I’ve been in love with my best friend for more than two years now. Sometimes I tell myself I never was in love with her, and even if I was at one point, surely I’m not now. But as I listened to my family express their doubts about my abilities and felt the worst physical pain of my life, I could only think of her. I relied on thoughts of her smile and kind words and piercing gaze to carry me through. When things were really bad I dreamed of her tucking my hair behind my ear to kiss me and of her holding me tight while telling me everything would be okay.
When she’s taking over my thoughts, I try to tell myself that I just need someone to hold onto. A person to consider “mine” as I overhear my friend talk about engagements and see the letters from his long-distance significant others. That’s all she is; someone filling the space created when those moments of loneliness strike.
I might be able to convince myself of this if I could forgot about the past two years. But I can’t, especially after reading through pages of the journals which hold my thoughts from this time.
Pages were filled with the downfalls and joys that come with navigating your early 20s. The heartbreak of seeing your friends fall apart under stress and the relief of feeling like you’re figuring out your life’s purpose. A lot of changes occurred, and I could see that I had grown. Yet one things had remained constant, his name. Just when I thought she had disappeared from the pages and my thoughts and my life, her name appeared in ink.
To an outsider the mere mention of her name may seem like nothing. But as I read my previous writings, I realized that putting her name on paper was the painful admission that she was still consuming my thoughts.
As I read through the pages encapsulating the past 20 months of my life, I saw the fluctuations between wanting her and wanting her gone. What has drawn me to you also terrifies me. You care. You get me. But do you get me enough to realize that I’m falling for you? I can’t get you from penetrating my mind and shaping how I’m viewing and interacting with the world. And I’m beginning to invite you into my thoughts rather than push you out.
There might always be something there, but we can just be friends. I was so quiet and serious but he said through word and action “hey, there’s something more to you and I want to know what it is.” He gave me confidence and propelled me to become what someone believed I could be. She, again. Trying to force dreams into my mind.
It’s not that I want to be her man exactly – it’s just that she’s my go to for so many things that I feel like I should be something to her. I think I’m reaching the point of being lonely and wanting someone and she is alway the person in those situations because she’s the only person I know. But there’s so many more people out there! I am over her – I just need to believe this.
One quarter of my value for her is because I know she won’t take my sassy insults personally, but also because I believe that she values my honest, vulnerable thoughts and she deserves to hear them.
I finally ranted about hows he is still there in my mind and I’m just waiting for something to happen even though I know we’re nothing and I’m constantly caught between moving on and going back and I know it’s pathetic and there’s so much more out there that I can’t see and it’s so fucking frustrating.
But as I write this now, I’m still in love with my best friend. And she has no idea.
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