Hey, how are you?

You’ve been on my mind, not in like an obsessive way or anything just in a you were on my mind every day for many years kind of way and sometimes it still feels natural to think about you. I rearranged my room and found those earrings you gave me that weren’t really bought as a gift but ended up being the first thing you offered me other than your name and your time for coffee in the mornings. And I don’t really wear them anymore but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get rid of them either because I’m scared that one day I will have let go of so many things and I’ll look around and realize there is nothing anymore of anything I used to be with you other than the sedimentary layers of my memory and it literally aches - aches like a sore muscle - in my heart to think about how much I don’t have of the people I love.

I’m a sentimental maximalist; this is a term I’ve been using a lot lately and I think maybe I made it up but also maybe I didn’t but the gist of it is that so many things have meaning and meaning is so fucking important to me and I want you to know I meant every word I ever said when I said it in love and only some of them I said when I said it in anger. And I can’t remember everything I ever said but I really do feel I said “I love you” enough and I hope I did love you enough. I hope I loved you enough that it fundamentally changed my DNA to be more loving. I hope I loved you enough to expand your heart and hold so many treasures within you the way I hold treasures in boxes and catch-alls and drawers even if it’s just a ticket stub or the unorganized-everything-everywhere collection of fortune cookie fortunes I have - did you know that about me? That I never throw a fortune away? That I keep every remnant of lucky number, hidden truth, esoteric almost nonsense? Before I came back to myself I got one that said “you will win the big prize” and now I am in a bigger place with a bigger heart and a smaller home but bigger ceilings and doorways and bigger rooms for myself to collapse into and the bigness isn’t about size but about what I’m willing to receive and then I fell in love with many things about myself and my life and the people in it but I also fell out of love with many things that defined me which had me kind of spiralling about how memory is false presence and could you (or anyone) really know anything about me when I am moulting?

Anyway, maybe collapse isn’t the right word, but sometimes I do melt. Sometimes I do crumble in a soft and brittle way like dried dirt and I have to really let myself feel to add enough wetness back to gather it all up again. Sometimes when I let myself feel that I can feel the cold water salted ocean in January, or the lake up the street from our house in June where I would swim laps, or the first bath I ran you on our first valentines when you gave me yellow roses for their symbol of friendship and because you didn’t want to be too cheesy or commercial and no one had ever given you anything except expectations and you didn’t  yet realize it was a day I wanted to give love - from the very conception I think that I really was so enamoured with giving love that I sometimes forgot to receive it from you. Except then you would sometimes still buy me a yellow rose or plan an elaborate Easter egg hunt because it made me so happy and we promised we would always we friends.

I think it’s funny how those things unfold. How I didn’t have your number for a good month even when we were kissing secretly and purposefully not flirting over coffee and letting the truth spill over the edges when I wore that shirt of yours after sleeping over that our friend made and he came over and said “I know exactly how many of those shirts I’ve sold in what sizes and to who….” And then he still kept our tenderness under lock and key because sometimes it’s just good enough to know even when you aren’t told. So that got me thinking about everything I know, and also all the things that I probably won’t get to know too. I won’t know when your coffee order changes, and probably won’t know when you get the next stripe on your belt or hear about the next art you want to put on your skin as you fill out that bucket list or listen to the pop-punk album you’re obsessed with and sometimes I’m okay with this because it’s not anyone’s business, really, to know everything about someone and I won’t delude myself into thinking I ever did about you or you did about me but I also don’t want to pretend that I don’t get worried that I still love you too much - not because is a bad thing but because the world has conditioned us to think that certain allotments of certain things are held up to this barometer like those strength games at a circus and the stronger you are the higher it goes but more of a “the more you love then this is what the relationship means” kind of thing… even though my heart is so vast and could always hold so many things and I’m scared for the day to realize that we’re good friends but really no longer best friends even though I kind of made a promise to myself to always be one of your best friends and I know if I call you crying and need to see the cat you will answer.

And, also, you were in my dream this afternoon, when I had a nap and was reminded of you because it was so easy for you to fall asleep at anytime during anything and I was envious of that - and in the dream we were at a concert, at a table with a white cloth and it was really fancy but you were in a t-shirt with a hat on and your Nikes and you were so you I thought you might also be sleeping and meeting me there and this woman performed this song and it was her first time singing it but I had heard it before and I started crying and you looked at me in this eternally sad way because you knew it struck something within me but realized you couldn’t comfort me and maybe never actually knew how and I said it was okay but I wasn’t really sure what it meant and then I left to go and rearrange my room and then I woke up and decided I really needed to rearrange my room and then I found those earrings and they weren’t lost, or hidden, or out of sight I just sort of noticed them and noticed every feeling and story about them and that thought of “should I keep this?” - which I was truthfully having about everything in my possession during this process - really struck me down because the question wasn’t about the earrings or the memory but about the way I feel about having had the pleasure of loving you and the wisdom I had (actually that we had) to know when it had changed, or really more when I had changed, beyond being able to love you and me in the ways we both need at the same time and when you told me that you burn candles because you realized it’s nice or that you enjoy bath bombs now and taking a good soak or even just that I’m in your grandmothers obituary even though we were both against it I realized that we don’t really need things to have things and I’ll still keep the earrings because they are objectively pretty cool and I do like them but I’m going to stop feeling bad about thinking about you and yeah anyway I just wanted to see how you were doing.