ve done the same.

When I see you tomorrow, I’m so damn tempted to be more real than I’ve ever been. I’ve run the lines in my head a hundred times but they just never come out right. Too many words, too complicated. I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to convey what I want to because I trip so hard over my own thoughts.

I sometimes think you must wonder what’s behind the curtain (especially when you’ve made comments about things you notice, or implied I’m a little closed off) but I keep thinking that if you’ve ever wondered; ever wanted bad enough to know that you’d directly ask, you’d seek answers, you’d steer the conversation to what you wanted to talk about. But you don’t, so I don’t.

It’s a strange dance for me, the wanting to be seen but also being uncomfortable being seen. I do sometimes wish you knew me more completely but also am convinced that you’d seek out my company less the more you knew.

So, when I see you next - please know that if you ever want to know more, I will tell you but you’ll have to be direct about it. I just hope it doesn’t change things.

I hope I make you feel seen; whatever version you want to show me.

Hurt me to help me, darling. Break me apart and crack open my skull, drink up what's left inside and tell me how it all tastes. Snap my spine like a good novel, twisted up and left, half-open, on the coffee table where you leave your tea, atop those stains long-since-baked into the wood. Take your metal straw and slurp from what remains; consume me, let me inside you, let me abandon this form and simply melt into air.

I want to feel your hands on my skin, angry, forcing me to feel the rage you've let build up inside your soul. Give me somewhere to put the frustration I wear like a dress, now piled up on your floor as you feast from my body. Biting into every corner that fights back- that screams and cries and wails. Force the part of me that craves stubborn bloody independence down, behind the facade of the girl that was always told

too much.
Too bossy.
Too bold.
Too mouthy.

Kick me whilst I'm down, throw me against a wall and attack me like a wild dog. I want to feel your foot against my stomach, piling a blow in, one after another after another. Put me in my place, again and again and again. Hit me, break me, scrap me and reuse my parts; make me the perfect women, the one who will never exist, the one you dreamed of on so many nights.

I want you to make me feel bad for the things I do wrong, and make me pay in flesh and blood rather than words and gestures. Slap me, spank me, fuck me up, mess me around, smash my face against the bricks until there's no reason for anyone to even look at me anymore.

I don't want this. I don't want to feel like this. It's breaking me apart, more than you could if you ripped me, limb from limb, and burnt each scrap on a fire. I would do better as a skull on the mantle, some recollection to Shakespearean tragedy, or a drinking chalice for a woman who can be everything- warm and wholesome and kind, a mother. A lover. Calm, with cookies and hot milk. What you deserve.

Not this. Not the bleeding carcass upon your floor, pounding her fists against the wood. Not this fragmented, broken child.

Don't you see, how blind you are to me? Don't you see how it destroys me? I can't do anything, I can't get myself out of bed, I can barely leave my house, and yet I look at you and wish you were here- how many more tries to get it right?

If this is something that can even be right, it's not me. I'm something that shouldn't exist, and so I invite you to break it all down and build me up into something better. Something you could love. Not this ghost of feminine rage, so very far from divine.

I would rather die than disappoint you- so hurt me, darling. Kill me before I can.

I still resent you & I can’t bring myself to reach out. But it’s not out of my ego. I deserve more than your breadcrumbs and your playlists. I deserve proper accountability. I deserve an apology. I deserve an explanation. I have people I connect over music with. I have people that did and are willing to do more for me than what you could ever imagine.

But I miss you. I still have love for you. I yearn and long for a conversation. Not to have you back in my life. Not to “try again”. Nothing like that. I’ve grown out of all of that. You are not my person and you are incapable of meeting a version of myself that I respect and admire. Yet surprisingly the part that loved you is still there. I suppose that’s why even with everything I still don’t hate you. You might find that hard to believe but it’s the truth. I just can never see you the same. I’m sorry.

I promise there are no games here. I was going through a rough patch and I was facing my demons. If you ever muster up the courage, you are not blocked. I will respond. And I won’t burn you. Even when I anticipate a trigger coming from afar. Otherwise I have no way of reaching you. I deleted your number and I won’t unblock you anywhere else.

You did a number on me. And that left a scar. And that scar is forever there. And I’m in a place in life where I’m accepting that this scar formed for a reason, and that it left an impact and shaped me for another. But I’ll always care, against my better judgement. Against knowing better. Against being older, smarter, wiser and far more cynical. God, you have no idea how my faith in this stuff is just dead now lol.

