Hamartia

Third

My dearest, you're an angel now up in Heaven, I hope, as if you weren't always my own guardian angel here on Earth already. Why couldn't I have been the same for you? Why would you leave me, why, when all I have left are these letters to confide in?

These letters I write to you upon parchment, the words so present but only for me to read. It's cliché, it's overdone and seeing as I know I'd have little intention of ever letting you read them if you could, and knowing when I'm feeling something this strongly how could I claim it to not be, but somehow making my thoughts readable means making them real and then, with that, maybe my feelings matter even though to you I know they don't. They didn't.

They can't have, or surely you wouldn't have done what you did. You would have realised, you must have realised what leaving like that would do to me. Did you think about me at all, in your final moments? You must have known I'd be the one to walk in and find you cold.

No, I'm not thinking about it, in fact, I'm going to pretend you will read this, because yes, it makes me feel better in the most sick and twisted way because of course it actually makes everything all the worse for me. I am sat here torturing myself, tricking myself into believing you might walk around the corner any second and I'd have to blush and hasten to hide the sheets beneath a book where you could not see, squirm uncomfortably under your kind, but probing gaze as you offered your curiosity into what I'd been writing, before burying my face in my hands once I gave in and let you read anyway.

If I'd ever have plucked up the real courage to tell you before it was too late, what would you have done? Would you have kissed me? I always liked to imagine you wouldn't have said a word back but showed me how you felt instead with a kiss, a tender one. I still like to imagine it could happen, although perhaps that's just because the truth has not yet sunk in. I don't want it to either, I will pretend it doesn't have to. For now.

I'm going to talk to you about my love for you instead. My undying love and I'm going to bitch and moan and whine about how you never noticed how much I adored you, even though I'm the most obvious person in the world. It's going to distract me from the dangerous thought that perhaps you did notice, you just couldn't have given two shits about it.

We met in 2009. You don't need me to tell you that. What you don't know, however, is the same day I got on that train to see you was the day I realised what I felt for you could be summed up quite nicely with one little four letter word: love. In fact, that epiphany came to me at precisely the moment you hugged me hello, the very second your heartbeat became audible as I pressed my ear against your chest, leaning into what was honestly the best thing anyone had ever given me, that close hug. Now there was a warmness and a comfort I'd been longing for my whole life, right there in your arms for me always.

I'd known you were perfect for months before that, of course, even before I'd ever spoken to you over Skype, but only then, in that one embrace, did I realise that the word that could be used to describe just quite how strongly I felt 'perfect' was the adjective for you was love. Love, and yes I have unwaveringly loved you ever since and you've never ceased to be perfect in my eyes, probably in everyone's.

Here's one of my favourite things that I love about you, just so I can reminiscence and you can know why I adored you so:

In the entirety of your beautiful existence on this planet you have not once said something bad about another person and meant it. You must have had some sort of gift because no one can be that optimistic all the time, no one, it's impossible, yet you did. You could always find something positive to say about someone, even people you didn't particularly like (me at times, I know, and I just wish there was a way to let you know how truly sorry I am now, even more than I was at the time, you deserved better than me, far better than, and I know you know which time I mean when I say I was at my worst).

Even through the times I made tough, however, loving you, just existing in a state where I loved every last cell of your being, was the most wonderful six years of my life. Somehow, just because I loved you, everything was made a little better in the world; even the worst things could happen and all I'd have to do was think of you and I'd start to feel better because after all, how bad could the world really be when it also lets Phil Lester exist in the same space and time.

Loving you was like my drug, my antidepressant, I felt like I lived those six years in the best haze of my life. If there really is a cloud nine I was certainly on it. When you were in the room my free time was spent staring at you and when you weren't I spent it wishing I could. Every night without fail I fell asleep thinking of one thing. Guess the pattern; it was you. I could only hope you'd be there in my dreams too because as far as I was concerned, if I could have, I would have spent every last second with you and still be left wanting more. My daydreams were images of you and me together and you being perfect and me being happy and us being in love. I was putting you and me in every song, every movie with a happy ending, forever wondering that if maybe I just wished for it hard enough it might come true.

Unfortunately, despite all your perfections, your one fatal flaw, had to be how oblivious you were to every signal I tried to send. Of some of those signals my favourites included:

1) Those Valentine's cards from your 'secret admirer'. Yeah, that was me, not a subscriber, and everything those cards said was cheesy but true.

2) That I always let you choose what we watched on TV, never mind the fact we often wanted to watch the same anime regardless,

3) and I always cooked your favourite meals when it was my night to cook,

4) and I more than willingly let you cuddle up in my bed the night of that really bad thunderstorm a few years back, even though it was 2012 and you thought I hated you.

Any way I could, I tried to let you know how deeply I felt absolutely everything for you, but to you it was never more than a friendly affection. It was always something more than just a friendly affection, Phil, not that you ever saw that and now can never see it again.

With more love than you can even imagine,

Dan