Letter to my friend

I drafted this awhile ago but then started feeling better. But my depression has re-triggered and it’s stronger than ever.  The anxiety pills and antidepressants don’t work. Drinking doesn’t dull the pain, it now only intensifies it. My therapist and doctors try so hard but I see the worry in their eyes because they know they can’t reach me anymore.  I’ve run out of ideas and energy, and my life feels empty and done.  It’s time to post this just in case. I need MC to somehow discover the truth.  If it’s meant to be, he’ll find this someday.  He’ll know it’s him.  He and my therapist know the story, but only MC understands the truth.

I truly promise to try my best every day, but if I decide to die I would want MC to know this:

My dearest, dearest friend, you never knew this, but you completely upheaved my life with your tenderness and compassion. You showed me there was more to life and love than just settling for “OK”.  I know it was in moments of weakness and fear over the future that you kissed me, I was weak and afraid as well, but the chemistry was there long before our troubles. I worked so hard over the past year to stay friends, not bother you too much and give you your space to be with J, but you slowly pulled away as your life got better and you started treating me with distance.  No more caring how I was, very little compassion.  And when we would meet I could barely look at you because I so desperately wanted you back as my close, intimate friend but all I felt was your distance.

The major part of my severe depression and anxiety was because I loved you and missed you so much, even when you were right in front of me.

I loved you, but I didn’t necessarily need a sexual affair. All I wanted was another strong close embrace, a stroke of my hair, and maybe a kiss – to feel loved and wanted again. All I wanted was another night of sharing our fears, our hopes, our lives – to feel safe and special again.  All I wanted was another night of silliness and laughter, and to gaze into your beautiful dark brown eyes and see the genuine happiness and tender affection I once saw there.  Had you initiated and given me these things, my depression would have faded a bit and I would found a little more strength, a little reason, to keep living.  To have you as my close friend forever and to feel I was special and truly loved by you was all I wanted and wished for, and it meant everything to me. You know why I could never have asked for them.

In the last few months, without notice, you became more and more distant. You didn’t talk to me in the same way, it was sometimes awkward, and I felt our closeness and a level of trust disappear.  I want to believe it’s because you actually love J and were afraid to possibly stray which was a valid possibility at one time. Yet I’ll never be convinced you really want to marry her when everyone knows marriage has been her goal, not yours, for 10 years. But regardless the reason, the more distance you put between us, the more my depression took hold. In the end we ended up more as acquaintances than friends and I just couldn’t bear it.

And on the rare occasion when we would reconnect and click, our innocent flirting left me confused, more lonely, and more depressed.  I’m so sorry; I simply couldn’t go back to the innocence we once had. My desire for you and the emptiness of my life crowded out any capability to pretend and act as if nothing ever happened between us.  Although you were the one who initiated the kisses, I suspect they meant nothing to you. It’s my deep attraction to you which ruined our friendship; I ruined everything.  Please, please forgive me for what I’ve done.  But the only way my heart would ever stop loving you is for it to cease to beat. I wish there had been another way.

I truly, truly wish you had never kissed me but I forgive you MC, I really do, because you don’t know the Pandora’s Box of emotion and sorrow you opened within me with those kisses. I often wondered if it evoked anything at all in you. And I forgive you for your distance as well.  I would wonder, if you had known I suffered so because of you, would you have kindly reached out more, and would it have been out of love or pity.  My biggest regret is that while we’ll never know if we might have proven to have been a disaster as a couple, we both knew we would have been extraordinary lovers.  I wish, despite whatever the consequences might have been, we had taken that leap to find out.