Letters To No One

Letter #21: To Dom With Love

You are perfect.

You are beautiful.

You are the stars in the sky and the moon beams on my skin.

If I could take everything back, I would. I would give anything to sit beside you again and just watch. To watch the way your eyes light up when you're talking about him. The way you raise your eyebrows and drop your eyes to the desk and just scoff when I say something ridiculous. Have I ever told you that's my favorite thing about you? That look. Because in that simple gesture, that simple lift in your brow and small breath of air, I felt like the luckiest person in the universe. Because I could make you do that. Because it was my joke, or comment, or suggestion that was so outlandish that you didn't even want to laugh.

I fell in love with you slowly and painfully. I didn't even realize it until I could picture that exact expression over and over again in my mind and in my dreams. I don't remember the day I knew. I just remember not loving you and then one day not being able to take my eyes off you.

You said you hated your body. You thought you needed to lose weight, to wear more make-up, to dye your hair, and change your clothes. I said you were perfect. Not out loud of course. I whispered it, to myself, over and over again while we texted or when you sent me a new snap. I love your curves. I love your eyebrows and that small patch of acne you get along your forehead. I love your hair especially when you wear it naturally, it's so perfect. And I love your clothes. Everything about you is perfect and I just wish you could see that.

Being in love with you is killing me. You're like my own personalized panic attack. I'm glad I don't see you anymore, I don't think I could handle it. Do you know that after that 10 minutes it took to take the senior class photo (the one where I got shoved in next to you) I locked myself in the bathroom and broke down so completely I thought I wasn't going to find all the pieces? I still haven't found them all. You still look perfect. But it's not my place to tell you that anymore. It never was. It's his and it will be for the foreseeable future.

You see there's something about falling in love with your best friend that fucks you up in such a way it's almost as if all the color has been drained from the world and is only visible when you're with them. But what happens when your best friend "can't do this right now"? When they need to "distance" themself? When they fucking pawn you off on the boy who's been sexually harassing you for months because suddenly you've become nothing more than a burden? What happens then, Dom, huh? What fucking happens then?

I'll tell you.

Life becomes unbearable. I can't even look myself in the mirror anymore. I look at myself and all I can see is the words. All I can see is the broken girl who confessed she loved you when she needed you the most and turned to nothing but cracked China when you said you couldn't deal with her anymore. I didn't need you to deal with me. I needed you to tell me that everything was going to be okay. I needed you to promise me that you'd love me too, maybe not in the same way, I could never ask that of you, but just enough that the cracks could heal. Now I'm standing on the edge, Dom, and strange things are happening. I've lost myself and I don't want to find me.

I understand now, Dominique. I understand.

I can't love you.

You aren't mine to love.

You never were.

But, holy fuck, I'm so in love with you it's killing me.