Track
14 - Even then
Track
15 - Through the BLUR
I don’t know if you’ll ever read this.
Maybe it’s selfish to even imagine you would, but for my own heart, for my own peace, I needed to say all the things I never could. All the things you probably never knew. This isn’t a letter to fix the past. It’s not a letter asking you to feel guilty. It’s not even a letter asking for anything at all. It’s just the truth, raw, heavy, and real. The kind of truth most people are too scared to say out loud.
There are moments burned into me forever. Small, strange moments that maybe meant nothing to you, but to me, they were everything. Like when we were up at the view spot near mission ridge, high, laughing, pretending everything was fine, and you asked if I had a knife so we could carve our initials into a tree… I had just barely stitched myself back together from the first time I let my feelings for you rip me apart.. and there you were, smiling, joking, or maybe not joking? In that moment it felt like the air got punched out of my lungs. We tried with my keys. It didn’t work. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to, but for a second, I let myself believe again. Believe in something I had no business hoping for. There were other moments too. Moments where maybe I should’ve known better. Like the day at the bookstore in Capitol Hill, when you picked out a book and then changed your mind about wanting it. I offered to buy it for you, and you resisted. Almost snapped. But when we got to the register, you didn’t stop me. I couldn’t tell if you were upset or caught off guard, but I know it made you uncomfortable. It confused me. So the next time, at the record store, I changed my approach. You put something back, and instead of saying I wanted to buy it for you, I said I wanted it for myself. Then later, in the car, I gave it to you. Quietly. Like a peace offering. Like a way to say something I couldn’t find the words for. I wasn’t trying to win you over. I just wanted to share something, and I didn’t know how else to say it. It never was about the gift. It was about the moment. The way you hinted about wanting ice cream without asking outright, the way you waited, smiling, hoping I’d offer. Little invitations. Little almost-asks. Little ways of pulling me closer without ever having to say it out loud. Maybe I misread all of it. Maybe you didn’t even realize you were doing it, but when you live mostly inside the spaces between words, when you’re someone who feels everything somatically, you learn to listen to what’s not being said.
I still remember that day, the drive after you apologized for everything that had happened the year before. You turned to me and asked, “What do you even like about me?” And I froze. Not because I didn’t have answers, but because I had too many. How could I explain that it wasn’t about a list of traits? When you love someone truly, you don’t make lists. It wasn’t about favorite colors or hobbies or quirks. It was you. In the way you laughed without apologizing, in the way you moved through the world like you belonged even when you doubted it, in the way you cared about little things fiercely and stubbornly. You didn’t need to be anything more than exactly who you already were. I didn’t know how to say any of that. I just stumbled over my words and let the moment pass, another offering I never quite managed to put into your hands. You were never just another person to me. You were a language my body understood before my mind could catch up. Like that hoodie. That night at the movies, when you asked if I had something you could put on because it was cold, so I gave you my hoodie. Maybe it really was just cold. Maybe it really was that simple, but in the moment, it felt like something more. Like you were asking without asking. I didn’t realize it then, but every time I looked at that hoodie afterward, I felt physically sick. Tight chest. Twisted stomach. That was the beginning of understanding that my emotions don’t stay neatly inside me, they live under my skin leaving bruises on my soul. Giving you that hoodie wasn’t just about warmth. It was about handing you something I couldn’t say out loud. Maybe it meant nothing to you. Maybe you never thought about it again, but for me, it was another hope I never dared to speak. And then there was the TikTok. The otter and the cat. “Us?” I asked you about it, stumbling quietly hoping I wasn’t crazy for thinking . You shrugged. “I just thought it was cute.” And I felt something inside me crumple, like I had just given you something precious and you shoved it into your back pocket without care. I tried to set a boundary, that ride home after our first trip to Seattle, when I asked you about the carving, trying so hard to understand if I was crazy for thinking it meant something more. You shrugged it off, “You don’t do that with your friends?” I had never done that with anyone before. And still, you picked up a stick and wrote “J + J” in the ground the last time we hung out at that bench in North Bend. Maybe you thought it was harmless. Maybe you didn’t think it mattered, but I remembered. When you wrote that, I realized I wasn’t just hurting because I loved you. I was hurting because I kept trying to live in a story that was already slipping away from me. Did you care? Did you not? Was it all in my head? Was it mutual and just too terrifying to name? I tore myself apart asking those questions. Again and again. And it wasn’t because I needed you to save me. It wasn’t because I needed you to fix me. It was because I just wanted to be understood. I wanted to believe that if you saw the whole of me, if you really looked, you would understand that my love was never about getting something from you. It was about meeting you where you were, flaws, confusion, fear and all and still saying you’re worth loving anyway.
