Dear P,

It was never my intention to fall in love with you.

The truth is, when I met you, I really thought I was just some mid-life crisis for you—your last hoorah before you realized you wanted to settle down. I believed that a man like you was simply trying to recapture his youth with a woman 18.5 years his junior, and then, when he realized how immature, insecure, and clueless about life I was, you’d disappear like a thief in the night.

But you stayed. Week after week, month after month. You gave me the things men of my past dangled in front of me but couldn’t deliver: commitment, honesty, warmth, effort. You were my knight in shining armor, sent by the forces of the world to save me from myself. And I fell in love. So, so deeply in love. With your intelligence. Your articulateness. The grays in your hair. The video updates you made for work and that movie-star sparkle in your eye. I fell for the way you’d remember that I liked my coffee black, with a single ice cube. With the kale smoothie you made me (and the way you really tried to like them too). With the way your sheets smelled, and the way you didn’t get mad at me when I got my make up all over them. I lived for the days when I got to see you fall asleep and wake up - opening one eye at a time. I was completely enamored.

But all that love I felt was too much, too soon for this 21 year old. I simply wasn’t ready for everything I was feeling, or so I thought. I’d often think about the way you’d joke that I would have to take care of you one day or soon push you around in a wheelchair. I‘d think about how in five years, I’d be 26 years old, at the height of my life, and you, 45, already well-seasoned and past the bumps I’d only experience for the first time. And that terrified me.

So I pushed you away. I closed the door to my heart the only way I knew how—by acting like a child. I’d pick fights with you over everything. I’d fight with you over why you never told me you loved me, when I knew quite well that you did through your gestures and actions. I’d pick fights with you over the waitress, when I knew you couldn’t care less about who she was or what she looked like. I, regrettably, wanted to show you that you were wasting your time with me – so you did what any self-respecting man would do, and you believed me.

And then you left. You said you couldn’t deal with me anymore. I had worn you down. You weren’t a fighter.

And there I was, wounded by my own actions, guilty of pushing away a man I truly loved – the only man that shared my passion for liberal politics, academia, financial news, NPR, TV and film, poetry, food, culture, and semicolons. You were so much older than me, but you treated me like an equal, and I cannot thank you enough for all the patience you showed me, the lessons you taught me, and the positive contributions you made to my life. 

I see now that it shouldn’t have mattered to me when I met you or how old you were. All that should have mattered was that I met a man that filled me with such love and adoration that I should’ve just trusted my feelings and loved him the way he deserved to be loved.

I want you to know that I am ready. I am ready to let my guard down. I am ready for mature love. I am ready to build my life with you. To have children, be a wife, make you coffee (for once), and to learn and grow together.

Unfortunately, I fear that I have irreversibly broken our bond and relationship—and that I am too late. The tables have now turned: the door to your heart has closed and I may never be able to enter again.

I know a part of you still believes I am the one for you. I know a part of you wants me to be in your future. I know a part of you knows that we can make each other very happy. I hope that part of you comes back to me. I know that you’re going to need time to let me back into your life. But I also know that, now, it’s my time to be patient. 

If and when you need me, I’ll be here – growing and working on myself. I just want you to know, my door is open.

Always and forever.
Toosh, age 21