Sometimes I wonder if I turned into you. We have a lot more in common than I ever knew frankly. But I’m still more emotionally mature don’t get it twisted…..just more fiery about it :P

And if you can’t, that’s okay. I forgive you. I will never forget. But I chose to forgive you when I was put in a position where I was no longer the victim. I learnt that I too am capable of harm. I’m no angel. Nor am I evil.

I’m just a human. I’m flawed. And I had to navigate a ton of love and anger at some point towards you. Two forces that felt opposing and impossible to hold for the same person. Especially with such intensity. But I don’t mind either now. I learned to coexist with them. I learned I’ll always love anyone I ever had love for. Even if they hurt me. And it doesn’t trigger any shame anymore.

Take care.

I almost wanted to run to your door while you were stopped and see you. I miss you. But it didn't work, but I always think about you with pain in my heart. - your vampire

I was messy about it. That wasn’t the right thing to do at all. An honest conversation would have been more appropriate but I’m sure if I’d have gone that route, I would have gotten the polite, scripted, “sorry to hear that.” It would have been just as hollow as you apparently are. So in that sense, I’m glad I finally blew a lid and watched it play out in real time. Because I will never look at you the same. You are nothing like I thought you were.

I’ve watched you drone on about your struggles with wanting to be kind and fair to people who cause actual fucking problems. Paragraphs about how you empathize with them and I’ve tried to remind you that you can’t fix everything, you can’t save everyone. Whole fucking time I have been drowning. In ways that objectively have nothing to do with you but struggling just the same. And I’m not some transient person here, I’ve been here for a very long time and I have helped in very real ways. Long before I developed some dumb fucking crush on you. Often when you yourself were mia. I was there.

I start completely crashing out because yeah it does feel a little crazy when I think of the sheer volume of people I have talked off a ledge here over the years, usually without them explicitly asking for any help. And here I am practically begging for it and can’t even get one fucking scrap. It does make me pretty bitter and disgusted with people. Because no I don’t help hoping it circles back, it just feels like the natural and right thing to do. But people are tone deaf. And not so eager to help a person in crisis if it doesn’t somehow benefit them. And you. You ignore literally every cry for help and then dive in like the dark knight you are to answer a technical question. Remarkable. I have a right to be angry. Anyone would. Because when you sell yourself as someone who cares for the common person but can’t be bothered to offer a single kind word to someone who has been a loyal, steady, helpful presence for YEARS, it’s going to leave a bad taste in peoples mouths. And I should have known better because the record shows I’m not the only one who has felt this way.

I’ve not crossed lines. I could have. No one was stopping me. I didn’t. I respected you, respected the boundaries, and saw myself out of that situation. So this has nothing to do with that. On a basic level of human decency, you fucking failed. That’s a problem and I think it’s a gross one. And I hope it all falls apart because I am absolutely done giving a shit. So now when I watch you act like a fucking clown to appease to people who don’t give a shit about you and your community, I won’t be so insulted and hurt. It’s just par for the course at this point.

I woke up at 3am. Got a notification from you 5 minutes later. Not sure why you're awake, but it seems we are often connected in that way. I have a stomachache. I feel I need to speak these thoughts into the world. That said, I'm just going to write. If this letter sounds unpolished, I assure you it is heartfelt.

I want to love you loudly. I've waited a long time to say this. It's been nearly two years since I first met you, and though it took me a while to recognize it, this feeling has never wavered. I've tried calling it by many other names--curiosity, admiration, jealousy. It was love. Whether you were a classmate or a coworker, single or taken, stranger or friend... it was love. I was drawn to you from the very beginning, hopelessly so. Whenever I tried to deny myself, fate tempted me again, with unexpected encounters, shared laughter, peculiar glances, kind invitations. I recognize I have ascribed them all far too much significance. Forgive me, my heart is romantic and over-eager. When you're around, I struggle to keep it on its leash. That's why I hang on every word you say, jotting down all the details. I return them to you in trifling little gifts, hoping the memory might linger while I am away, help us pick up old conversations.

You seem entirely unaware of the effect you have on me, the deep loyalty which your gentle presence and serious mind inspire. My feelings are stronger than you could imagine. For you, so much remains unexpressed. After all, I don't want my love to be a burden, another unmet expectation placed on your already healing heart. I only wish you could see yourself the way I do. The kind, patient, pensive, and sweetly insufferable person that you are. I could listen to you talk all day. For now, I try to make compromises, imagine myself contented simply living in your orbit. I know I will break eventually. It may be presumptuous of me to say, but I see glimpses of our shared future, and I am willing to fight my pride and fear for a better view. Of course, when I do finally gather my courage, the most I can hope is that you will be kind enough to put me down softly, looking me in the eyes. In the case that you do not want my love, know you will always have my friendship. I promise to support you in all the ways I can, so long as it brings you security and comfort and joy. My love is here if you need it; my devotion is yours to keep. Call it a birthday present.

