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a love letter to a friend (the extended outro)

I couldn’t write this in my letter because I think I would sound a little insane and also I ran out of time lol

I think loving you has taught me a lot about myself. And it would be an enormous disservice to call this anything other than love; the exhilaration and the blinding terror of being seen and understood so deeply by someone who, despite it all and despite all our split and shared flaws, wants as badly to be seen as I do.

Amongst others, the lessons include: how to let go; how to resist my baser instincts towards jealousy and envy; how to move forward and forgive, even when we hurt each other so deeply not-so-long ago; above all, how to keep choosing this- to keep choosing us- to work at this and (against my inner instincts) to change, always striving to be the better and bigger person, even when it feels like the hardest thing in the world.

M spoke a little about seeing and loving someone deeply in his wedding speech, at your marriage, and of course (just like so many other things) I arrive late to understanding. But I got there in the end, E, and thank god it wasn’t too late to now know how lucky I am to have a friendship like this. How immensely privileged I am to have my inner world known so intimately - and to know yours equally closely - in a life that passes so quickly. How insane it all still feels that someone who I admire and respect so much would also think I am worth the effort.

sometimes I suspect you still read this blog; maybe you do, and maybe you will text me about this later. But the joy of it all is that I think that you would understand, that you already know that I do or feel things either intensely or not at all, so if you do, forgive me (again, again), these words have rattled around my head for months and now I am finally setting them free

served cold

by god I’m going to savour every single minute of the next few months

this birthday I wish for:

less neck pain, more defined shoulder muscles

a great bottle of vintage champagne

the wisdom to remember the lessons of the last 10 years, hard-earned and won through so many tears

nevertheless, the courage to try and try again without fear of heartbreak or rejection

the grace to forgive others for things they could not have helped, for things that can no longer be changed

happiness for Y and the discipline to choose kindness towards her, every single time, no matter how hard it gets

more depth of character, more laughter, more dinners with my friends, more time with my parents

a/e wedding

i’m glad i’ve grown enough to only want another to be happy (without (too many) complications or other motivations in the mix), and to derive the simplest of joys from seeing them achieve it

what a weird feeling to have. last night, looking at someone not myself, someone not Y, and suddenly remembering why we first became friends - how I admired her fortitude and kindness, her grace under pressure, the way she held onto herself even through abuse

what a feeling it is, to see someone and to see through them to the sum of the depths they had endured, now just bad memories we hardly ever talk about

every day i tell myself / comparison has only ever stolen my contentment

getting older

do you remember the way you leaned your head on my thigh, all those years ago

the sleeveless shirt you wore to a friend’s birthday celebration, the way I couldn’t keep my eyes off you

confusion, fear, self loathing

growing up young and daring together, the arrogance of intelligence and the heady rush of sin, the way you’d catch my eye in a crowded room

i close my eyes and we’re only eighteen again

more useless things

I don't know why I stepped away from writing for so long. actually, I really like this self-indulgent form of journalling (spilling my secrets to all and sundry on the internet behind the cover of anonymity) so here are more disjointed thoughts I had, re-arranged nicely because I like the way pretty words form phrases:

I guess I stopped writing because up until I met Y, my personal life had been filled with chaos and now my relationship with her is anything but. it's not easy to get new material out of something so good and so stable - but happily for my two (2) readers (?) (maybe just me), old material hasn't been rehashed for quite some while

thinking about her still makes my heart hurt. but we have gone through too much and come too far for me to turn back now and say hold on, can we go back to the way we used to be, I'm sorry. as if sorry could change years and as if regret would help. so I just dream about it, night after night, my dream self paying the price that my conscious self won't think about

writing (2) above actually made me too sad to continue. will try again soon

conversations on love

tiktok and instagram really have fucked my attention span, it’s kinda sad how the only thing I can focus on now for hours at a time is work or video games

reading takes conscious effort

but finally getting down to reading E’s gift and things that leapt out at me were:

