You saw me once in the study hall all those years ago. I was just sitting there, minding my own business, wearing my black whatever outfit and listening on my headphones. You tapped me on the shoulder and asked, "Hey, what are you listening to?" From that point on, I knew that I was yours. The trouble we used to get into, and all the headaches we must have had, but it was always with you. Decades later, when I was lost, you were the first and last person I sought. You took priority. Just to see you one more time, even if it was brief, would have meant everything. I was so lost and hurt from everything in my life. What kept me going was the hope of seeing you again, hearing from you, being in your presence, or just seeing you smile, even if only for a moment. It was my secret, a secret I wished I would have told you sooner.
The saddest and perhaps the most hopeful part of it all is that I am still waiting for you to come back. You left me here because you had to go far away. I should have made you mine that day, but I was too scared. Because once I was with you, I would have given you the world, and I would have burned the world for you.
So when you said, "I am still in the past," you were right, but it's not in the way you think or believe. I wasn't stuck in my past because I was hurt; I was in pain. I was facing my past alone, with no refuge to turn to, because it was you. You are my home, you are what I have always hoped for, at least during those times. No one is perfect, and no one can be someone else's everything. It would be wrong of me to expect that from everyone. If I had been more courageous, stronger, I would have sacrificed everything that would harm me just so that one day, you would be proud of me, because I don't care about the rest of the world, I only care about you.
I don't regret my life, I don't regret having my own. What I do regret is that it wasn't with you.
So when I confessed to you that I have always been in love with you and asked if you felt the same way, your response tore me apart, it devoured my soul. I never expected you to change your situation; I didn't want you to change your life because of some old feelings from the past. Instead, you left me in limbo, and I don't blame you. I just wish that you could have closed the chapter of my life that you were a part of. Because I can't.
So, if you do read this, if you do understand this, even though it's a long shot, and uncertain, if you truly don't care anymore, if you truly don't have these emotions towards me, if everything was a lie or if I am delusional, free me from this torment, free me from this torture, free me from this love that I have always carried, but I need your help to end this torment because you're the final piece for me to keep moving forward. I don't want to be that 16-year-old version of myself waiting for you to knock on my door anymore. Because you were always my past, always my present, but I need to have my own future. I just need you to let me go.