messages i'll never send

i am mad but i can't be

i'll never forget the first time you kissed me. we had just left the mall and i was finishing my lemonheads that you gave me and we were about to go home but we just didn't want to leave. i just kept looking at you and not wanting the night to end. right then, that day, i knew i wanted to be with you properly. you just made me laugh at everything and we had so much in common yet we were so different and i felt so giddy around you, almost like a child. and i remember just looking at you as you spoke, in your car, the way i did many many times after that day, and then you stopped and stared back at me before asking to kiss me. i wanted nothing more than a kiss so i said yes but neither of us moved at first and i just started laughing and you did too because we didn't know how to just start kissing after that but i was so glad you had asked for consent because you know that i get really anxious sometimes but eventually you leaned in and i did too and you cupped my face and kissed me. it was just a kiss at first, and we parted after a couple seconds so we could breathe and i felt like i was on cloud nine. we kissed again and there was tongue this time and you tasted like lemons and i felt like i was bursting at the seams with happiness. you made me feel like no one else had before and it was mesmerizing. you asked if that was ok, making sure you weren't 'jamming your tongue down my throat' because you knew that he had done that to me before and i felt so awful about him. but he wasn't you. you made me feel so comfortable and safe and ridiculously happy. that moment right there was the moment i knew i wanted to be with you.

much later i had dreams about us being together through senior year, some about doing long distance through college, and one dream where we were married and living together with two kids. it used to scare me because i didnt know how you felt about that and you seemed like your future had already been planned out. but eventually i felt that i could easily spend the rest of my life with you, and i really wanted to. the littlest things you did made me fall for you and all i wanted was to be with you always. at my prom, singing on the dance floor while looking into your eyes and holding you, sweaty as ever, and you holding me back firmly but gently all at the same time, the way all your touches were. you made me feel safe and supported, yet you were so gentle and it was the most contradictory yet wonderful feeling in the world. but that night, when we were singing on the dance floor together and holding each other and i just looked into your eyes and i felt something deep within me and that was the moment i knew for certain i wanted to spend forever with you. i felt like my past dreams were validated, and i hoped you were feeling something too.

i didn't stop to consider that maybe you didn't want to spend your forever with me, i just wanted to be yours. because i felt like we were meant to be together and i tried to tell myself labels were stupid but you kept talking about what if we break up and i didnt realize until much later but you were so focused on the end that you didn't even ever truly want an "us" to begin. you must have felt from the start that it wouldn't work, that it wasnt right. you prioritized your future because you never saw me as a part of it. and after knowing for sure that i wanted to love you for the rest of my life, realizing and accepting that you never wanted the same was one of the hardest things to do in the world. it still hurts, two months later. i'll see a picture of you, or something we both liked, or i'll read something that reminds me of you, or i'll see your family and friends on instagram and i realize that i still have feelings for you. yet i've accepted that you don't and never felt as much for me as i feel for you, and it makes me want to be so angry to think about that because i want to hate you, i want to wish i never met you, i want to cast you and everyone else that knows you out of my life because i remember telling myself the moment lisa told me you had a girlfriend, "i can't let myself catch feelings for him" and i did, even before you broke up with her, and i'm still paying for it and it makes me mad at myself mostly, but also i want to be mad at you. but i can't. i can't be mad at you the same way i can't make you love me. you can't change the way you feel. and neither can i. it's so frustrating to understand that i want to be angry at you because you didn't want me but i love you and i want you to be happy, even if that means i'm not with you. of course i wish i could be with you, i wish i hadn't given up on us, i want to run back into your arms, crying into your chest and ask you to take me back and to love me, but i can't. and i want you to be happy. that's what love is to me, platonic or romantic, it's wanting someone else's happiness over your own. so deep down, under the surface pain i still feel, i do hope you find someone someday who will love you as much as i did, but will make you feel happier than i ever could.