Dear R,

There was poet, I think it might have been Earnest Hemmingway, who said "I have written you a hundred letters, but I haven't sent any because none of them were true enough". In the same way, the letter I wrote to you that Wednesday evening the January before last, should never have been sent. This is the letter that should have been sent, but I didn' t know that yet. 

R, I didn't love you. I didn't even "Like Like" you. All I felt was a mild inkling that you were somebody I wouldn't mind being miserable over for a bit. And I thought that because that was what we both felt, the right thing was to feel it together. But I was wrong, because I was the wrong number in your equation. You x me did not = good, in the same way that 1 x 1 = 1, not 2. We were too alike, we two - excepting your honesty and my deciet. 

You were honest about your feelings - I lied because I wanted to be kind. You were honest about your inseccurities - I hid my own because I wanted to impress you, to protect you. You were honest about your family - I could not be open about mine.

I could not tell you that all the times I skipped lunch it wasn't because I forgot to eat in the same way you did, but because I felt the only thing I could really control was how much I ate. I didn't tell you how much I really cared, desperately cared, about my studies and how I found you and your friends' relative disinterest and lack of understanding about the pressure I was under maddening.

I didn't tell you that there is someone else in my life who has dark hair and freckles, who is taller than me, who likes numbers and computers like you do, and who suffers from depression and suicidal tendancies just like you. I didn't tell you that I couldn't make room in my heart for someone to whom I had to give love that wasn't there, because all my love was pouring out my heart like "water through a telescope" like Lindsey Bird puts it, to someone else. I didn't tell you that a lot of my stress wasn't actually about my schoolwork, but about worrying that if I went home he would be dead. I didn't tell you that I was selfish, shallow and unsure that I could give any more of myself to anyone, let alone someone who needed as much care as he did. 

I couldn't find the words to tell you that when you told me that you wanted to die or detailed the ways in which your mind convinced you to hate yourself, that all I wanted to do was shake you and hold you at the same time. I couldn't tell you how special you are, how important you are, how much you matter. I didn't tell you that there is a God who I believe knows you in your inmost being, who died because He loves you so much. 

But I also didn't tell you that that I wanted to run my fingers through your chesnut hair, that I wanted to bury my face in your shoulder and breathe in the warmth of your shirt. I didn't tell you that you have nice hands - that those delicate hands should have held mine and that I regret they never did. I didn't tell you that your striking blue eyes seemed to see straight into me from the moment you first spoke to me and that the way they twinkle when you laugh is magical.

I didn't tell you that your caring was what first drew me to you - that because you never complimented my appearance it made what we had seem sacred to me, unsullied by the sordid ways in which other boys spoke to me. I didn't tell you that the messages that made me smile the most were the ones where you repeated our "silly mantra" that we should "have confidence in ourselves", that so many of our conversations made me laugh.

I didn't tell you that I loved you. And I should have. I didn't tell you any of these good things. 

I haven't told you that when we ended, I knew I'd lost my best friend. 

I won't tell you any of this now, because you're gone. 

But I will tell you goodbye, which is the last thing I forgot to tell you.