To The Boy I Refused To Love

This is to the boy I walked away from; to the boy I glanced at and realized: "Hey, you're funny. You're cute too," and proceeded to shut down all the ways to know him, all the ways he could have known me.

I wasn't ready to get to know him, to be friends with him because I believed in my clairvoyant abilities. I still do. I can see the future at the beginning and make a decision to either take the risk or not. And I looked at this beautiful and kind boy and said, "No, you're not worth the rejection, the pain. You're not worth a broken heart."

I wasn't ready to be a friend to a guy who made my heart flutter again. I've been burned before, and I wasn't willing to get scorched again. I still smelled of the last fire. The burns still flared. So I built this wall around me and avoided looking at him when he was anywhere near me. My lips were so tight in his presence; I wasn't willing to bloom, to be me. I kept myself budded up, wounded up in flight.

What he must think of me, if he even does, I can't blame him at all. I cringed whenever I saw him because it was better than letting my heart make a fool of myself again.

Years later, I still think of him. He's become the ideal, the idol of what I want of a man. The limited moments of when I allowed myself to see him, I gathered pieces of his personality and fashioned him on this pedestal, and he's become the standard. He's become this icon that is as real as the risk when I got a first good look at him all those years before.

So I've created even more of a chasm between the two of us. I made him in the image of all that I could never deserve. In my mind, perfection has become his defense. He is perfect. Who I created him to be is perfect, and I cannot get to know this creation. It isn't real. He is not real.

I'm running away from a phantom. And I have got to stop.

I'm sorry that I didn't get over my fear to know you. I'm sorry I never got to love you as a friend, as a person, as a real person with your own dreams and desires, with your own fears and insecurities. I'm sorry that I never thought that you were worth the risk because you are worth to be seen, to be known, to be loved as a real person even if you never loved me back in the way I wanted.

I wish I can get over you to know you- the real you. I hope I can because of all the things I've made up about you, there's one thing I know for sure. You are beautiful and kind. I wish that didn't scare me off. I wish it did what it was made to do- draw me near you.

Maybe it will.