Oh J,

You have no idea how much the words you say that are supposed to console me, actually haunt me. I wonder if you can read my thoughts as you speak to me. Sometimes it feels like you can, because you know exactly what to say that can hurt me the most. For instance, telling me how lucky some man is going to be to have me in his life? That’s the worst.

I’m sure you feel like you’re a wonderful friend when you say that, and you are. You don’t have a mean bone in your body and I know if you knew the truth, you’d hardly speak to me at all for fear of causing me any more pain. That’s why I don’t want you to know the truth - because us not speaking would probably kill me.

If I say one thing to you, the one thing I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, it would be thank you. I’ve been so jaded about love for such a long time and meeting you has changed everything. As corny as it sounds, you’ve shown me what real love is. It’s putting someone else’s needs above your own. It’s respecting yourself because that’s what the people you love expect from you. Above all else, it’s wanting happiness for the person you love, even if that happiness isn’t with you.

Before I met you, I always wondered how the greatest love stories written came about. I figured it was the great imagination of the authors, an exaggerated take on personal experience. Now I know that soul mates, true love, fate and all the other cliches that I continually groan at are actually facts. It’s just timing that makes the happily ever after.

Maybe our time won’t be this week, this year or even this decade, or maybe it will never happen. But I’ll always be grateful just to know you’ve touched my life. Please make yourself as truly happy as you deserve to be.

With so much love,

S, 21