Um, hi

so I've been thinking of you. It's a quiet day so, of course I am. I don't think of you everyday anymore, but on the quiet days, definitely. I'll try to be plain. I'm less jangly nerves these days and I've gotten tired of wrapping myself in big, bright words to say what I want to say while maintaining plausible deniability.

I've been thinking of you and what you're doing and how you look now. Your faces have gotten a little fuzzy. But I still remember clearly the patches on your coats and how each of you smelled, though your mannerisms are beginning to fade too. I haven't seen enough of you and some of I out and out ran away from and some of you I didn't honor enough in the first place. I was unkind. I am sorry about that. You were my so many first everythings. So I was scared or else not paying attention. I now sort of know that's the way of things, that that is always going to have been the way things shook out for me, but it doesn't mean I like it. You were all big and important and amazing. For a while, for a very special while, you were all that mattered. I was surrounded by you and it was beautiful. So I'm thinking of that.

You know, some friends of mine from college (acquaintances of yours? I gotta be honest, I'm forgetting who you looked at that wasn't me) got married this past weekend and their whole little crew showed up. And I realized that we will probably never all get together again. That's okay and we can't be anything but ourselves and we can't do anything about the fact that we all wanted things far away from each other, but it doesn't mean I like it. I hear that they are also trying to make sense of what they meant to each other, but I don't think it's the same.

I'm still struggling. I have a hard time not lying about doing more than I am. I don't call my family enough. I try to shut out the world. I have to really work to not assume the worst. I'm building the childhood bedroom of my dreams. I still have all sorts of ideas that I don't do anything about. I misplace my love and stop myself from loving, to stop myself from hurting anyone. I think I moved to a place that everyone is destined to leave again. I don't entirely trust myself and I am still so afraid. I have shrunk from the big thing that came from me being around you. I've gotten small. I'm still flinching at everything.

But I am a little better than I was too, in a million tiny ways. I want to show you, but that's more for me than for you, so it's not entirely fair.

I think I'm looking for permission to move on and start building something new.  It's a cowardly thing to do here, you're all separate people, and you all deserve your own reckoning. But I'm not ready for that just yet. Most probably though, I don't even need permission at all. But you have mine, if you need it. I've got my fingers crossed for you.

So I guess, I miss you and if there was any doubt that I loved you, I did and I'm sorry.