5.

Dear Dustin,
I’ve been trying to sleep (not very hard) and I just can’t.
I keep thinking of you and how your birthday is coming up.
I’m planning to send you a happy birthday text — that’s it, just "happy birthday" — and I’m feeling anxious because I’m not really sure how you will respond, or if you will respond at all.
Or if you’ll bother acknowledging my birthday.

I pray to God that it turns out in a way that I can stomach.

I swear that I pray for strength every day.
I want to talk to you so much…even just the barest of communications…but I promised you I wouldn’t.
That promise is getting harder and harder to keep with each passing day.
I don’t think I can keep it, at least not forever.
I wonder if you are getting one of your intuitive feelings… like, if you KNOW how I’m feeling right now.
If you have that sinking feeling that I’m going to contact you soon.

Don’t worry, besides for your birthday, it won’t be any time soon.
I have a lot of work to do on myself yet.
I haven’t earned the privilege… and it’s important that I do earn it, if not for you, then at least for me.

Because, if you didn’t know, I’m not giving up.
I can’t.
What we had was too strong and beautiful to give up on.
Too real. Too soul-wrenching. Too binding.
So many overturned dreams, so many feelings I just can’t swallow…
I can’t walk away.
At least not without an honest try.

Every day is a torment.
But maybe it’s my turn to wait.
My turn to have self-control.
And I hope you’ll listen.
Because maybe third time’s the charm.
And sometimes….sometimes I feel so confident, like I can make it happen.
Change your mind. Earn your trust. And embrace the opportunity to love you, unwavering, for the rest of our lives.
And other times?
I don’t think it’s possible at all. Like I’ve fucked up too badly, and even if you wanted to, you just couldn’t bring yourself to do it.
Those times are the worst. It always feels like there’s this giant chasm in my chest, and it just aches and aches…and I just cry and cry.
It’s funny though, I guess, because you used to say that my tears broke you down so hard.
I used to never cry…. now I cry all the time.

But I have to learn how to soothe myself.
To be comfortable with myself.
Develop my own hobbies, talents, interests.
Be alone and be okay with that.

I have to suffer to grow.
And I need to grow to be worthy of you.
And I hope to God I’m not wrong. I don’t see how I can be wrong when everything about us is so…real. But I fear it just the same.

That’s why I know I need to settle down.
I’m obsessing. Thinking about you almost constantly.
All the memories…all the dreams…
you’re still the only person I can picture waiting for me at the end of an alter,
the only person I can see growing old and decrepit and senile with.
But I need to push that aside as often as I can.
So I can focus on me…so that one day, there can maybe be an "us"…and there will be no more breaking and leaving and goodbyes.
Which was the point in all this heartache in the first place.

Will you do me the honor of keeping your heart open to me?
I don’t deserve it, and I’m not ready for it yet.
But if you’re the prize at the end of this interminable struggle? It’s worth it.

Love,
Amanda