You pulled away before I could even say goodbye properly. The unfollowing, the silence, the slow fade… then, months later, the message, “I wish I would’ve handled things differently because I promise you it’s not the way you think it is.” It broke me open all over again, because it didn’t give me closure. It gave me ambiguity. and ambiguity is a harder thing to mourn than a clean ending. Maybe you cared, and just didn’t know how to show it. Maybe you didn’t care, and just didn’t want to be the villain in the story. Maybe you wanted to explain, but you got scared halfway through and didn’t know how to finish. Maybe you thought I had already given up on you, so you gave up first. Maybe you never knew how much you meant to me, or maybe you did, and it was just too heavy to carry. Maybe it was all real. Maybe it was all in my head. Maybe it was somewhere in between that painful middle ground where nothing is clear, and everything still hurts anyway. A confusing state of emotional ambivalence. If fixing things truly mattered to you, you could’ve kept trying. You could’ve left the door open. You could’ve fought for the friendship you said was important. But you didn’t. You blocked me. Hope without evidence became a prison and keeping you around out of fear of losing you only guaranteed that I lost myself in the process. I learned that the hard way, a nearly 7 year long lesson. It hurt because I liked you, genuinely. Not just as someone I wanted, but as someone I admired. Your energy. Your mind. Your stubbornness. Your chaos. Your style. Your laugh. All of it. I loved you. Not in the way people toss the word around casually. Not out of loneliness, or need, or pride. I loved you the way someone loves a sunrise they know they can’t keep, quietly, stubbornly, selfishly, selflessly. I loved you without needing you to love me back. Without needing anything in return. I loved you because something about you felt so soft, so rare, and it woke up a part of me that had been sleeping for too long. I didn’t love you because you loved me back. I didn’t love you because I thought it would be easy. I loved you because you were real… at least, the version of you thought I knew. Without needing you to change. Without needing anything from you except to exist, exactly as you were. You didn’t save me. You didn’t complete me. You didn’t fix anything broken inside me. You just reminded me that my heart still worked, at a time when I wasn’t sure it worked at all. I didn’t love you perfectly, I’ll admit that. I loved you messily. Anxiously. Naively. Blindly, sometimes, but it was real, and I know that now, even if I doubted it then. And the hardest part? Realizing that my feelings made being “just friends” impossible. Even if I could’ve suppressed them, they would’ve still lived in the background like a ghost tapping on the glass. I didn’t choose to like you this much. If I could’ve flipped a switch and just been friends, I would’ve. But feelings don’t work that way. Love doesn’t work that way. I realize now that loving you wasn’t a mistake. Clinging to a dream that could never exist was. To walk away felt like the hardest choice, but clinging to a dream that was never going to come true, would have only kept the future away from me and you. From something new. I wish I could have stayed. I wish I could have fought. I wish there was something to mend, but unrequited love has no amend. The signs were clear. The path was drawn, and even now, even after all of this, my heart sometimes still asks.. What if I was wrong? Letting go doesn’t erase the past. It doesn’t dim the light of the love I cast. It just means making space for someone who will meet me face to face, instead of halfway, or halfway hidden.
