You know who you are...

I want to be able to walk away from you, clean, whole, and happy. And yet I can't.

There is something about you - about us - in whatever capacity "us" is - that I'm not free of it yet. There is too much to learn, too much to see. I'm learning that what I thought of as a relationship is apparently far more shallow than what I should have thought.

Things I never knew I wanted, I have in our friendship.

There are times I wrack my brain about why I love you so damn much - why I can't imagine my life without you in it. I've tried to convince myself that I only want you because you don't want me...

I love the way you see the world. The details you catch that others overlook. I remember seeing the world with that depth years ago. The lines, the color, the ways things connect, the flow of life. The way the world breathes. You can make anything out of everything.

I love the way you make me laugh and smile. The way you never want to leave me in a situation where I could be upset. When I'm stressed, you remind me of all the light things in life, and the joys of it. Just as your place has become my haven, so have you. You are my peace and my solitude ... in a perfect balance. There is no one else I would rather be near when I don't want to be near anyone at all.

I love your uninhibited passion when you're creating - whether its music, photography, sculptures, or a new idea or thought. I love that you think in a way that isn't concrete.  That everything can be something different and that you greet each thing with an amazing childlike wonder. Just watching you makes me want to pull you close and kiss you until it takes my breath away.

I love the way you talk of how you were with other girls before ... I envy them. I wonder what it feels like, to be wanted by you, to be loved by you. I ache for that, to know that feeling ... I can't imagine ever wanting to let it go - I don't even have the words to describe how it would feel to me. Surreal, magical, complete.  For myself, I get glimpses of it - every time you kiss me, or when you touch my skin ... never before have I felt an entire world melt away, and with you, it does. I am no where but with you. Always before, it's perfect, intense, uninhibited, full of meaning ... and then again, we become nothing. I fight myself from running up to you when I see you and pulling you to me, every time. I talk myself out of spontaneous kisses, even when I feel like I need to. How can you encompass so much of what I love yet be so much of what I hate?

I hate that you know that I love you, and yet you still call. You still text. You come with me when I go out, we make plans, you dance with me at the bar, you capture my eyes with your own, the way you hug me... I can see the sorrow in your eyes. I hate the way you were in front my exes, with the girls, when we were alone in the wilderness ... you were mine, you were ours ... and yet you're not. It should tell me you have no concern for my feelings, that we're stuck in this sadistic cycle because we currently have no escape. Yet, I can see you're confused as well ... you don't understand why you don't feel ... almost as though you should. If I worked elsewhere, we would grow apart, and the pain would end of trying to hope as the hopeless romantic I am, that someday you'd grow to see me as something else, something more.

I hate that you won't tell me "not ever". I know you tell me again and again there is nothing there, but then the dance of it all continues, and you say and do things that friends just wouldn't do. You're so bent, it seems, on not cutting off your options that you'll hurt me again and again in the process. Who does that to a friend?

You play the act of pretending to care - remembering just enough to matter. I know its a game ... I once had this perfected, scientific. I could draw others to me like a bug to a lamp - enticing, captivating, and deadly to them. The joy in the game was receiving love ... the point of it all. I would do all the right things, say the right things, even if it meant hurting them in the end. I didn't consider the feeling of them, the reality of who they were. I ruined so many, and now I am in turn being ruined. In the end, all that mattered was that I could be the "perfect girl"... and now I am the pawn, the one tossed aside... only shown attentions and affections when its risked that I may stop showing them to you.

And I know, when someone better comes along, when you see her and something sparks within you - when you find the one you don't have to work at it with (such a stupid conundrum that is, since when have we ever had to work at anything) ... that this will stop, that I will become a fleeting memory. I hate you for that.

But I love knowing that right now, before she comes along, that if I just need to hear your voice, you will answer if I call. I can count on plans with you, time with you ... and try to enjoy what I have, even if it will never be what I want. And you know, you're all I want. We have it balanced so well, its so set and yet dynamic ... it's so hard to see an amazing relationship that truly isn't one.

I love that we can spend days without talking, and pick up where we left off. I love that we don't need to constantly be around each other -- that I can miss you and still feel OK. I love that there is no worry, no concern, just complete trust and pure enjoyment when I am around you.

I love the little things you do, absentminded expressions ... the way you sigh, the way you laugh - you have different ones, you know, for different things. I know them, I anticipate them. I smile even now at the thought of it - knowing just how you'll look when someone says something, the way you smirk in response... it's my familiar.

