Dear You,
I know this will never end up in your hands (even though part of me wishes it would), but I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I think you deserve an explanation. Well, that’s how I’m justifying this as productive and not wallowing. Either way, I need to talk this out, and you're the one who should probably hear this.
Up until 8th grade, I did not speak to guys. Ever. Clammy hands, hyperventilating, trembling; just being around boys froze me. I was beyond normal shyness. That year, a close friend recruited a guy friend of hers to try to speak with me as a sort of immersion-therapy type deal. As soon as he said hello, I held my breath, turned around, and walked away.
In high school, I went through two years of despising every inch of myself. Sophomore year, I was in the deepest part of my eating disorder, and my thoughts were so dark and clouded that I couldn’t even try to focus on making friends. That year, I had been placed in the juniors-only French class due to scheduling conflicts; I knew nobody, and the class was mostly boys. I sat next to two girls I barely knew, at the table closest to the door. Three classes in, I was considering dropping. I was constantly tense, shy, and uncomfortably awkward. But right in the middle of it, in the middle of that class, I looked up and saw, you. You were sitting straight across from me in the horseshoe of tables, but I had yet to notice you. I had previously asked my desk partner to write the names of everyone in the class on a sketched seating chart so I’d know who everyone was. That day, yours became the first name I would remember, and I was never good at names.
I put that I wanted to learn a certain skill in my "about me" slideshow that we were presenting to the class. I was only mildly interested in it, but you said you knew how to do it well, so I added it in. That day after class, you caught me in the hall and offered to work with me during activity homerooms on Mondays. I didn’t know what to say. I must’ve said something, though, because that Monday I found myself face to face with your smile in a room filled with other people who shared your talent. Before long, you were teaching me every week.
At first, my friends had to drag me to meet you. I would freak out and refuse to go, even planting my feet on the linoleum of the old-building lobby, but they grabbed my arm and dragged my frozen self over to the room I knew you’d be waiting in. After the first few times, they had to fight to drag me away.
I so vastly enjoyed my mornings with you. You were the first guy I could really talk with without bolting. Something about you just put me at ease, and I didn’t understand it, but I craved that free feeling you gave me. It was lie someone would loosen the chains of panic on my lungs and my brain a little bit every time you were around. It was affecting me outside of that room on Mondays, too; I made friends with the guy that our teacher moved next to me. I looked people in the eye, and I walked a little taller. I laughed and smiled a little more. I hurt myself a little bit less.
The day you asked me to sit with you at lunch, something tweaked. I told you I had to ask a friend a question and walked to my usual table. I never came back; I ate lunch with my friends. You stood there with your tray for a few minutes and waited for me to come back and I never did. The entire time, every inch of my brain was screaming to go back to you, but my body wouldn't listen. My subconscious had frozen up with panic. I didn't understand why I couldn’t move, but I knew that lunch with you was out of the question. But still, you smiled and said it was okay.
The day you asked me to go to the movies with you, I was over the moon. I walked around for the rest of that day with a stupid grin on my face that I couldn’t quite wipe off. But, that afternoon, something inside of me snapped. Those chains, those goddamn chains that you had loosened to the point that I thought they were off came snapping back on, breaking my ribs and my lungs and my will to stand and dragging me into a deep place where I couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. I cried and hyperventilated for over four hours; My dad almost called an ambulance. And you were so goddamn nice about it. You said that you knew that I’d never done this before, that it was okay, that you still liked me, and that we’d take it at my pace. In my eyes, in that moment, you were nothing short of perfect.
But I was plenty short of it. Who has a panic attack when they get asked out on a date? So, I didn't talk to you the next day. I was humiliated, and every part of me that felt comfortable being open had closed right up again. You were on the verge of turning a five-month friendship into a relationship, and I was back to square one.
I don't remember how long I couldn't speak to you. It was months. And as each day went on, I missed the happiness you gave me. My confidence and self-esteem were shattered. I had lost the pieces of myself that I had found in you.
I stopped learning that thing you taught me. I wouldn't go near it again for over a year.
And you moved on. You found new girlfriends and eventually found a girl that is basically perfect. She's sweet, talented, funny, and kind. I knew I wasn't allowed to care, but I did.
It's an interesting thing, watching someone you love fall in love with someone else. When I first saw that picture of you two together, I looked at your smile first, and it made me so damn happy. Your smile was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. Then I turned and looked at the girl your arm was around, and my stomach dropped to my hoes to avoid the knife that was driving into my abdomen. I felt numb. Ad as I looked back and forth, between you and her, between you and her, you and her you and her I couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop until my lungs were knotted and my heart was laying shattered on the floor and my soul had drained out through the holes that her sparkly eyes drove through my stomach.
I don't think I'll ever be 100% over what we had. You were the first guy who took interest in me, and you were amazing in every way. And I ruined everything that could've happened. Last night, I was reading our old messages for the first time in two years, and I found the one from the week after I had my panic attack. You were apologizing, apologizing to me for “being an asshole” and how you knew we’d never be close again but you just wanted me to know you were sorry. YOU were sorry. And you didn’t even do anything wrong. I responded with something stupid like “No problem. I’m sorry too”. And that’s it. There you were, the boy I was hopelessly in love with, and I ruined everything because I couldn’t figure out how to move the walls I had built around myself. You were the only one who ever got in, but once the chains were back, I didn’t know how to ask you to help me fix what I had done. I didn’t know how to do it myself. The what-ifs hurt like a bitch sometimes.
I panicked after a date I went on last week. And after a promposal. And after the date I went on last year. And you can probably scientifically trace it back to something. But at this point, what does it matter? Because of it, I ruined everything good I had.
All I know is, I don't have a solid answer. But I wish I did, because I never wanted to hurt you. I wanted with every fiber of my being for us to work, but we didn't; I ruined it.
I am glad we're sort of friends again, though. It hurts like a knife in my stomach every time we speak, but I'm guess that makes me a masochist, because I'd put up with it every day just to try and hold onto whatever piece of us I still have left.
I guess it's just hard for me to digest that you can move on and find new love while I'm stuck in the same spot and every time I think I'm over you, I realize I'm just stuck even worse than before.
I guess I just wanted you to know that I never stopped caring.
Always,
AHM
