I imagine you being as gentle with someone else as you were with me, and it makes me sick to my stomach. I've never met someone so patient, so giving, so understanding, and I'm scared that I won't meet someone else with even half as beautiful a soul as yours ever again. It feels strange to grieve someone who is still alive. Someone I never really even had, but pretended I did. I'm sorry I've hurt you. I'm sorry it's religion that came between us before we could even give it a try, before I could let you love me the way you silently promised you would, before I could repay you threefold for all the ways you've built me up. You've been a lighthouse in every storm, constant and grounded, and I don't know what I've done to even deserve knowing you, but what I do know is that I've put you through more than you deserve by being in your life. I'm grateful you're in my life, but I apologise for intruding on yours. Sometimes I imagine an alternate universe, where our fates were kinder, and you spend every third day at my house hanging out with my younger siblings who love you, and my brother finally has an older brother figure to look up to. Or maybe, on other days, I take your dog on walks with you, fingers intertwined like they used to be. Your hands always ran warm. We walk home along the shore near your house, and I have comfortable chats with your sister and your parents, and I tell them how well you treat me, as I know you would. You always do. You always have. Whoever gets to hold you will be the luckiest girl in the world. You're so easy to talk to. So calming and careful and sincere. So honest, so smart in the way you saw through every part of me that I doubted. I selfishly thought no one would ever know you or love you the way that I do, but you're so perfect that I think it's impossible not to. I wish things were different. I wish this tightness in my chest was from a nightmare, not reality. I wish you would tell me I'm pretty without being worried that you'll make it worse, make us fall further apart than we already are. I wish I could hold your face in my hands and kiss your nose, or rest my cheek on your shoulder again, or hug you again. Just one more time. And I want to stay friends. I want you in my life. But right now, the thought of having to see you as someone other than the only man in the world who understands me makes me cry. I've cried every day for weeks. The headache doesn't go away. I've made so many mistakes in my life, but the biggest one is being someone you fell in love with. You told me nothing is my fault, that I've done nothing, that you could never hate me, that I'm not a bad person. But I can't bring myself to believe you. It was my religion, my beliefs that fell between us. And, despite knowing how it would play out, I let myself pretend that I was right for you and you were right for me. And I hurt you because of it. You've grown into every part of my life, and I don't know how to live without seeing you everywhere. I miss you so so so so much. Even though we still talk in spite of both our aching hearts. I love you, and I'll always love you in some small part in my chest, with the innocence of a child being carried to bed after falling asleep on the couch, and with the depth of two sort-of-adults who feel everything in its fullest. I started writing this hoping you'd never see it, but some part of me hopes you will, and see all the things I'm too scared to say out loud. You deserve the world. You deserve everything. And I'm sure you'll get all of that and more, but it won't be from me. I'm sorry it can't be from me. I'm always here for you. Stay strong. -D