Things have been hard in this silence. Wondering if you'll ever find my words. Whether you'll contact your mom and she'll share what I sent. Or if you'll come here and be bombarded by all I've written. I’m not sure if you even have a phone anymore or any means of connection. Either way, the silence is the heaviest thing I’ve had to endure in a long time. Maybe ever. I feel helpless. I want to write some music to cope, but I’m too depressed. I pick up the guitar or sit at the piano and there’s just nothing there. When I lost my dad, it just flowed out of me, like my soul was hemorrhaging music. But this grief I’m feeling now is suffocating. I don’t know where you are or whether you’ll ever come back. My mind is writing out the rest of your story, whether I like it or not. And what it writes, I don’t like at all. I don’t want to think about it, but I can’t stop myself.
I often think about our time together. I vividly remember one specific day you and I and your friend Kate all met at Denny’s for lunch. And while we were sitting there waiting for our food, Kate said “So, are you guys a couple now or what”? I quickly said “we’re just friends”...so afraid you’d say that first and I couldn’t face that rejection. I was protecting my heart at the expense of my soul. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve thought about what could’ve been if I didn’t say that, I’d be very wealthy right now. Aside from losing touch with you in general, that is easily at the top of the list of biggest regrets of my life. I’ve got a lot of regrets, but that one...it still haunts me. If you only knew what I wanted to say was emphatically YES. Did you have any idea that I was head over heels in love with you then? I had no idea then that that day would ultimately lead me down a path that didn’t include you, but when I look back on everything I think that was the turning point. I hate that I was such a coward then. I wondered then and still wonder now if you set that up, if you had asked Kate to ask me that, maybe because you were scared to ask me yourself. And I have wondered if my response hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you.
I know this is all probably ancient history to you. And it may seem weird that I’m still here turning it all over in my mind. For so long I believed that my feelings would simply fade and you’d eventually become just one of the pleasant memories from my past. That all the regrets I held would eventually be something I could let go of, that I’d dismiss them under the pretense of being a broken young man that didn’t know how to hold love properly. But that hasn’t happened. And my feelings today are still as strong as they were then. The regrets still eat at me as much as they ever have. Life would be so much easier for me if it weren’t the case. I’ve gone to therapy. I’ve been told and I’ve told myself I have to move on with my life. And so I did. I got married. I had kids. They’re the light of my life. And I love my family. But always, ever present, you have been there in the back of my mind. I still carry you with me and I think I always will. After all this time nothing has changed, I have no reason to believe anything ever will. I live with this emptiness that you once filled. And I’ve tried to fill it with other people and other things. And sometimes those people and those things feel good for a little while. But ultimately, I always end up feeling like something is still missing. Because nothing fills that space in my life like you did. And I realize now that maybe nothing will. And that’s a really really hard thing to deal with.
I should’ve reached out years ago, the moment I saw you on Facebook. I looked at your profile and considered it so many times. But you seemed happy and I didn’t really feel like I had any right to do so. And of course, I was afraid. The same fear of rejection from all those years ago, protecting my heart at all cost, and now it’s become another regret and another what if.