I Capital L Love You

shutting the door

April 28th
Dear Oliver,

I haven't written in almost a month because my therapist took my journal away. (I didn't talk to you in person for a month either, but I'll get to that soon). Dr T. locked my journal up in his office and hid the key in his drawer. The session after the one where I shared this journal out loud, he told me, "Sophie, I'm going to give this journal back to you in a month. It's good that you're starting by taking a break from your friendship, but you need to take a break from your feelings and this journal, too."

And he was right. To heal a wound, you have to stop touching it. And by touching it, I mean staying away from you. 'Cause every time you're near, that wound is constantly prodded and reopened.

And during this past month of creating a physical distance between us, I have learned a few things.

The first being that it's the hardest thing ever to not talk to someone you used to talk to every day. I was so used to sharing my little triumphs with you (like finding the good chocolate at the grocery store), it was weird not sending you those random texts. But now that I think about it – after the distance – my dependency on you wasn't healthy. At all. I shouldn't have been relying on one person for the majority of my social needs.

This might sound cynical, but people leave. I can't be so dependent because when they leave, I will be alone. And that is exactly what happened to me. You moved on with your life, and I am alone.

Hindsight is 20/20, people.

The second thing is that people don't leave until they're ready. I've been told over and over by myself and others that I need to do something about my feelings, but I haven't done anything until this year. And I realized that it's because I wasn't ready until now. I wasn't ready to finally let go of that final strand of hope that you love me back.

You don't love me back – I've known that for a while, and I needed time to fully accept it. I needed to get closure and I did so by shutting the door on my feelings. But to shut the door on my feelings, I first had to shut the door on our friendship. It can (and will) be opened again soon, but I needed to shut that door in order to shut the door that leads to my feelings.

Kinda like the saying, "When one door closes, another door opens."

The other door is my happiness. I don't know where it is yet, but it's out there somewhere. Probably at the end of some ridiculously long hall, but it's still there.

I sincerely hope that my gentle explanation of how I will be super busy with work and unable to hang out for a while was sufficient for you. The last thing I want is to look like a cold-hearted bitch and ruin our friendship.

And based on our meet-up for coffee yesterday, I think last month's white lie worked. You asked me about work and didn't seem to doubt my coverup. I take that back – if you doubted me, you didn't call me out. Then again, you always call people out on their bullshit, so you must have not noticed mine.

But the moment I saw you walk into that café, I knew that my feelings hadn't disappeared during our hiatus. They had dulled, but the delicate flutter of butterflies in my stomach was still there. (I thought they died when you got with Bri, but the stubborn little brats came back to life). But on the other hand, I didn't have the urge to hug you as soon as you walked in the door.

That, my friends, is progress. While I had unrealistically hoped that my feelings would go away in a month, the shred of progress I made ended up being more than adequate and worthy of celebration.

But in the back of my mind, I know that distance won't work forever. Temporary solutions don't solve long-term problems.

I can't just create a permanent distance, discarding our friendship because I can't deal with my feelings. If you aren't able to reciprocate my Love, there's no way I'm going to throw away our friendship; I'll gladly take whatever I can get from you.

There has got to be another door, leading to something else that will work.

~•~•~•~••~•~•~•~