You were a go-with-the-wind kind of person, not knowing where life was taking you and not really caring where you ended up. I was an old soul with an enormous sense of emotion and longing to save people like you. You were upset, I dedicated my time to make you happy. You felt alone, I committed my life to show you I was there. You felt you needed space, I patiently waited until you were ready to come back. Somewhere along the line I started to call this love.

It wasn’t always bad. When things were good, they were good. Almost so good that they made the bad times seem worth it. You made my cheeks ache with giddiness while lying in bed at 3am reading your sugar-coated promises for the future. Screw butterflies, you had elephants stampeding through my stomach every time that I saw you. And when we were apart, no matter where I was, I always felt as if there should be two of us standing there. You were my best friend and my soul mate all wrapped up in one, and because of that I continuously taped you back together every time you started to fall apart, not realizing that unraveling wasn’t an accident but part of your nature.

I wanted forever with you, you only wanted me when there was nobody else. I wanted your worst days as much as your best, but my worst days became too much of a hassle for you. I thought to myself, maybe you just weren’t ready to settle down yet when you still had so much life left in you, or maybe you simply couldn’t handle a love that real. I came up with every excuse as to why I wasn’t your first choice or a priority in your life. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that at one point you loved me, but I’m also a firm believer in telling people how you feel while they are still around to hear it, and you’re a firm believer that they should just know. Suddenly I became the one who did all the talking, and you only listened when you wanted to.

I wish that I could blame it on the timing, that I could say it was one of those wrong place at the wrong time kind of scenarios, a hit-and-miss kind of love. But honestly, I think it was just us. I think that if somewhere down the road we met again much older and wiser from the mistakes we made as kids, we would still end up right here, like this. Because sometimes people can love each other but are not meant to be together, no matter how hard they try to make things work. All of the love in the world cannot make two people compatible if they aren’t, and our pieces never fit together in the way they were supposed to, in the way I so desperately wanted them to.

I used to want to be the one who you got down on one knee for, who you danced with in the middle of the empty living room of your brand new house that you haven’t finished painting, who you settled down and made a family with. Now I realize there is nothing I want more in this world than for you to just be happy, and I can’t give that to you anymore.

We were better off as friends than we were anything else, and now I know what happens to fate when you try to control it. I hope you find someone who sings along with you to your favorite songs in the car, and who lies in the grass to look up at the stars while you teach her all of the constellations. I hope she asks you what your favorite memory is, and I hope you tell her why you have trouble opening up to people. Please, please open up to her the way you opened up to me. And more than anything else, I hope she makes you happy. True, raw, genuine happiness - something that I could never give you but we both wholeheartedly deserved.

You are still my very best friend in life, and I loved you in ways that I’m not sure I could ever love another person. But we needed so much more than we got. I’m not angry or bitter about the way things ended, instead I’m just grateful to have gotten to know somebody like you. I only want the very best things for you in this life and even though I can’t make them happen, I will always be cheering you on whenever you need to hear it.