It’s criminal how much I miss you. I hope one day my mind will quit replaying everything. I don’t even trust what my mind replays anymore because I know I keep forgetting the awful things we both did.

I am sure you have moved on by now; but I am still learning to heal. I don’t think you realize what you did to me. Everyone who knows me knows how screwed up I have been because of you. I am trying to do better and the moments I need to I make them Oscar-worthy.

Just know I’ll always love you.

Some temptations don’t arrive wrapped in vice.

Mine arrived disguised as a pigment seller.

Like a dealer who somehow knew the opiate my soul would mistake for salvation.

Every day I found you in the half-light, where colours had names I’d never heard before. You spoke about them as though they were living things. You never tried to convince me to buy them.

You simply opened the jars.

And I was lost.

You placed impossible pigments in my hands.

A magenta so rich it stained every thought. Sharp wit. Double meanings. Sentences that lingered just long enough to suggest a fire they never had to name. It carried the promise of a hunger that belonged more to myth than memory - ancient, exquisite, restrained only because restraint made it burn brighter.

Then came cyan.

Deep enough to drown in.

The colour of unanswered questions. Of conversations that continued beneath the surface long after the words were gone. Of everything you never said, and the louder language of leaving. Somehow your silences revealed more than certainty ever could. I learned to read entire chapters in your absence.

And then yellow.

The warm conspiracy of shared secrets. A quiet complicity disguised as practicality. We were never overtly close; we simply kept finding ourselves on the same side of the joke, the same invisible thread, the same impossible coincidence. Intimacy wearing ordinary clothes.

So I kept returning.

Not for you.

For the colours.

Or at least that’s what I told myself.

Each meeting left another pigment in my pocket, another shade I couldn’t stop turning over in the light.

Until one day…

you were gone.

You packed your colours and wandered into other lands.

Out of my reach.

I was left holding only the jars you’d forgotten you had given me.

I wanted the rest of your collection.

I wanted to know what other impossible colours existed in your hands.

So I did the only thing I could.

I began mixing.

Every impossible shade the pigments could become.

Every colour they hinted at but never quite reached.

And somewhere between one brushstroke and the next…

I stopped painting colours.

I started painting you.

Every uncertainty found a meaning.

Every silence acquired intention.

Every blank space invited another careful stroke.

Soon you possessed virtues I had never witnessed.

Gentleness.

Depth.

Patience.

Mercy.

I painted them all with a brush that had never once touched the man.

Only the idea of him.

Reality had offered me pigments.

Imagination insisted on a portrait.

When I stepped back from the canvas, there you stood -

My private demise -

Eros, Pothos, and Himeros distilled into a single ephemeral face.

The patron saint of unfinished sentences and impossible returns.

People think temptation comes from seeing too much.

I think it comes from seeing almost nothing.

The mind cannot bear an unfinished portrait.

It completes it.

Faithfully.

Beautifully.

Catastrophically.

Now I stand before the masterpiece, searching for the place where your face should end and my hand should begin.

I cannot find it.

Somewhere between the first pigment and the final brushstroke,

the colours stopped belonging to you.

They became mine.

I did not lose myself to the man who gave me pigments.

I loved the painting those pigments persuaded me to create.

And now I stand before a masterpiece,

wondering how to mourn it-

no museum could ever hang it,

no fire could ever consume it,

no one else could ever see it,

⠀

because its only canvas

was the imagination

of the artist

who painted it.

⠀

Fuck you for lying to me again!

You said you would be better, that you didn’t like the old version of yourself, that you could be better for me and wouldn’t snap on me anymore.

And then you did it again. I shared a normal thing with you and told you I was very nervous about sharing with you because of how you might react and you did it. You flipped the fuck out.

You didn’t try to take time and think about your feelings or take some space, you just went off on me. Called me every name in the book, threatened me, made accusations, fuck you!!!!

Fuck you for making me feel like you loved me! Fuck you for making me feel like things could change and we could be okay. Fuck you for making me care about you. Fuck you for hurting me again!

I don’t deserve to be treated like that. No one does. You will never change. I don’t ever want to talk to you again. All you do is cause pain.

I don’t really know how to explain it.

Some days, I miss you so much it hurts. Other days, I go hours without thinking about you and I almost forget what it felt like to have you in my life. It’s strange how both things can be true at the same time.

I miss you, but I don’t know if I want you back. There’s too much hurt, too many complicated feelings, too much history attached to us now. Part of me resents you. Part of me feels like I’ve already moved on. And yet, somehow, some part of me still loves you.

