This is not a medical post - this is me trying to fix me.

Dear Friend

I think that’s what we were for a brief moment – like a supernova, or a firework display – something brilliant and breathtaking and so distinct from the sepia tones of every other day. Friends.

I’m not sure what we are now. Where there was colour and wonder and excitement there is now something grey and blurry, indistinct and uncomfortable.

For the longest time I have been turning our relationship over in my hands, like a rubix cube – trying to figure out how to make the colours line up, but the more I try to create order the more I cause chaos.

I think that is what hurts me first – I am trying. I, alone, am investing. That has always been a poor prognostic factor.

With the hindsight of days, actually probably more like months, I am forced to accept that the first problem was that I didn’t see you as my equal – I saw you as better than me. More beautiful, more intelligent, more disciplined, more adventurous. I saw pieces of myself in you and it gave me hope for me. I put you on a bit of a pedestal, set you apart as someone to aspire to and when one day you approached (or maybe it was me) with an offer of friendship I was so flattered and honoured I let you into my heart without doing my usual safety checks.

We had some great moments. We had some great laughs. We dragged each other through tough days. We talked sometimes too late.

And then one day it stopped.

A wall went up that I feel like I ran full-speed straight into. I was unprepared for the puff of smoke that you disappeared into. It left me winded, and blinded, coughing and spluttering and crying frantic tears.

Of all the possible options, the most likely explanation seemed to be that you had figured out you were too good for me. Whatever that brief fusion of stories had been it was over.

I cannot figure out how to get back to you. I have asked gently, I have groveled pathetically. The wall stays.

And so I find myself having to choose between the possibility that the problem is you, and the fault is beyond my locus of control, or that the problem is me and I must mourn my deficit and accept that I cannot be more than what I am.

They are both impossible situations – each with it’s own mix of frustration and despair.

More than once now, I have tried to overcome this in my heart, forgive you of wrongs I’m not sure you’re even aware that you committed and convince myself to fight for what could be one of those magical-movie-inspiring friendships. But you have retreated into a shell that I cannot force you to come out of. I feel like a lion cub that tries to play with a tortoise and while my intentions are not harmful they seem only to be frightening you and pushing you further away.  Instead of a friend a weed of self-doubt grows.

  

I cannot continue. My heart will not survive.

So this is goodbye.

I’m setting you free.

Always I will wonder about what we could have been.

Always I will miss you.