I realize now I wasn’t just grieving you. I was grieving the version of myself that believed we could exist together and the future I built in my mind without even meaning to. I wasn’t mad at you for not loving me back. I was sad that I couldn’t stop loving you anyway and I was sadder still that loving you meant eventually having to let you go, not because I wanted to, but because I had to survive myself. I felt guilty for not being able to “just be friends.” For not being able to turn my heart off. I wanted so badly to believe that no matter what happened, friendship would be enough. I told myself I would be okay just standing beside you, supporting you, asking for nothing more, and I believed that for a while. I tried to force myself into being okay with it. The truth is I loved you too deeply to pretend it didn’t hurt. I couldn’t erase what I felt just to make staying easier and it killed me to realize that the only way I could protect my heart was to step away from you. It wasn’t because you weren’t important to me. You were. You still are, in a way I’ll probably carry quietly for a long time, but I had to be honest with you and with myself, that loving you silently was starting to hollow me out. It hurt to realize that what I felt wasn’t enough to keep you close. It hurt even more to see how easily you seemed to let me go. A thumbs-up and silence. Maybe you didn’t know what else to do. Maybe you didn’t feel the same way and didn’t know how to say it. Maybe it was easier for you to forget. Whatever the reason, I’ve had to live with the space you left. I’ve had to grieve not just you, but the version of me that believed that would be enough, even if it was only as a friend. What did I even get out of loving you? A handful of memories that still catch me off guard? Sometimes. A deeper understanding of how deeply I’m capable of feeling. And unfortunately, the painful lesson that sometimes love isn’t enough to make people stay. I finally understand that holding onto you meant losing pieces of myself, and I couldn’t do that anymore. You’ll probably never fully know how much I rooted for you. How much I wanted you to find happiness, even if it wasn’t with me. I blamed myself for this for a long time. I’ve came to the realization and understanding that I didn’t fail. I didn’t love wrong. I just loved at a depth that you weren’t ready for. Maybe you were never meant to be ready. I don’t hate you. I never have or will. I don’t carry anger when I think of you. I carry something much quieter something softer. I carry the version of me who loved without limits. Who believed. Who tried. You’ll never know the version of me I was willing to become for you. You’ll never know how much I carried without asking you to carry it back, maybe you were never meant to know. That’s okay. It was never about you having to love me back. It was about me learning that I was capable of loving someone that deeply at all, and that’s a gift I’ll never regret even if it cost me everything. You are capable of love. You are capable of being loved. I saw it, even if you couldn’t see it yet. I’m not writing this to burden you. I’m writing it because part of me hopes that someday when you’re standing in the light of your own growth, when you’re braver, when you’re ready you’ll remember that someone once loved you in a way that was pure, without expectation, without demand, without needing anything but to be allowed to care for you. And maybe you’ll realize you were worth it all along.
I don’t need anything from you now. Not an apology. Not a conversation. Not even acknowledgment. I don’t even need you to understand. I just needed to say it so it wouldn’t rot quietly inside my chest anymore.
You mattered. It mattered. It changed me. It stayed with me and maybe somewhere deep inside you, even if you never say it out loud, you know it mattered too.
I’m still moving forward, still building a life that doesn’t have you in it, but somewhere inside me, there’s still a quiet corner where the memory of you lives, untouched, unresolved, unnamed. Not haunting me, not hurting me, but existing like a room left just as it was. I didn’t disregard you out of anger. I walked away because I had to. Because staying felt like trying to carve our initials into a tree with a house key, desperate, hopeful, but ultimately futile.
No carved goodbyes. Just a pause. A silence. A maybe.
…and maybe that’s all it was ever meant to be.
Maybe it’s selfish to even imagine you would, but for my own heart, for my own peace, I needed to say all the things I never could. All the things you probably never knew. This isn’t a letter to fix the past. It’s not a letter asking you to feel guilty. It’s not even a letter asking for anything at all. It’s just the truth, raw, heavy, and real. The kind of truth most people are too scared to say out loud.
There are moments burned into me forever. Small, strange moments that maybe meant nothing to you, but to me, they were everything. Like when we were up at the view spot near mission ridge, high, laughing, pretending everything was fine, and you asked if I had a knife so we could carve our initials into a tree… I had just barely stitched myself back together from the first time I let my feelings for you rip me apart.. and there you were, smiling, joking, or maybe not joking? In that moment it felt like the air got punched out of my lungs. We tried with my keys. It didn’t work. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to, but for a second, I let myself believe again. Believe in something I had no business hoping for. There were other moments too. Moments where maybe I should’ve known better. Like the day at the bookstore in Capitol Hill, when you picked out a book and then changed your mind about wanting it. I offered to buy it for you, and you resisted. Almost snapped. But when we got to the register, you didn’t stop me. I couldn’t tell if you were upset or caught off guard, but I know it made you uncomfortable. It confused me. So the next time, at the record store, I changed my approach. You put something back, and instead of saying I wanted to buy it for you, I said I wanted it for myself. Then later, in the car, I gave it to you. Quietly. Like a peace offering. Like a way to say something I couldn’t find the words for. I wasn’t trying to win you over. I just wanted to share something, and I didn’t know how else to say it. It never was about the gift. It was about the moment. The way you hinted about wanting ice cream without asking outright, the way you waited, smiling, hoping I’d offer. Little invitations. Little almost-asks. Little ways of pulling me closer without ever having to say it out loud. Maybe I misread all of it. Maybe you didn’t even realize you were doing it, but when you live mostly inside the spaces between words, when you’re someone who feels everything somatically, you learn to listen to what’s not being said.
