Letter to long lost love

Hello, love.

It’s been awhile. It’s been too long.

I loved you. I still love you. I will probably love you until the day I die. Actually, I’m pretty sure I will.

I remember the first moment I ever laid eyes on you. You were sitting in a folding chair, leaned back on two legs against the wall, your blond hair shining in the sun. Something inside me clicked into place and I literally thought “There you are. I was wondering where you were.”

Your eyelids were at half mast, masking what I would later learn was the beautiful blue of your eyes. You watched me walk up the stairs with something akin to the eyes of a hunter who was not yet ready to embark on the hunt. You watched everything I did but you didn’t approach. Nor did I. I was still processing my initial thought.

I peeked in the door of a friend a few apartments away and told her the most beautiful man I’d ever seen was sitting at the end of the hallway. She laughed. I was not one to say things like that. I was not one to feel things like that.

Your friend had invited me over for a barbeque. I didn’t know him except in passing. He introduced us but we didn’t talk. Not really. I was far too shy and intimidated by my gut reaction to you. You were out of my league and that was readily apparent to anyone with eyes. I felt it. I knew it. I owned it. That does not mean that I wasn’t still breathless when you turned those eyes my way or felt that itch under my skin that made me want to reach out and touch you. I only stayed for a short while, still far too intimidated by strangers and men to feel comfortable staying for too long.

Two weeks later, you moved in with your friend and he, again, invited me up to hang out with you both. I was still breathless around you. I was still full of nerves and wants that I didn’t know how to handle. I was always that girl that was shy and afraid with no idea how to even begin to approach a man, even if I’d wanted to. I was fascinated by the way your hair stood in spikes. I asked if I could touch it and I remember a strange look passing over your face although I could not read the expression. Your roommate went to bed after drinking too much and we stayed up talking about any sort of randomness. When I went to leave, you walked me to the door and I raised my hand to wave goodbye. Faster than I could even process, you had pushed me up against the wall and were kissing me like I was your last breath of air and you were drowning.

I have never before and never since been kissed like that. I felt so beautiful, so wanted like I never had before. I felt like I had sunshine running through my veins. I was lit up from the inside out and I felt like I could fly. You were so beautiful and you were kissing me like that.

We messed around on a couple more occasions. We moved on to sex. I knew I had fallen in love with you that first moment but the first time we were together, I could not wrap my head around how loved I felt, how special and treasured you made me feel. I have never really gotten over that. Not really. Men are still compared to you and it’s likely they always will.

You fed my soul in a way that no one else ever has. You made me feel loved, you talked to me about philosophy and the universe and all manner of things I didn’t know or comprehend, you talked to me of possibilities, you made me feel special. Most of all, though, I loved you with every fiber of my being, every beat of my heart, every touch of my fingers on your skin, every smile, every kiss. I loved you like no other.

You were an alcoholic. I knew that. You began a habit of coming to see me after you’d been to the bar. You would come to me sobbing with your broken heart on your sleeve. All you wanted was comfort and to be cared for. You loved to have me run my fingers through your hair as you held on. You would talk about your heartbreak and I would listen with tears in my heart. I cried because you hurt. I wanted you to be happy and feel loved because you did those things for me. You even asked me to marry you once. You didn’t mean it. I understood it was just the liquor talking. I would have married you. I would have had a child with you. You were the only man I would ever have had a child with.

We didn’t last long. I was young and frustrated that you were a homebody and I was not. I was stupid and hurt. I was insecure believing that you didn’t want to be seen in public with me because I wasn’t a stick thin model figure. I broke it off. I broke my own heart and wallowed in the pain of losing you. I spent a week not speaking to anyone, no one. I went a little bit crazy and locked away the broken pieces of my heart in a steel chest behind a steel door within a mighty fortress surrounded with barbed wire and landmines. No one was getting in ever again.

I knew that I needed to get rid of the pain and face it for what it was. I made you listen to me. I told you I wished we’d never met because the pain was so great that I was drowning in it. I made you cry. I will never forget seeing you with the shine of tears in your eyes. I also told you that if you told me to wait here and you’d be back for me in 5 years, I’d be sitting here when you returned. Even now, if you told me to wait, I’d be waiting for you.

We had to stay friends as I started dating your newest roommate. That was difficult, to say the least. To be forced to be around you and still see all the things I still loved about you but not be able to kiss you or hold you like I wanted was torture. I cried out your name in bed with my new boyfriend. I never told you that.

You told me once that we’d never been together as a couple. Yet, on another occasion, you let it slip you were angry with my boyfriend because he had stolen me from you. I think you were still in the same boat as me, possibly. You wanted to be with me but couldn’t. I was a poet then and had asked that you not tell me if you didn’t like the poetry because it meant a lot to me. A group of us were drinking in your room one night and you made a comment out of the blue that I sucked at poetry but I was good in bed so I probably should just stay there. I was so shocked and devastated by that statement that all I could do is walk away in silence.

You chased after me, trying to give me your most prized possession as an apology. That was a sign of something that I can only hope for but can’t put my faith in.

Things between you and my boyfriend dissolved into anger and violence so you left. You just left.

I have been married twice since we parted and had other relationships. None of them work. They never work. They never work because he isn’t you. He will never be you. He can never make me feel what you did and I am forever chasing that high. I am always chasing that feeling of being loved so completely. It may have all been in my head but I know how I felt.

I think about you over the years. You were always and will always be the one who got away. I let you go and I regret that all the time.

We were too broken to stay together. We each had our issues. I just wish I’d known then how to work past them. I wish I’d known the keys to keeping what we had together.

I am sorry for everything but mostly I’m sorry for letting you go.