*This is a pointed letter, continue at your own risk. Or maybe it's a work of fiction. Meh, your call.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you.
This is what I realized I hadn't said to you yet.
***
I'm a very passionate person, and anyone who knows me well could probably roll their eyes and provide you with about five stories about that, off the top of their heads and without batting an eyelash. It's true, with girls I'm either indifferent about them or head over heels for them. Not that I show it, mind you, but it's still there. If a girl gets under my skin, she lives there like a parasite leeching off my thoughts and emotional capacity for a life span about as long as this tortured metaphor's. Not only that, but I'm extremely unpredictable. It can take me days to get over a girl who locked eyes with me from across a busy room, hours to get over a girlfriend, months to get over a girl I met for three days.
In other words, you.
Without stressing the point too much, I've only ever been in love once and it didn't end very well. And when I say it didn't end very well, I mean it in the same sense that playing the bagpipes to soothe a raging grizzly bear wouldn't end very well. Long story short, eventually I realized that I hadn't felt that way about any other girl because I'd put up too many defenses and completely given up on the idea of trusting a girl enough to allow myself to like her. Yeah yeah, mushy mushy stuff, blah de blah de blah.
My point being that I was completely unprepared to deal with how you made me feel for the very short period of time that we've known each other for. Not that I felt it immediately, mind you. At first, as always, I was indifferent. You were just someone I had to deal with. It didn't take long to warm up to you, but I'm a friendly guy so I put it down to that and left it there. As time went on, I frequently caught myself looking at you without quite knowing why I was doing it... maybe I was bored and your face was the most pleasant thing around to look at -which it was- but it doesn't make sense because I had to crane my neck to look at you. When we talked, I was actually listening and not secretly thinking about chocolate cake. Whenever we playfully touched, it didn't feel forced. I didn't understand why it bothered me when you were being flirty with other guys.
Bit by bit, as I started coming out of my shell, I started appreciating how beautiful you are and how there seems to be a haze around you, hiding the immediate universe around your face, overshadowing your surroundings as they fade into complete insignificance beside your radiant smile. Suddenly I'm not just hanging out with you because meh there's nothing good on television -which is my usual motivation to do stuff- but because I actively seek you out because I actually want to be around you. Subtly, without even knowing it, I crossed the border from indifferent to smitten. And I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you felt the same way.
And just like that, the real world stepped in and it was all over.
I had to take a 37 hour trip back home, which was every bit as exhausting as it sounds- even more so. I didn't have any money because I'd lost my wallet and I'd vowed not to ask my dad for any extra cash. Well, I had a $100 bill I didn't want to break because I wanted to give it back to dad because it was his money (I'd promised myself I'd pay for the trip on my own) and a couple of dollars and a pocketful of cents. I spent 6 hours on the floor at JFK, hungry and sick, surviving on tap water and the stale popcorn and candy bars I bought for my $3.89 (I still remember the number).
But I digress.
You'd left such an impression on me that even as I sat there, coughing my head off and eating cheap popcorn, I had to take out my tablet and start jotting down notes about how I was feeling. I was afraid I would forget the feeling and I wanted to put it down in words as soon as I could. Before I knew it, I was on the flight, and it was all I could do to wait until I got to Amsterdam to... party, you ask? Get some well-deserved rest from my 37 hour-long journey? Hang out with my best friend who I hardly ever see?
All I wanted to do was get to his house so I could sit down and write that blogpost I wrote a few months ago.
Jet-lagged, hungry, penniless, homeless, sleepy, sick and in fucking Amsterdam, and all I could think of during my 12 hour transit was you and how I couldn't even wait to get back home to write down what I was feeling because I was afraid words would fail me if I waited. I wanted to save that feeling; immortalize it... preserve it. If I could, I would have framed that feeling and hung it up on my bedroom wall, because it was nothing short of a miracle.
This is what I'll always be grateful to you for. I thought I'd never feel that way about anyone else, and you proved me wrong. You proved that I could have chemistry with a girl and like her and be a smitten idiot. You'll always be that girl to me; the girl I wish I could have been with if circumstances had been different. The girl who showed me that there is still a chance for a broken someone like me to -in the everlasting words of Joey Tribbiani- "grab a spoon". You gave me the most valuable gift you could have given me.
You gave me hope.
