The Love Letter That Ended Our Friendship

Here’s a big confessional, emotional letter that I guess you won’t want to read, but I want to write it. So you can delete it — just tell me “Thanks for the big email but I couldn’t read it.” Oh, if only you resisted your curiosity. If only I resisted my drunken need to share this. Instead:

I love you. This isn’t how I want to tell you that I love you. I’d rather tell you in bed, after sex, while stroking each others bodies, holding hands or something. But anyway. This is really the most direct thing I can say, and it explains everything else: I love you. That’s it.

I mean, do I even know what love is? Maybe not. But I think I do. And when a friend asked me recently if I liked you or if I actually loved you, I paused, considered it and realized: yes, I love you, and that’s why I feel how I do. God, I feel so vulnerable and awkward admitting it, but it’s the truth. Why can’t we choose who we love? Do you think I’d really choose you? The girl that always pushes me away, keeps me at such distance?

Why do I love you? What do I love about you, anyway? Well, I love your face. I love just staring at it, watching it move. I love how round it is, and how narrow too. Your cheekbones, your chin, your forehead. I love all of this. I love your eyes, so blue and perfect and honest. I love your hair, so blonde and straight and how it looks great in every style you put it in. I love how it flips around, how it pulls back. I love your nose. I love your lips. I love your ears, even if they’re not perfect, as you say. They’re yours.

I love your smile and how it forms so fully a sharp beam of joy. I love how straight your teeth are and I wish mine could be so straight, to be worthy of yours. I love the whole picture, put together. I love looking at all of this. I can never get enough of it. I just want to stare at your face and enjoy it all of the time, every day.

I know: I’m being superficial I guess. Maybe it’s wrong to indulge myself in your beauty. These stupid eyes of mine that see it so keenly, imbue you with perhaps my own rosy-colored glasses. But I must go on, even as you must cringe in hearing it:

I want to know this face so much more. I want to touch every part of it with my fingers and my lips. I want to kiss it all over and watch you smile and close your eyes and then I’ll kiss your eyelids. I want this and it hurts my stomach how much I want it but don’t have it. And then comes the self-pity because of how undeserving I must be of it. Still, these thoughts I think about.

I love your body. You hide it from me, so I don’t know all of it, obviously, but I imagine. And from what I see, I just want to see more. I love your height — it’s perfect to me. I love your shoulders and arms and how thin they are, but not to0 thin. I love your stomach. I think I love your breasts, knowing they’re perky, and how you hold them out so assuredly. I love your waist and how soft and skinny it is. I’m going crazy thinking all of this. I imagine taking off your clothes all the time so that I can tell you more about how much I love your body. I want to hold it, to hold it to me, to grab it firmly, to play with it.

This must be the stuff of your nightmares: a man who you don’t love back, advancing on you with his words. I don’t want to be a monster.

I love your voice. I love how you sound. I love how high-pitched it is but not too much so. Not a child. Just so perfectly feminine. I love how you talk and how you accentuate certain words and fluctuate parts of your sentences. I love how you form your thoughts and I just want to listen to you talk all the time, to just hear you go on and on, telling me anything.

I just think you’re the most wonderful girl in the world, even if I also think you’re evil.

I love your personality, even with all its coldness. I love how light and bubbly it often is, but also serious. I love this range and I wonder how much lower and higher it gets. I sense it. I am so curious about the rest of it, the moments of joy, ecstasy, love and also of anger, of pain of torment. I am fascinated by you and I want to be there when all these emotions happen.

I love your laugh. I love the way you tell a story. I’m always captivated. I love the way you move your arms and hands and body. I love how you stand. I love how your face contorts, like you are fully expressing every aspect of your mind, how you really feel what you’re saying, how you totally embody your thoughts and emotions.

I love how you think. I love the way you dissect things, even if to just be contrarian. I love how you make jokes, how everything can be so silly. I love your little laugh at the world. I love how you aren’t shy about sex, or about your own shyness. I love how you can jump into almost any topic. I love how you hold onto a childish excitement about the world. And I love how direct you can be when discussing anything. You’re just my favorite girl.

If we were together, do you suppose all this would vanish? Is my love so ephemeral? So loose? Are you so sure that this is all just some sort of ruse? I wish it was — that it was lifted from me by the slightest affection returned. Wouldn’t that be something. But I have a feeling you’re wrong. I think this love is as solid is the ground we walk on, and I wish you’d give it a chance.

Instead, you lie in bed with another man who you don’t actually love either, but somehow he suffices. He’s good enough. I’m not, I guess, despite all the fun and engaging times we have. This makes me feel quite pathetic.

It hurts very badly that I am not with you, that I can’t touch you, that I feel sleazy when I want to hug you, that you don’t want to be close to me, that I somehow repel you or turn you off. It doesn’t make sense to me. And I hate myself for spoiling it, for driving you away somehow, for ruining whatever opportunities have almost arisen.

I must be a fool to think you would want to read all of this!

In my fantasy, you check your phone while out and step outside to be alone and read this whole thing, your heart beating. And then as soon as you finish it, you become flush and light-headed, say goodbye to your friends and bike straight over and we embrace. Sometimes I actually think you love me too, deep down — that you’re just hiding it. Just too scared to face it. That you’ll pay attention one day, eventually, see me as a lover.
We could be happy.