Excerpts I'll Never Tell

Epilogue

If there is anything I have come to know in the last almost twelve months, it is while we are similar, we are not the same. I can't.

I don't know why, but my heart still painfully aches, and I mean painfully. To the point, I am researching how long someone's chest can ache and why it even aches when they think of someone. Cortisol and adrenaline. I feel forgotten. I feel confused and like a piece of me isn't here. Like a lost cause on a highway that missed an exit and just kept driving straight. Telling myself that if you had felt the same, you would have been here. You would have reached out, especially when I sent you the hardcovered red bound. You told me not to reach out, so I didn't, even when I convinced myself you wanted me to do as such. I didn't because I wanted to prove to you that I could do it, but I wanted you to prove to me that this isn't one way. That it never was just me fighting for you, being the first to reach out, or to not give up.

I feel as though you never felt the same way. I can't.

Over the years, we have always found our way back, but we have never truly put everything aside to make it work due to pride on both ends, ignorance, and fear. I was prideful, and I was ignorant of my reality, what I was capable of and ready for, especially when it came to relationships, and I feared you emotionally more than any other man. You were prideful and feared me as well. We were honestly a whole mess separately, but I have never felt together more the way I feel with you than with anyone else. It doesn't feel right; it doesn't feel like summer and spring. It doesn't feel genuine. It doesn't feel more.

Change takes time, it doesn't happen overnight.

My chest aches. I drive in silence because the music is too loud. Skip. Skip. Skip. I can't.

You left. I wonder what it's like to be in your shoes instead, not having anything out in the open. I tried doing that, but it doesn't feel right. I like wearing my heart and emotions out there on my sleeve because it's who I am. I want you to know what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling.

I really don't think you ever understood how much I loved you. It's humiliating, and the fact I am here, again, chest aching after a year. It feels all very one-sided like the enjoyment was in my adoration and love for who you are at your very being, even when you're not the best version of yourself. I loved you regardless of who you were. Regardless of your actions, feelings, and what you do. I loved you entirely.

My heart aches. I still cry.

My love, I can't.

Why do I still feel this way, I can't make sense of it. Why am I the only one to feel this way, why can't I make it go away? Why haven't I felt like this with anyone else? Why does it still hurt? What's the point? What's the purpose? Genuinely, make it make sense because I'm tired of constantly feeling my heart twist at the smallest interactions with fragments of you.