I still remember that day, the drive after you apologized for everything that had happened the year before. You turned to me and asked, “What do you even like about me?” And I froze. Not because I didn’t have answers, but because I had too many. How could I explain that it wasn’t about a list of traits? When you love someone truly, you don’t make lists. It wasn’t about favorite colors or hobbies or quirks. It was you. In the way you laughed without apologizing, in the way you moved through the world like you belonged even when you doubted it, in the way you cared about little things fiercely and stubbornly. You didn’t need to be anything more than exactly who you already were. I didn’t know how to say any of that. I just stumbled over my words and let the moment pass, another offering I never quite managed to put into your hands. You were never just another person to me. You were a language my body understood before my mind could catch up. Like that hoodie. That night at the movies, when you asked if I had something you could put on because it was cold, so I gave you my hoodie. Maybe it really was just cold. Maybe it really was that simple, but in the moment, it felt like something more. Like you were asking without asking. I didn’t realize it then, but every time I looked at that hoodie afterward, I felt physically sick. Tight chest. Twisted stomach. That was the beginning of understanding that my emotions don’t stay neatly inside me, they live under my skin leaving bruises on my soul. Giving you that hoodie wasn’t just about warmth. It was about handing you something I couldn’t say out loud. Maybe it meant nothing to you. Maybe you never thought about it again, but for me, it was another hope I never dared to speak. And then there was the TikTok. The otter and the cat. “Us?” I asked you about it, stumbling quietly hoping I wasn’t crazy for thinking . You shrugged. “I just thought it was cute.” And I felt something inside me crumple, like I had just given you something precious and you shoved it into your back pocket without care. I tried to set a boundary, that ride home after our first trip to Seattle, when I asked you about the carving, trying so hard to understand if I was crazy for thinking it meant something more. You shrugged it off, “You don’t do that with your friends?” I had never done that with anyone before. And still, you picked up a stick and wrote “J + J” in the ground the last time we hung out at that bench in North Bend. Maybe you thought it was harmless. Maybe you didn’t think it mattered, but I remembered. When you wrote that, I realized I wasn’t just hurting because I loved you. I was hurting because I kept trying to live in a story that was already slipping away from me. Did you care? Did you not? Was it all in my head? Was it mutual and just too terrifying to name? I tore myself apart asking those questions. Again and again. And it wasn’t because I needed you to save me. It wasn’t because I needed you to fix me. It was because I just wanted to be understood. I wanted to believe that if you saw the whole of me, if you really looked, you would understand that my love was never about getting something from you. It was about meeting you where you were, flaws, confusion, fear and all and still saying you’re worth loving anyway.
You pulled away before I could even say goodbye properly. The unfollowing, the silence, the slow fade… then, months later, the message, “I wish I would’ve handled things differently because I promise you it’s not the way you think it is.” It broke me open all over again, because it didn’t give me closure. It gave me ambiguity. and ambiguity is a harder thing to mourn than a clean ending. Maybe you cared, and just didn’t know how to show it. Maybe you didn’t care, and just didn’t want to be the villain in the story. Maybe you wanted to explain, but you got scared halfway through and didn’t know how to finish. Maybe you thought I had already given up on you, so you gave up first. Maybe you never knew how much you meant to me, or maybe you did, and it was just too heavy to carry. Maybe it was all real. Maybe it was all in my head. Maybe it was somewhere in between that painful middle ground where nothing is clear, and everything still hurts anyway. A confusing state of emotional ambivalence. If fixing things truly mattered to you, you could’ve kept trying. You could’ve left the door open. You could’ve fought for the friendship you said was important. But you didn’t. You blocked me. Hope without evidence became a prison and keeping you around out of fear of losing you only guaranteed that I lost myself in the process. I learned that the hard way, a nearly 7 year long lesson. It hurt because I liked you, genuinely. Not just as someone I wanted, but as someone I admired. Your energy. Your mind. Your stubbornness. Your chaos. Your style. Your laugh. All of it. I loved you. Not in the way people toss the word around casually. Not out of loneliness, or need, or pride. I loved you the way someone loves a sunrise they know they can’t keep, quietly, stubbornly, selfishly, selflessly. I loved you without needing you to love me back. Without needing anything in return. I loved you because something about you felt so soft, so rare, and it woke up a part of me that had been sleeping for too long. I didn’t love you because you loved me back. I didn’t love you because I thought it would be easy. I loved you because you were real… at least, the version of you thought I knew. Without needing you to change. Without needing anything from you except to exist, exactly as you were. You didn’t save me. You didn’t complete me. You didn’t fix anything broken inside me. You just reminded me that my heart still worked, at a time when I wasn’t sure it worked at all. I didn’t love you perfectly, I’ll admit that. I loved you messily. Anxiously. Naively. Blindly, sometimes, but it was real, and I know that now, even if I doubted it then. And the hardest part? Realizing that my feelings made being “just friends” impossible. Even if I could’ve suppressed them, they would’ve still lived in the background like a ghost tapping on the glass. I didn’t choose to like you this much. If I could’ve flipped a switch and just been friends, I would’ve. But feelings don’t work that way. Love doesn’t work that way. I realize now that loving you wasn’t a mistake. Clinging to a dream that could never exist was. To walk away felt like the hardest choice, but clinging to a dream that was never going to come true, would have only kept the future away from me and you. From something new. I wish I could have stayed. I wish I could have fought. I wish there was something to mend, but unrequited love has no amend. The signs were clear. The path was drawn, and even now, even after all of this, my heart sometimes still asks.. What if I was wrong? Letting go doesn’t erase the past. It doesn’t dim the light of the love I cast. It just means making space for someone who will meet me face to face, instead of halfway, or halfway hidden.
