An Open Letter

Flashback to a dark, unremarkable October evening in 2005. I am minding my own business on the web forum we both used to frequent. 

I notice that I have received a private message. It is from you.

You explain that you have noticed me on many of the same boards as you and I seemed interesting so you decided to contact me. I recognise your name from the boards in question and feel flattered that you want to talk to me.

We message each other back and forth over the next few nights before rounding off our conversation. I didn't think anything of it until a few nights later when you messaged me again; you had copied and pasted the Q+A from my profile and sent it me with your own answers where mine had been.

There was no real need to do this; our original conversation had been wrapped up, you just wanted an excuse to keep talking.

It was here I discover that you are quite a bit older than me and that makes your interest in what I think and have to say even more flattering, though I feel self-conscious and frustrated when I don't have an intellectual or insightful answer to your questions.

We continue to message each other most days for several months - you even send me a postcard when you travel to Antarctica, which I prop up behind my mirror as my most treasured possession. 

When I travel to Corfu in October 2006, I don't remember if I send you a postcard, but I know that I sent you pictures of myself. So when you vanish shortly afterwards, I am left confused and upset.

Days and then weeks pass since our last correspondence and I miss you. I actually miss you. We'd never met and you don't owe me an explanation for living your life, but I couldn't shake the feeling that a vital part of my life was missing - even in those early days.

So when I log in to our web forum seven months (yes, I remember how many months) after we last communicated and see that you've been active, my heart leaps into my throat.

I forget who contacts whom first, but when we re-connect it's like no time whatsoever has passed. In fact, our time apart seems to bring us closer together and I notice that your attitude towards me is more flirtatious and suggestive and I can't shake the feeling that you seeing my photograph had something to do with that...

Shortly after this, in November 2007, my niece is born and shortly after that we exchange phone numbers and we speak on the phone for the first time.

As I dial the number my hands are shaking but as soon as I hear your voice I feel as though I've known you my whole life. Neither of us enjoy talking on the phone, but conversations could easily last two, three sometimes four hours or more! 

My parents scold me for racking up the phone bill for calls to the USA but I don't care.

It's around this time I know that have I have developed feelings for you, but I am utterly petrified of revealing this to you. You constantly mention other women that are interested in you, or women that you are going on a date with - whether you are doing this to be honest, or to gauge my reaction, I don't know, but I err on the side of caution and don't fully reveal the full extent of my feelings to you. 

During our lengthy correspondence, we talk of meeting up numerous times, but circumstances are just never favourable.

So, when you mention that you have the opportunity to work in Singapore, I don't get what your full intentions are. You say that when you mentioned that taking this job might lead to work in the UK and I didn't give you the 'right' reaction... from my side it just seemed to like you really wanted the job and was using the chance for working in the UK as an excuse to get me to give you my approval.

In truth, I really didn't want you to take the job; you'd be farther away and in a completely opposite time-zone that would make communication extremely hard, if not downright impossible. 

And in a way, I was proved right when once again, you vanished. You say later that you didn't really vanish, but to me you were completely out of reach; therefore there's no two ways about it- you vanished!

During this time I had the most vivid, detailed dream (which anyone reading my blog will know I have) where I had been missing you deeply for several months and then I receive a phone call from you where mid-conversation I hear a child in the background; you are then forced to reveal that you have a wife/girlfriend and child and you were only calling me to let me know and relieve your conscience.

I am so traumatised by this dream that when I wake up, I delete any and all evidence of your existence or that I had ever had feelings for you. I had made my peace with never seeing or speaking to you again- just as long as you didn't call me to relieve your conscience. Anything but that.

I forget how many months you were absent this time and whether it was longer than the original seven months absence, I only know that when I woke up from a nap that unremarkable afternoon and I saw that you were following me on Twitter, any fearful feelings I felt melted away and I just couldn't wait to speak to you again.

Not long after this, we start to discuss meeting up in person for real, and you reveal to me that me being and living with you is something that you've thought a lot about and wanted for quite some time.

It sounds so stupid to say so now because looking back it seems so obvious, but the revelation comes as such a shock to me and when you say it, it makes so much sense; this is where I am supposed to be and who I am supposed to be with. This is exactly what I want too, it just took you coming out and saying it for me to realise it.

Unfortunately circumstance doesn't rule in our favour and it takes over a year before we meet in person in July 2013; and even then, I don't tell a single soul where I'm going- I barely even give you any warning and even though you have next to nothing, no money, no proper place to live I still think the world of you and want to be with you more than anything. 

Stepping out of that cab and meeting you for the first time is such a high, such a rush I can't even put into words...

I don't even remember our first kiss, I just remember how I felt.

I want more than anything for you to ask me to stay, but I know that it isn't realistic so I return to the UK more depressed than ever.

If I thought that us meeting was the biggest hurdle we had to face I was wrong; it seemed that everything after that just seemed to go even further downhill, not just for you but for me too.

You think that I didn't care that you had difficulties, but I actually used to spend night after night unable to sleep, racking my brain as to how I could help you and crying myself to sleep when I couldn't do anything.

I guess that's why it's so hard for me to process why, after everything we've been through, you can't forgive me for being at my lowest point when I loved you and thought the world of you when you were at yours.

When I get back to the UK after my anxiety attack in June 2015, for some reason I get the bright idea to only contact you when I am returning; I want to surprise you.

I am haunted everyday by my decision to do this. I just keep thinking, if I had only contacted you one week earlier, five days earlier, one day earlier... would I have gotten to you before you vanish into thin air and we wouldn't be in this mess we're in?