A letter to a girl I knew:

More in the continuing series of painful letters never meant to be read.

Hey, I think it's great that we're friends and all, and I have a great time hanging out with you. But is that it? Call me crazy, but haven't we connected? Maybe just me... We could be like peas in a pod, but you're just not where I am. And I doubt you ever will be. And I've given up hoping. I think to myself that it'd be great or nice or special, but I'm thinking in that hazy dreamy way, the kind of thinking you do when it's raining outside, and you think of how you'd love to go outside and play, but if the rain stopped, you know you'd still be inside. It's not reality. It's not even a world of 'might have been's. It's all fantasy and conjecture. There's no truth to it.

I know that the proper course of action is bridge burning. It's the tried and true solution. And it wouldn't be because I hated you or resented you. It's be because every time I see you, I think, 'Maybe...' and every time I get a card or e-mail or phone call from you, I think, 'Maybe...' when there is no maybe, there is no possibility. There is no might. And the mind knows this, but the heart, it wants what it wants. And the only way to change its mind is to hate you, to resent you, to wish that I'd never met you. It's the only way to stop the wondering and the fantasies and the endless string of maybes. It's the easy way out, the model solution, but I can't bring myself to do it. And maybe I know that it'd be pointless. The maybes would still be there at night or in my dreams.

They wouldn't go anywhere. These feelings aren't the ones you can just chase off, because they're not lust or infatuation. It's not love either. I don't believe in love. You can't grasp it. You feel it like you smell cinnamon in an apple pie, and it blows away in the cold and wind. No, love is nothing to connection. Two people connecting, that's real. That's firm. You can't throw that away any more than you can throw away your parents.

So I guess it'll just be status quo, with me wondering if I'd ever had a chance, or if I was always out of focus. But I'm just festering, rotting away, waiting for something to happen when it never will. And I wonder what will happen when you finally find someone. Maybe that part of me will die, like I hope it will.