I love that you take the time to know me, to talk with me. In a world where so many see only parts of people, and never delve into anything more, you explore who I am, what makes me tick. I love that we can sit on the phone for hours, barely speaking, just being a part of each others evening.

I love when you play piano for me. Nothing brings me more joy than that. I'm honored that you let me inside that intimate part of your world. It makes me feel special, important. The way you show me new things you're working on, the ideas you have. Seeing you sitting there, playing, all of your feelings into the keys and the flow of the sound speaking for you ... it's one of the most beautiful things.

I love that you teach me. You show me things, tell me things I have never known. Especially when you teach me pieces of your arts, glimpses behind your eyes - it's pathetic that it makes me love you even more. I have so much admiration for you, my respect for you is beyond measure.

I hate how I have tried to hate you and can't. Why shouldn't I hate someone who drags this on?

I hate that the brightest part of my days is seeing you mid-morning, smiling that brilliant grin, your eyes twinkling with mischief and anticipation of the day ahead (its there, even if you are dreading something, you live and breathe hope and optimism, it pours out of your eyes).

I love the glances we share that communicate so much - a conversation unspoken even about the littlest things - often unintentional but there all the same.

I love the way you secretly brush my arm or against my back, as though to simply say "I see you" ... it means so much to be visible. Something even just so slight improves my mood by millions.

I love the way you call me out - you pull no punches and allow me nothing to be insignificant - you know my patterns, my habits, how I will react to something. You know what my looks mean, you embarrass me easily, and yet it makes me smile. As much as I act as though I hate it, it means so much to me.

I know that you know what I wish for. And you know that I know it won't happen. I see the conflict, the apology behind your eyes. I have spent many nights awake, trying to remember how to be in unrequited love, and still live.

It sounds silly, but when he passed, I didn't know what to do. My anchor and compass in this world, my closest friend and the man I loved more than life itself was gone. The man everyone assumed I would be with for the rest of my life and yet was star crossed ... I didn't understand his passing. If not him...

And again, I have an anchor, a compass. Someone who can ground me and set me on the straight sights, and doesn't even know it.

Slowly, I began to see you. I fought against you for a long time - reassuring the guy I was dating that there could never, would never be anything. You weren't my type. I didn't want to like you, I was content respecting you and your talent. And I didn't date people I work with.

But you amazed me, I'd never met anyone like you. You met me head on, effortlessly, it seemed. You understood my humor right away, you knew me quickly. You intrigued me as you were contradictory to yourself in so many ways. I had to know you, to touch you, to kiss you, even if just to feel that energy.

I wasn't worried about falling for you - I had more than enough walls up that would keep that from happening.

Now that I know you, I see how ridiculous it was for me to think that. You are the master of destruction, and your forte is in vulnerability. I have come to realize that I now fight so hard for control because you've completely demolished the only part of me I had control over - the ability to keep someone else out. You scare me because you have all of me. I'm completely unobstructed from your view. No one knows me as you do. And you would expect me to not have fallen for you?

You fit everything I'd wanted - hardworking, family oriented, sweet, independent, sarcastic, funny, free, creative, confident ... you truly see the world, something I had always prided myself on.

You have an easy confidence, an optimism that is contagious. At first, you simply reminded me of him, even to the way he carried himself... and then you surprised me. Changing around every turn, intriguing me. So different from him and yet so similar. You keep me interested, which is no easy feat, as I am so quickly bored.

You know some of this, of course, but you will never know the depths of this, the colors it paints with, the dance or the intensity of it, because it isn't yours to know.

Sometimes life throws us into a situation we don't understand, and we have to learn the lesson that even in as much as we seek the answers, we may not yet be ready for them.

I can no more force you to love me as anyone could force me to love them. I am old enough to know that you can't help who you love, nor can you force yourself to feel something when it just isn't there. Sometimes I wonder if you stick around trying to make yourself feel or trying to figure out why you don't.

Love is beautiful, painful, blind, rich, aching, enlightening, and far deeper that I could have ever known without you. It is far more intricate, complex, and confusing.

If I learned anything amongst my hatred of you and my love for you, that is it.  You have shown me that I am able to love patiently, kindly, selflessly and unconditionally. And I will always love you.