These days I’m not much into being sentimental, but I think I’d call this a love letter

I know, I should have done this already. I’m sorry. Again.

Since everything has ended this is a hard place for me to go. Lord knows I’ve already been depressed enough the past year, and I spend as much energy as I can spare to just function normally, but it is still wrong of me to neglect this. You’ve meant too much to me and deserve better, but instead, in what is likely the final scene of the third act, I will offer what I can. I know anything coming from me will mean nothing at this point, but maybe one day these words will acquire some value.

What more can I really say? I love you. I guess I can’t say that anymore. I’m learning how to stop. I feel like one of the world’s most notorious criminals. For months, maybe even a year, all those times I said those words almost as a routine; not that I never meant it. Though, here I am today and I wish that I could have really meant it the way I feel it, but I also don’t think that humans can physically intimate such tender feelings, we can only find small things to vary in order to tack on small bits of emphasis where we can.

I’ve done you wrong. I know this. I guess I’ve known this for a while, in the sense that the past year was not one of my best ‘performances’. One of the last times we talked, you brought up the past. It got me thinking about it too. Not even our first real date or anything, but further back. Back to the girl that I had already started falling in love with before you ever made the decision to accept my affection. That girl that I sort of met that one night where I played Spoons for the first time ever with a group of mostly random strangers. And all those times I happened to see you, whether it was walking by or off in the distance with your usual crowd in the passing year. That entire time I didn’t know you, but you always captivated my attention. I think for me, speaking as a guy, it is one thing to notice a girl; she can be cute, or pretty, or hot, or all these types of adjectives, which typically can equate to pretty large differentiations. It’s similar to gold. Civilizations have always had some sort of fascination and infatuation with this so called precious metal; always captivating powerful rulers and wealthy nobility. When they saw gold, they couldn’t take their eyes off of it (and always had to have more). In that sense, when a guy sees beauty, it is hard to not have your attention, your eyes, your vision, your focus completely siphoned away by it, but I think for as long as I can remember, I have understood it is a further thing than that.

That ‘thing’ that catches our eye, that aesthetic factor that our brain convinces us is so satisfying is merely an attention grabber. You have always struck me as incredibly beautiful, but it is what follows that initial grab of attention that usually tells if a girl is attractive or what not. I kind of like to think we were wired that way for a reason. It isn’t just this concept of something nice to look at, but rather a signal. In this case, signals are meant to be further investigated. And I think that really is where the difference has always been. You weren’t just beautiful, or a pretty face with a nice figure, or any of those mere physical factors, but it was almost instantly apparent that there is something more here. That is the difference between seeing something that is ordinary versus something that you’re not sure man was meant to witness. You had my attention from the very moment I knew of your existence, because there was a spellbinding ‘something’ about you  that always made it clear that there was so much more behind the mask; a richness. A pure beauty.

And this is my problem I’m having with the whole thing. I can’t say anything right. I can’t say anything true without feeling almost somewhat corny. What I’m trying to say to you is this: you’re undoubtedly physically beautiful in every facet. I told you so many times that you face was perfect, and never did I not mean that, in my mind’s eye, it was, but when I see a nice looking lady, which isn’t a rare thing at all, I don’t make these types of judgments just by looking at them. There is that whole adage about a personality being attractive or not, which further leads into this whole, “looks don’t matter thing,” and that is just corny and tacky as crap, but I think that its meaning is in the right direction. Looks matter, personality matters, but personality is part of looks. You can see a person’s personality, this doesn’t mean you know them or the extent of their personality, but rather there are things we learn to identify as visual representations of someone’s personality. They are coupled; symbiotic really. I could always see how intimidatingly pretty you were, even as you pretty much never wore any significant amount of make-up, and I could also see that it was in your personality that you didn’t feel the need to paint a mask of what you looked like, plus that always helps with the whole guessing game of, “What do they really look like without any of that stuff on (even with only a subtle amount it is still a guessing game).”  I hope this makes sense. A coupling of pure visual aesthetics and personality. I know it isn’t the best example by far, but I am really just hoping the concept carries the meaning more than using a concrete example as a crutch.

I guess my point with that entire ramble was that you have always been a very rare thing to me. Someone who is instantly captivating and remains captivating. In my life, I’ve met a fair share of those who were instantly captivating and very shortly following nothing more than pop art, at best. Or on the converse, the type of person who cooks slowly and delicately, growing on me, but, and allow me to put it in a quite unromantically blunt manner, you’re like heroin without any of the bad side effects or risks– something so wonderful that it is reserved for mythology.

