magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

it's four am. and i guess i'm doing the insomnia thing right now.

eventually, around five i think, i got to bed. it's two-thirty tomorrow morning, i'm halfway through the following letter, and i'm at it again.

---

dear stef,

although it's still two weeks until we will be forced by circumstance into the same place at the same time, i need to put some words down now. i've been running through possible scenarios for at least a month now, but if anything i've realized that i have no idea how that first encounter will go. cold stares from across the room? uncomfortable smile and wave? outright hostility?

my guess is that you'll wonder. maybe you fucked up. maybe you pushed something incredible out of your life. but you'll be too stubborn to really admit to that. i could be wrong. i could be a million miles off target. maybe you've built up a healthy does of animosity towards me. maybe i'm really not any more than an insignificant little footnote in your life's story.

as for me, i'd like to say that i could give you the cold shoulder. or be genial and friendly but betray no indication of any need for you in my life. i'd like to be able to tell you that you fucked up. that i fucked up by falling for you in the first place. that you were a mistake and that i'm moving on and i really couldn't care less whether you're happy or ever will be again. but experience tells me that i'll want you near me. that if we were to touch, to hug hello say, or even accidentally bump into one another, i wouldn't want you to ever leave my side again.

one of my possible scenarios, one of the early ones, involved you tapping me on the shoulder, or approaching with arms somewhat expectantly half open, and my saying with the most venom i could muster, 'don't fucking touch me unless you mean it.' in another my first question is along the lines of, 'how many?' how many people did you sleep with in the last two months? but of course i wouldn't really want to know, and would only be bringing it up in the hopes that the answer made you feel guilty. i could hand you a stack of paper, the last two months of journal entries kept off-line. i could hand you a short note. i could hand you this letter. i could simply tell you that i missed you, that my life on the whole is better with you in it. i could say nothing. i could just see what comes out, without planning it, without rehearsing it to death over and over in my mind beforehand.

the truth is that i have missed you. that i would rather that you were in my life. that after all this i still love you. that i still think love is enough.

the truth is that i think i've tried to make up for your absence by subconsciously incorporating bits of your personality into my life. i've fought with an urge to start smoking. i've found myself wanting to lie out in the sun. when i've thought of my future and of dating there's been two paths that i can visualize, either you, or casual sex with virtual strangers.

and where does this leave us? leave me? as the pathetic ex-boyfriend who can't let go? i feel like a loser writing these things. and i can't really win either way. either i hold on too tightly to something that has passed, that you've let go of and no longer want. or i admit that i fucked up by loving you in the first place. that i fucked up again by falling back in love with you in may. i'm a loser for still loving you or a loser for ever having done so.

and you know we're not all that different in so many ways. part of me just can't admit that i was ever wrong. and i want to say it's because i wasn't. but that only serves to prove the case against me.

part of writing this to you now is to work through the urge to actually write to you. to call or email or send flowers or text message you. i've really struggled with it for this past month and a half. yesterday was particularly hard. yesterday was the day, a year ago, that i made that tape. yesterday was 'this day next year'. i promised you that i would love you and i would stick by you and i wasn't able to keep that promise. i really wanted to. i really wanted you in my future. i really wanted to be a part of yours.

part of me wishes that we had graduated before this happened. or that at least one of us had. that we were headed towards different paths in life. and i wouldn't see you every day and i wouldn't have this constant reminder in my life. but even that wish is tempered with the thought that maybe somewhere down the road we'd cross again. and maybe it would work that time. there's a romanticism in that thought that is somehow dashed with the knowledge that the next year can probably only serve to eat away at that imaginary future. and i know that the idea of letting go only with the hope of a reconciliation down the road isn't really letting go. i've known that for a long time. i've known that since allison.

and so now i've rambled beyond the point of concision. beyond the point of writing a letter that i could simply hand to you, to convey how i feel, what you've meant to me and where i find myself in relation to you now. it all just keeps coming down to the fact that i miss you. i've always missed you when you weren't there.

always,
bean