Dear Boy,

It's only been about a month and half since the first night that I met you. I'll never forget that night for the rest of my life. I remember sitting with you underneath the stars and wondering how a world that is so beautiful could also produce so much pain.

You see, when I met you, I was in a lot of pain. The boy that had me before I met you did more than just break my heart. He ripped it out of my chest, threw it on the ground, stepped on it and threw it down over and over again until it shattered into pieces. And then he slowly tried to return it to me. At that point, it felt like pieces of shattered glass were sliding around my insides. Every morning before I met you, I woke up in tears and felt like I couldn't breathe. I knew that it wasn't possible for me to ever love someone again after what he did to me. The pain was unbearable and I wish you could see why I was so afraid to feel anything again.

The night you approached me I could see that you felt like there was something between us. I'd be lying if I told you that I didn't feel it too. But that's exactly what I did. I lied to you. I spent hours talking to you and hearing the fascinating stories about your life and I tried to hide from you how hurt I had been for the last four months. I tried to hide from you everything I was feeling inside by putting up a wall. I did a very good job of making sure you couldn't see anything that you could someday be able to use against me to cause me pain. Including what I felt for you.

You see, I couldn't risk falling. I couldn't risk giving you everything because I had done that before and ended up with nothing. Worse than nothing, actually, because I ended up so broken. I didn't want to give in to the way I was feeling with you that night because I didn't want to give you something that you could end.

It seemed like the harder I tried to push my heart away from you, the more you kept coming back. And the more I tried to hide how much I was hurting, the more you started to figure out just how broken I truly was.

You fought like Hell to try to be the man that would fix my broken heart. You made every effort to be with me, you complimented me, and you tried everything you could to help me whenever you even began to think that I was experiencing any kind of pain. You were always there for me.

You looked at me one night as I was sitting with a silent expression on my face. You asked me what I was thinking about, knowing that it wasn't about you. You knew it was about him. You knew I was thinking about the pain. You knew I was feeling pain. And I think you knew I was afraid. But you asked anywaiy. You asked me three times before I shot you down completely and told you to mind your own business. Then you stopped asking me what I was thinking about.

In fact, you stopped caring completely. You stopped asking me to spend time with you, you stopped asking me to support you in your endeavors, you stopped asking me what I was thinking and you stopped asking me if I am okay. The text messages became short and the effort was no longer there. I had broken us.

And that's why I want to say I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for refusing to embrace what you and I both knew was real between us. I'm so sorry for telling you over and over again that we would always be "just friends" because I was too afraid of my own feelings. I'm so sorry that I let what he did to me affect the destiny of you and I. I'm so sorry that I denied your every attempt to care for me and to protect me and to bring happiness into my life. I'm so sorry that my fears hurt you.

I can't reach out to you anymore because all of my efforts go unanswered by you. Perhaps I deserve that though, I hurt you pretty badly. I threw away the boy who actually cared about me because I was too hung up on the one that doesn't.

I made a mistake. And I hope you can see this letter and I hope you read it and I hope you know I'm trying to reach out to you. I hope you read this and realize what a stupid mistake I made in letting you go and that if I had the chance to sit with you again under the stars and share life stories with you, I would do it again in a heartbeat and I would never let you go.

I can't go back and change the past but I am trying to grab hold of my future. My pain isn't ever going to completely disappear but I have learned to accept what happened to me and I have learned that what you were willing to give to me was worth more than any of the pain he caused me.

I'm tearing my wall down, slowly but surely and I'd love it if you could be there with me.

I hope you can find it in your heart one day to forgive me.

Signed,

The Girl Who Made a Huge Mistake