thank you for one of the most wonderful and exciting weeks of my life. thank you for giving me such a refreshing experience in times of stress for me, and thank you for teaching me more about what i value in a person. thank you for being part of a happier version of myself than i previously was. i really wish i had talked to you earlier, talked to you for longer, had more conversations and moments together. i wish we had more of what we had yesterday. i wish you’d known how much i liked being next to you and how much i admired your volleyball and how much i wanted you to notice me. i hope you know that because of you, i was motivated to play better. we’ll go our seperate ways, and maybe never see each other ever again. in another life where you wouldnt be so far away and we wouldn't have completely different native languages, things couldve been different; but, in this one, its impossible to be more than just a brief summer connection. thank you for giving me confidence and thank you for giving me something to look forward to. one day you’ll graduate university, have teammates and friends ive never met, and stories id never know; probably even a special someone of your own(how could you not, when you look like that?). And it's strange and scary to think that someone who feels so vivid to me right now will become a complete stranger again. its bittersweet, sorrowful almost. im going to be honest; one of my biggest regrets isn't that I never told you I liked you(even though theres a bit of that one too); It's that I spent so much of our time together convincing myself I couldn't talk to you, only to realize on the last day that I could. in short, i wish we had more time. time was all i thought i had until i lost it; i didn't realize i was counting down our last days together until there were no days left to count. when i first arrived, the days had felt endless, but looking back, it seems like they passed in the blink of an eye. watching you play made me want to improve; it still does. It wasn't just because I liked you; I genuinely loved watching someone care so much about getting better. you make me not only want to like and admire you; you made me want to compete with you as well. Every compliment from you meant more than it should have. Every time you noticed a good pass or a good receive or sometimes even a good hit, I carried it with me for the rest of the day. i so desperately wanted you to think i was good, so i tried harder every day. theres so many questions i never got to ask you and i wish i did. Id never tell you these things, but i was always looking for you; id always hope that i was on the same team as you; i was always hoping you'd serve at me if you were on the other team. i kept finding myself more and more drawn to you, your face, your skill, your personality. thank you for mattering so much, and im so so so so grateful for you. its so painful for me right now because i never got solid evidence of your feelings for me. that’s partly on me for not even asking, but your actions only tell me a “maybe”. and that hurts, so much. were your compliments and support a personality thing, or were you actually interested? did you tease me because you just were comfortable enough w me like you were with everyone else, or was it because you wanted that spark? did we mean something to you, as much as we meant to me? ill never forget you; or maybe i will. but i hope, i so sincerely hope, i never forget you. so, don't forget me either. never stop trying, and i hope your life goes smoothly. i was never in love with you; not even close, i hadnt known you long enough; i was in love with the possibility of spending more time with you and what we couldve become. i was in love with how terrifyingly, irrevocably alive i felt with you. I think what hurts most is that I finally started talking to you right before I had to leave. i wasn’t - still am not - ready to let you go. thank you for adding such a beautiful chapter to my book.