day 22

dear ___________,

everything, everyone, every shred of rational thought in my head tells me not to love you. but i don't, honestly, know how to stop.

you're afraid you're not good enough, that you've messed up too badly, that you have something to hide. and you steal happiness from others to prove that you're exactly who they think you are. the only thing i can say in response is… you're absolutely right. you don't deserve their love. you don't deserve their forgiveness.

but this is about me. i am flawed in a way that stems from the same fact that i don't love myself. except that while you're reckless with others' hearts, i'm reckless with my own. and in my whole life, i have never stopped loving someone because of the things they have done. i love you not because of who you are, but because of who i am.

i didn't feel this way at first. i didn't think i could. what you did, it gave me reason to manage my expectations from the very beginning. i set up walls, boundaries--and i told everyone they were uncrossable. you did so many things to hurt me, to shock me, to test my limits. i was unfazed because i kept my heart in a tightly locked box.

or so i thought. the problem is, you were also kind. selfless and gentle. i opened myself up to you and you did the same. except while it's a daily occurrence for me, i knew how much it meant to you. you were sincerely wonderful, and the past began to feel incredibly distant. i began to wonder if you might love me after all, even though i had convinced myself that we were impossible.

i don't know when it happened, but one day something from your past came up and i came to the sudden realization that i did care. i cared about the awful things you did. something that hadn't bothered me previously now hurt me deeply and i couldn't understand why. i suppose all those things had been waiting at the door for the moment i let my guard down.

i believe that you love me, in the way that you know how. you say you want a second chance, but i don't think you really know what that means. i guess it doesn't matter because you know i'll give it to you. and a third and a fourth and many more, if you need it. not because i want to. but because i've given you my heart and i don't know how to get it back.

something is seriously wrong with me.

There were more unrequited crushes throughout my 20s and (hard to admit it) even into my 30s. The guy with a girlfriend, the work-a-holic, the angry poet. I was the best unrequited lover out there. I had become a pro at it. I told myself that love is painful and I must endure that pain. Even if that meant never betraying my true feelings, always keeping them to myself, loving cautiously from afar, keeping careful records in private places, or denying myself. Although I had real boyfriends, from time to time, the unrequited ones were better. They were perfect in my mind. They never hurt me, I only hurt myself and I liked it better that way.

When I fell into my final unrequited love affair, it felt like a dirty secret. I had always been able to compartmentalize my amorous inclinations, but things were different this time. I was way over writing about him in my journal or thinking about him only at bed time. I wanted him to, gasp, love me back. That’s when I cut off contact with him. He wanted to be friends, but I declined. I don’t need that kind of friend.

I realized that unrequited love was my favorite form of self-punishment, one that I had grown familiar with. When I finally felt I deserved to love and be loved in return, the childish habit had lost its dramatic cache. While it’s masochistic to long for something I think I’ll never have, it’s awfully safe. It’s scary to put myself in a situation where real love is possible with someone and in turn, real heartbreak, but I’ve decided the risk is worth it for the chance to let him love me back.

the sparkling brilliance of new york city, the woodsy, misty air of seattle, the pulsing electricity of hong kong... they will have just one thing in common, and that is that you don't, you won't, exist in those worlds.

i don't see you anymore. i don't know where you are or what you are doing. but i do know that memories of you remain in the people and places around me. and as long as that's true, the imprint of you will stay with me.

this year i'm going to say goodbye to southern california and home as i know it, for some time. i don't know when. i don't know where i'm going. but i need a place to call mine that you haven't touched. streets and houses and friends and lovers that bear no inkling of your presence.

you always believed in me, always told me that staying here wouldn't be enough for me, that i would do bigger and better things. you'll likely never know that you are the reason i had to.

i want to wish you well
i didn't watch you go
because i suppose i don't know how
i will remember you
not the way you left but how you lived
and what you knew

i want to feel your hands
i want to feel your fire burning
right from where i stand

i'll find my way
because you showed me how

i want to know it's you
when i hear your voice inside my head
inside my room
i want to touch the sky
i want to see the stars twinkle
like they were your eyes

i want to smell your scent
i want to breathe the air i did
before you left

i want to wish you well
the only reason my heart beats
is because you showed it how

katie herzig.