Of course, I haven’t even begun to cover anything substantial, or the extent of it. To this day, I don’t know if I ever was able to adjust being your other half. It was something intimidating. Me, as the ugly duckling and you the graceful swan. Me the unsophisticated and ignorant cave man, you the elegant and cultured duchess. Or really, me the bum, you the treasure. It’s as if I broke into the king’s castle and stole his crown and was wearing it all over town. There is only one King’s crown, everyone know I stole it, everyone knows I don’t deserve it. I am not the king. I’m really sorry that I was never able to fully conquer that inequality I felt, walking around with you at my side, but that is just how I felt. I can only act so well, and I can only shake a feeling so far. I wish that I could have been putting on parade’s greater than Macy’s for you anytime we went out anywhere, because you certainly deserved it, and better than I could offer.

Then there was the hard year, maybe and a half. Nobody is going to lie or pull any punches about it, it was a crappy time, but I look back on it all and there was never a period where I thought any less of you, or that I had to get out. It is kind of funny when I think about it, because really it is more like you spent some time being amplified, turned all the way up to 11. So even the smallest thing rung out in a deafening and overwhelming manner, often sending vibrations powerful enough to send Earth rattling shockwaves that rumbled on for days. But it also amplified just how gentle you truly were. Gentle is my favorite word I could use to describe it, because I believe out of gentleness, so many other wonderful things are born. Such as your sweet and always caring mentality. It makes me miss waking you up at 3 or 4 in the morning and just having you, without even opening your eyes or really ascertaining any real consciousness, latch on to me and never let go. It was as if all you had was me, then you were fulfilled. I think we both know it isn’t quite that simple, and there are greater factors for fulfillment, but it was just knowing that even if I had rejected everything and consigned myself to the couch and permanent bumhood, you’d always put a smile on your face and take care of me.

Man, oh man, what did I ever do to deserve that? How did I ever manage to earn that?

You see, that’s just it, I don’t know if I’ll ever know. I could say all sorts of sappy things, and use all this inventive, lush figurative language to try and paint out how wonderful you were in every way possible, but it wouldn’t do any justice and it would also preclude the point. You were someone so special to me that I never will understand what I did in my life to not only know such a person, but to really have that person grow to love you more and more each day. Sure, I actually feel like I could say that for a period of time, I was the best boyfriend anyone could have. Arrogant, cocky, ignorant, maybe, but heck, I believe it. How could I not have tried to be– considering who I was with? It was the nature of loving someone and having someone so special to love.

That’s why I will always feel guilty.

I know I lost that. I lost myself somewhere in it all. I was horrible to you for many months. I know you looked past it, tried to understand what I was going through. I know even when you were hurting the most, you would show your loving side even more. I’m pathetic, I know I am. You never deserved to go through any of that, even if it was my current stage of life. You never deserved to go through the end of it all. In my mind, I can’t imagine a more ideal person than yourself. When people go through break ups, they always say, you’ll be ok, there are going to be others– as if to insinuate that everyone can do better because it wasn’t meant to be or whatever. I also know that I have the ignorance of not having experienced the rest of my life following this moment, but that matters not, because it is in this present moment that I say that I can’t imagine a lovelier woman to spend my time and love on. I ruined it, and probably squandered the best person that ever happened to me for good. Assuming that, and the idea that “there will be others” (which doesn’t even concern me anytime soon anyway), sure there will be others, but there is only one you.

I guess you understand it too. Heartbreak would be a weird thing if we had programmable clones of ourselves scampering across the earth, because, in some manner, it’d be a lot harder to really lose someone close to you. I know for you, there is not another me. I think that makes me hope even more that I haven’t ruined you. You said you can never trust again, or be close to anyone again. You told me you felt betrayed, and many more heart wrenching things. These things make me obese with sorrow and guilt to the point that I might burst. That is why I just hope you can forgive me. I hate how I had to lose a best friend.

I promise you it was just the course of my life that sailed me off into this predicament. It makes me sound awfully hypocritical saying that my life is better off in the long run without the person who was the best thing for my life, but somehow, life doesn’t always make sense like it does in the way we come to expect with everything else. I think I need to end this letter now, I think the more I say will just do more injustice to you, I can never give you what you’ve really deserved. I honestly feel that. I know you probably hate me know, but I promise you, I love you. Even when I was at my worse, I loved you so much.

I guess this is it… closure…

I give you my least favorite phrase in the English language: I’m sorry.

I miss you, my best friend.

Love,

James

P.S. – Sorry for not proof reading my letter to you.