A. R.,

Ill never know how to tell you how i feel about you, so much time has already passed from the moment we met, to how hurt i still feel right now. I tried moving on , i swear i did. Every new interest i found was met by your friendly “how are you?”, “lets hang out soon?”, since we agreed on being friends after all. As soon as i see your name on my phone my heart breaks and rejoices at the same time, i think, “the love of my life has finally come around”, while also thinking of how much i’m about to hurt myself again because i know i cant resist you and that we end with the same heartbreak, or at least i find myself with the same pain i was left with a whole year ago. I thought i had prepared myself for our separation, no contact, give you space, no one prepared me for when you actually kept coming back into my life for a friendship that you don’t know is causing me so much pain. i expected you to talk to me maybe once after. Not this often, its almost as if you want to remind me you’re still there, because you feel me forgetting about the heartbreak.

Its just odd, you always came back when i found someone else to spark my interest, as if a sixth sense, that you could feel me moving on. Or maybe part of me thought you were getting jealous and wanting me back. Every time we begin talking, i drop anyone i’m talking to as fast as a pen, i go back to waiting for that moment where you confess how much you still care about me, but it never comes. Instead, i get the constant update that you’re feeling amazing and this year has been great to you, the best year as a matter of fact. Its as if every time i start to think i’m moving on you come back, like clockwork. I’ve began to notice that its every 3-4 months you come back for one of your checkups, i find myself waiting for them since its the only piece of you i still have left, and in that short moment we talk, i find myself hoping, maybe this will be the time, i win you back.

I’m so happy you’re having such a great time since we split up, i love you and want the best for you, and ill always want you to be happy, even if it isn’t with me. Hearing you say that was like a hole in my chest. This was the worst year of my life, since we’ve parted ways. Id go through it all over again if we could be back to the beginning. But you’re different now, or i’m different, maybe we’re different. I tried to change so much about myself to move on but when i see you all that melts away, and i find myself in the same place i was before.

I don’t have the strength to send you this letter, but i hope one day you find it. I hope so badly you find this, and know its from me. Then you’d know how much ill always love you. I’ve seen you run through girls like nothing, i always wonder if they fill a void that was left by me, if the cared for you the way i do. Maybe that’s why you always come back, because they don’t. Or maybe i’m just a time filler until the next one comes along. Do they know your favorite places to be held? Words to soothe you when you cant sleep? The way you like your ears to be rubbed? That’d you say i was the only person who’d ever done that, and the only one who could do it right. I wonder if you think of my hand in yours when your hand is lying empty, the way mine does. Or when someone else is filling my absence, if i’m still there in the back of your mind, even though you are always in the front row of mine.

I keep trying to tell myself, you were my first love, but you will not be my last. Yet i cant find anyone who makes me feel half of the emotion you still cause to surge out of me. It isn’t as if i’m deliberately comparing everyone to you, there’s honestly no way to compare. No one compares to you. I’m becoming scared ill never feel that way about anybody else. Ill always love you, I’ve come to terms with that, our friendship means so much to me, even though its a constant knife in my heart. How can i think of another man in terms of “us”, when i used that word to describe me and you so perfectly? I wonder how you can look at me and not feel a pain in your heart the way i do. Do you really see us as friends? What do you tell people about me when they ask who i am?

I was hoping writing this to you would be a form of goodbye, my goodbye i never got to tell you. i feel as if this is the last time i can put myself through another cycle of our friendship. I need to move on fully, not necessarily with any one new, just with myself. I want to let go so bad, but i don’t know how. All i can say is that i love you, you’ve hurt me so bad, and i love you.

We are over, i have to accept that. We are friends, i have accepted that’s what you see us as, but i cant handle it anymore. i have to cut the ties before they wrap around my neck. I cant wait anymore for you, I’ve been waiting so long it feels like. But, now i need to gather my strength, and not be there in the next 3-4 months.

Goodbye Alec