I realize now I wasn’t just grieving you. I was grieving the version of myself that believed we could exist together and the future I built in my mind without even meaning to. I wasn’t mad at you for not loving me back. I was sad that I couldn’t stop loving you anyway and I was sadder still that loving you meant eventually having to let you go, not because I wanted to, but because I had to survive myself. I felt guilty for not being able to “just be friends.” For not being able to turn my heart off. I wanted so badly to believe that no matter what happened, friendship would be enough. I told myself I would be okay just standing beside you, supporting you, asking for nothing more, and I believed that for a while. I tried to force myself into being okay with it. The truth is I loved you too deeply to pretend it didn’t hurt. I couldn’t erase what I felt just to make staying easier and it killed me to realize that the only way I could protect my heart was to step away from you. It wasn’t because you weren’t important to me. You were. You still are, in a way I’ll probably carry quietly for a long time, but I had to be honest with you and with myself, that loving you silently was starting to hollow me out. It hurt to realize that what I felt wasn’t enough to keep you close. It hurt even more to see how easily you seemed to let me go. A thumbs-up and silence. Maybe you didn’t know what else to do. Maybe you didn’t feel the same way and didn’t know how to say it. Maybe it was easier for you to forget. Whatever the reason, I’ve had to live with the space you left. I’ve had to grieve not just you, but the version of me that believed that would be enough, even if it was only as a friend. What did I even get out of loving you? A handful of memories that still catch me off guard? Sometimes. A deeper understanding of how deeply I’m capable of feeling. And unfortunately, the painful lesson that sometimes love isn’t enough to make people stay. I finally understand that holding onto you meant losing pieces of myself, and I couldn’t do that anymore. You’ll probably never fully know how much I rooted for you. How much I wanted you to find happiness, even if it wasn’t with me. I blamed myself for this for a long time. I’ve came to the realization and understanding that I didn’t fail. I didn’t love wrong. I just loved at a depth that you weren’t ready for. Maybe you were never meant to be ready. I don’t hate you. I never have or will. I don’t carry anger when I think of you. I carry something much quieter something softer. I carry the version of me who loved without limits. Who believed. Who tried. You’ll never know the version of me I was willing to become for you. You’ll never know how much I carried without asking you to carry it back, maybe you were never meant to know. That’s okay. It was never about you having to love me back. It was about me learning that I was capable of loving someone that deeply at all, and that’s a gift I’ll never regret even if it cost me everything. You are capable of love. You are capable of being loved. I saw it, even if you couldn’t see it yet. I’m not writing this to burden you. I’m writing it because part of me hopes that someday when you’re standing in the light of your own growth, when you’re braver, when you’re ready you’ll remember that someone once loved you in a way that was pure, without expectation, without demand, without needing anything but to be allowed to care for you. And maybe you’ll realize you were worth it all along.
I don’t need anything from you now. Not an apology. Not a conversation. Not even acknowledgment. I don’t even need you to understand. I just needed to say it so it wouldn’t rot quietly inside my chest anymore.
You mattered. It mattered. It changed me. It stayed with me and maybe somewhere deep inside you, even if you never say it out loud, you know it mattered too.
I’m still moving forward, still building a life that doesn’t have you in it, but somewhere inside me, there’s still a quiet corner where the memory of you lives, untouched, unresolved, unnamed. Not haunting me, not hurting me, but existing like a room left just as it was. I didn’t disregard you out of anger. I walked away because I had to. Because staying felt like trying to carve our initials into a tree with a house key, desperate, hopeful, but ultimately futile.
No carved goodbyes. Just a pause. A silence. A maybe.
…and maybe that’s all it was ever meant to be.
– JDLC