Which is why you'll always be special to me, and why I will always wonder what could have been.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you.
This is what I realized I hadn't said to you yet.
***
I'm a very passionate person, and anyone who knows me well could probably roll their eyes and provide you with about five stories about that, off the top of their heads and without batting an eyelash. It's true, with girls I'm either indifferent about them or head over heels for them. Not that I show it, mind you, but it's still there. If a girl gets under my skin, she lives there like a parasite leeching off my thoughts and emotional capacity for a life span about as long as this tortured metaphor's. Not only that, but I'm extremely unpredictable. It can take me days to get over a girl who locked eyes with me from across a busy room, hours to get over a girlfriend, months to get over a girl I met for three days.
In other words, you.
Without stressing the point too much, I've only ever been in love once and it didn't end very well. And when I say it didn't end very well, I mean it in the same sense that playing the bagpipes to soothe a raging grizzly bear wouldn't end very well. Long story short, eventually I realized that I hadn't felt that way about any other girl because I'd put up too many defenses and completely given up on the idea of trusting a girl enough to allow myself to like her. Yeah yeah, mushy mushy stuff, blah de blah de blah.
My point being that I was completely unprepared to deal with how you made me feel for the very short period of time that we've known each other for. Not that I felt it immediately, mind you. At first, as always, I was indifferent. You were just someone I had to deal with. It didn't take long to warm up to you, but I'm a friendly guy so I put it down to that and left it there. As time went on, I frequently caught myself looking at you without quite knowing why I was doing it... maybe I was bored and your face was the most pleasant thing around to look at -which it was- but it doesn't make sense because I had to crane my neck to look at you. When we talked, I was actually listening and not secretly thinking about chocolate cake. Whenever we playfully touched, it didn't feel forced. I didn't understand why it bothered me when you were being flirty with other guys.
Bit by bit, as I started coming out of my shell, I started appreciating how beautiful you are and how there seems to be a haze around you, hiding the immediate universe around your face, overshadowing your surroundings as they fade into complete insignificance beside your radiant smile. Suddenly I'm not just hanging out with you because meh there's nothing good on television -which is my usual motivation to do stuff- but because I actively seek you out because I actually want to be around you. Subtly, without even knowing it, I crossed the border from indifferent to smitten. And I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you felt the same way.
And just like that, the real world stepped in and it was all over.
I had to take a 37 hour trip back home, which was every bit as exhausting as it sounds- even more so. I didn't have any money because I'd lost my wallet and I'd vowed not to ask my dad for any extra cash. Well, I had a $100 bill I didn't want to break because I wanted to give it back to dad because it was his money (I'd promised myself I'd pay for the trip on my own) and a couple of dollars and a pocketful of cents. I spent 6 hours on the floor at JFK, hungry and sick, surviving on tap water and the stale popcorn and candy bars I bought for my $3.89 (I still remember the number).
But I digress.
You'd left such an impression on me that even as I sat there, coughing my head off and eating cheap popcorn, I had to take out my tablet and start jotting down notes about how I was feeling. I was afraid I would forget the feeling and I wanted to put it down in words as soon as I could. Before I knew it, I was on the flight, and it was all I could do to wait until I got to Amsterdam to... party, you ask? Get some well-deserved rest from my 37 hour-long journey? Hang out with my best friend who I hardly ever see?
All I wanted to do was get to his house so I could sit down and write that blogpost I wrote a few months ago.
Jet-lagged, hungry, penniless, homeless, sleepy, sick and in fucking Amsterdam, and all I could think of during my 12 hour transit was you and how I couldn't even wait to get back home to write down what I was feeling because I was afraid words would fail me if I waited. I wanted to save that feeling; immortalize it... preserve it. If I could, I would have framed that feeling and hung it up on my bedroom wall, because it was nothing short of a miracle.
This is what I'll always be grateful to you for. I thought I'd never feel that way about anyone else, and you proved me wrong. You proved that I could have chemistry with a girl and like her and be a smitten idiot. You'll always be that girl to me; the girl I wish I could have been with if circumstances had been different. The girl who showed me that there is still a chance for a broken someone like me to -in the everlasting words of Joey Tribbiani- "grab a spoon". You gave me the most valuable gift you could have given me.
You gave me hope.
Which is why you'll always be special to me, and why I will always wonder what could have been.
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