I don’t even know what to write about you, yet the drive to do so has been with me for ever so long. A good year now, really. Longer if I think about it. In fact you can trace back when I stopped writing in this blog and you’ll probably find that to be right about the time I wanted to write about you.
My life was chaos at the time. Rift with so much sorrow and pain. You were the friend that led me through it all. At the time we were just friends, as I suppose we are now. I knew you fancied me, in the way any man who likes a great behind might. I knew we were dear to each other. The way any friendship fueled by an unexplained emotional bond leads to dearness. Looking back I realize I was in love with you long before you or I realized it; and while I won’t put those exact words into your mouth, I know I am very much treasured by you. Whether or not the exact phrase applies, I know the emotion flows both ways.
It was never about sex or physical intimacy with us, which is a fair point as we’ve never been physically intimate. No, I’m not counting the times you caught me crying as my world was shattering, and wrapped your arms around me, trying to help hold me together and in one piece. That move showed me your heart, not your lust.
We discussed being intimate, but it never came to pass. Even while it would have been ok. Even though it would still be ok. However, I’ve never needed that from you. Oh, I’m sure I’d enjoy it, but I’m asexual enough to never need sex from anyone. Even you.
What I need the most, possibly of all the things in the world that I don’t have, is just your existence in my life. See, I know you insist you aren’t a stranger and that in our core we’ll always be friends, but we are no longer in each other’s lives. I could blame you because you are impossible to ever get to text back. Or your fear that hanging out will cause one thing to lead to another, which you aren’t comfortable with for reason I respect. However, I hold so much of the blame within me for leaving a job I needed to leave. Not because anything was wrong with the job, but because everything was wrong with me.
It is funny that our affection for one another was this big secret, which I understand why, but there is someone who knew from the start. I didn’t have to tell Pat, though. He told me. Granted, I had figured it out by then, but he knew. It wasn’t anything you or I said, please understand. He reads people like we might read a newspaper or a book or a picture book with captions. It was in our eyes. In every interaction with one another. Interactions that 99.9% of the world would see and think nothing of, but he knew. And my dear, dear sweet friend, he has never been anything but ok with it. He knows what our friendship is to me. How pure and wonderful it is. How true it is. How the mutual joy in simply knowing each other and calling each other friend is a gift. You don’t find many of those friendships. Usually someone has something to be gained. Or someone is secretly annoyed. True friendship for its own sake? A gift.
That friendship turned to love and love acknowledged lust and that’s ok. He knows that and is ok with that. Our marriage’s complexity is not understood by most, but he has his one woman friend that with my blessing, and when I’m in good mental health, he may go to when she is in town. It is hard to be married to someone with little to no sex drive, I understand, and they love each other in a way that makes it more wholesome than a random one-night-stand, and yet she would never dream of coming between him and I.
You, my dear, are my unicorn. People flock to you. Want to be close to you. Want to know you. Be your friend. Give you their business. He is not immune to that pull you have. It’s literally like a gravitational pull and he’s felt it. After he confessed he knew our feelings, we talked about it at length. Our little secret details are still ours, but he knows the feelings, desires, and heart ache. He doesn’t blame me one bit for wanting to be near you, even if it does lead to intimacy, and he’d be the last to blame you for wanting to be intimate with me. Or even just wanting to sit and talk for hours over coffee or tea or even alcohol. I’d stay 100% sober so that nothing would be done that you’d regret in the morning. I swear to you, my dear.
That is how I knew this wasn’t BPD love. That I didn’t simply turn you into a white knight. His validation of it was a huge step. The fact he fully supports us in whatever it leads to is not trivial, with the understanding you would never dream of taking me from him for good. You always have been our biggest relationship fan and supporter, which I have come to understand to be the reason behind your fear of being with me even just as friends, even though you believe in open marriages. I know you’re afraid of hurting him or simply respect him to much to be alone with me in any capacity. Then it having been a year since our last real length of time spent together and my heart still shatters into a million pieces at the thought that I may never… Anyway BPD love has always been gotten over much faster. I see the flaws in them, or they write me off, or they turn hurtful, or basically I recognize they are only human, and the desire for them is lost in the wind.
With you… A year later and I still hope that one day you really will take me to dinner for my birthday. You don’t have to touch me in any way. Just once again let me be subject to your gravitational pull, let your words grace my ear, let my lips be privileged to tell you my thoughts and my life. Not only would that be enough, but that’s all I need.