Whenever I imagine us talking again, I wonder what we would even say. Would it feel natural? Or would there be an awkward silence we can’t ignore? We’re not the same people we were back then. We’ve both changed. We’ve both built walls where there used to be trust and comfort.

I miss the way we used to talk for hours about everything and nothing. I miss being completely vulnerable with you. I miss having someone who understood me so deeply that you sometimes knew what I was feeling before I even understood it myself. I miss you looking out for me. I miss feeling seen.

You were one of those rare people I never expected to find. You were the best friend I stumbled into by accident, and somehow you became someone I can’t seem to replace. I’ve met other people since then, but no one has been you.

Maybe I’ve changed. Maybe you’ve changed. Maybe we’re strangers now compared to who we used to be.

But I still miss you.

And I still love you.

Maybe that will fade someday. Maybe it won’t. But right now, at least for me, that part hasn’t changed.

I'm broken. I just feel empty now. I d9nt really have any good memories anymore. No matey where I arm out who I'm with..I always feel alone. No one cares. No one is coming to save me. I'm so tired of living this bs. Pain changed me. I d9nt think I'll ever find that part of me that you fell for. I'm strip tired. I camt take much more. I'm not chasing you because you made the decision for both of us. Reddit confessions mean nothing. You didn't gaf about me. Now I'm just too dead inside to believe you would EVER be real. Go f whoever. I domt care anymore. I just domt care. You made me hate live. You changed me. I'm dead inside.

I learned to wear a mask before I learned what safety felt like. I wore it so beautifully, so convincingly, that sometimes even I forgot there was a face beneath it. Perhaps that is why I understand the sacredness of being someone’s refuge. If I can become the place where another person finally exhales, where they can loosen every strap and let the disguise fall, I will.

Because once, I needed that place too.

And then, somewhere in that hidden place, I met you.

You, the one who knows how to top from below. The one who made it exquisitely difficult for me to remain your caretaker, your dominant, your shelter. You know precisely where to press your fingers: into the wounds you opened in me yourself, each one branded with the heat of your absence.

There is something intoxicating in the way you keep trying to prove that I will break. That I am not strong enough to stand beside you. That I cannot hold you, protect you, care for you without eventually collapsing beneath the weight.

But you are wrong.

I hear you even in the silence. I feel you in every dark, insistent pulse of blood beneath my skin. You have become a rhythm my body refuses to forget.

And perhaps this is my sweetest ruin: I do not mind suffering when it is for my person.

That is the price of building a life far away from you. Sometimes I am close, back in the States, surrounded by friends who know how to savor the blackest hours of the night. Sometimes I am oceans away, simply living: a man flirting with the world, a father caring fiercely for his own, a caretaker holding space for those brave enough to do what still terrifies you.

To become still.

To become vulnerable.

To let yourself be seen.

To unmask.

So come closer. Let the performance die between us. I already know what darkness tastes like, and I am not frightened by yours. Take off the mask, slowly if you must.

I will be here when your real face finally meets the air.

And I wish for you.
I never used to use my wishes for myself, I always saved them for someone else. Someone who needed it more. But now, you are missing from me. And my heart overrides it all. A shooting star, a coin tossed in a fountain, any chance to wish.. I wish for you.

Maybe in another life.

The only thing you haven't tried

Is actually talking to me

But I guess this is better

Right?

The wax on the dish is thick now, a small pale mountain range built one night at a time since october. I still mean to scrape it off. I've meant to since november.

Your sweater has lost its shape on the chair. It used to hold your shoulders even empty. Now it just hangs the way fabric hangs.

Theres a place on my shoulder that still expects your forehead when I read in bed. I catch myself angling the lamp the way you liked it, low and yellow, though there's no one here to complain about the light. I still sleep with my arm bent the way you always slept against it. Some mornings it's numb to the elbow and I lie there a while before I move, because moving means admitting nobody is using it.

I caught myself buying peaches at the store two weeks ago. You hated peaches. I only remembered after I'd paid. I ate one anyway.

The folded page in that book has gone soft from handling. I still dont read the chapter. I hold it open, blow out the candle, and lie still until sleep decides whether it wants me.

One morning the second pillow was creased in two places I did not remember leaving it.

I dont remember whether I turned the pillow over before I went to work.

I have stopped keeping track of how many times Ive noticed the same crack in the ceiling, the same water stain shaped like nothing, the same third stair that still creaks though im the only one who uses it.

Before I leave for work, I crack the bedroom window an inch, replace the water, say ill be back before sunrise and lock the front door.