1. love comes in many different forms

2. you can try all you want and in the end you still need some luck

on (2), this got me thinking about how SMT keeps saying that being a partner needs luck. and i thought, how lucky I am already to have someone like Y in my life. how lucky I am to have succeeded in this most important way. how i might die tomorrow and how this doesn’t really matter after all, if I only am lucky once in this life, that’s still okay

late at night

she said: it hurts so much and you know exactly how I feel, because i broke your heart fifteen years ago the same way she’s breaking mine now, and i don’t have it in me to go away

i’m so sorry

she’s so sorry

i said: i promise you it will hurt so much more when she leaves you, and i know exactly how it feels - i loved you so much, when we were only just girls growing up together

disjointed things

i wanted to put down:

why am i so sad about things that happened so long ago

why am i so sad about girls who didn’t love me back, still

do people just hold these things within them, oceans of memories and sad things that flare up every now and then when they make the mistake of thinking about them, for too long

will i ever achieve inner peace and acceptance lol, i’ve ascended to a new plane of excruciating self awareness but sometimes i’m still so so so so so so sad about so many things, i don’t know what to do

things pass

haven’t been sleeping well cos aircon isn’t working so here I am, journaling again for the first time in years at 6.40am ugh

thinking about what’s changed, feeling this awful nostalgia for how I used to be - and I know who I am is so different now, so much more well adjusted, after 29 years I feel less like drowning and more like treading water in my current of relationships, obligations, love and fear

but in the process of getting there I had to give up so much. and more than anything it bugs me how much I hurt E and how much, mainly as a result of my immaturity and shortsightedness, I irrevocably altered the nature of our friendship. i know things are different now and we’re still friends and going back doesn’t work but all too often I still miss our easy closeness, i miss having someone (apart from Y) who knew me better than the back of my own hand, I miss the endless texts and the chemistry and the feeling of being mutually important to each other

separately, in other small joys, realising that [the original reason why I created this blog] continues to value me so much more than I thought. she really is one of the strangest people I’ve ever dealt with - never texts first, constantly ghosts me in the middle of conversations, goes months (or MORE) without saying a SINGLE WORD to me - but then now and again I reach out and she says, I’ll fly down to meet you in DC, I’ll get you an incredible wedding present - there is such a diversity of people and ways in which love manifests, and my life is all the richer for it

onwards and upwards i guess

emotions r v tiring

tell me

is there the smallest part of you that remembers our past the way i do? any small, buried part of you that still dreams about the almost-ifs, more than a decade later, the looks and the grey touches, the moments that felt like we were doing something wrong? the terror and the illegality of it, the want, the indescribable longing? or was it all in my head? twelve years on, why do i still think about you?

the world’s worst breakup

someday I'll be able to write about us

formative

beginning to suspect that I will never stop dreaming of the girl I was, all those years ago, hopelessly in love with the girl of my dreams

the song she played will always be as evocative as it was - is - then and now

grey areas, tentative friendships, inside jokes, I'll always wonder what we could have been

longing, sadness, exhilaration all bound up together in the memories of the best days of my life

Memories are weird things, people are strange

I still remember kissing you after you'd had a cigarette from that absurd little case of yours. the chill of a lonely winter in London

the metal bench we sat on. the orange glow of the streetlamps outside. my breath puffing out in a cloud besides me

I've never not been in love with you, I've never known what it is like to love you, years later and still I'm taken back to that very moment

sadness, sweetness, losing something I never had anyway

bye bye

who was I before this, who am I now, where do I go from here

i still feel like such a fucking failure

Whoever said things have to be difficult to matter (or whatever the term is) was full of shit

Loving you is the easiest, most natural thing I've ever done. Inevitable, even, as easy as the sunrise each morning and as sure as the passing of days

You're the surest bet, the safest pair of hands, the quickest way to a better day, the rock that never weathers

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