Dear You,

It is not the distance between us, or the unfaithfulness that humans often have, or even the falling out of a love that we once shared that is keeping us from being with each other. Instead, it is something that we are never taught that will get in the way of things. It is something we are all afraid of, yet want to encourage at the same time. It is something that will cause you to be unhappy for a bad grade on a test, but is also the same thing that causes us to refrain from jumping into oncoming traffic….or rather, the thing that pushes us into the car because some of us just can’t handle life anymore.

It has come to my understanding that the biggest thing that is keeping me from you, is myself. And it hurts, and it’s something not even I fully understand, so I will never expect you to either.

We haven’t been together too long in the scope of things, but to us it has felt like an eternity. I feel as if I have been married to you for years. I feel as if I have seen those same hazel eyes expand in the way that they always do when they look at me, and as if I have seen your eyebrows curl up in the most peculiar way as they almost always do when you’re perplexed or thinking. I have held your hand countless times, and if I could draw well enough I’m sure I could make a portrait of yours perfectly, every wrinkle, every freckle and every scar. I could pick your voice and face out of a crowd of thousands, and I can read any letter from you in your voice because it has grown so familiar and comforting to me. But even in all of that, I still cannot be with you.

I’m not sure what happened that started all of this. But I know the enforcer of my thoughts trying to block you from my head is no one other than yourself. We have suffered countless fights and we are both way too stressed for people our age. No matter how many screaming matches, cursing fights, call hang-ups and call-backs, it’s always you that I go back to for comfort. But all that fighting has taken its toll on the comfort that you once brought me. And I no longer feel as safe in your soft strong arms as I once did, and I know that this is the path that others have taken in my mind, but never have they been as strong as a presence as you still are to me. And never have I loved them in a way that I love you.

I’m scared to admit that I have thought over being with someone else and you being with someone else now. And that thought scares me, and it’s a thought that I do not often want to put in the front of my mind, and I most like it to stay hidden in the shadows along with my other deep fears. But I can’t see you with someone else, and I can’t see me with anyone but you. But I also can’t see you with me either. I don’t trust us to stop fighting and to start loving in the same way we once did, and I don’t trust us to fix things and make it all better. I don’t trust you to see your stubbornness about many things and how even though I’m stubborn too sometimes, it hurts me in ways you couldn’t imagine. So we will continue being in love but not together, because as hard as things get, I can’t see myself in any other way.

So I will continue loving you, even if I really can’t.

-d.b