dear amit,
i’ve been sitting with everything you said, and obviously with you taking time to think, my brain has been going a million miles an hour.
i’m scared.
i don’t want to lose you.
but i also don’t want this letter to just be me telling you how scared i am or begging you not to leave. i really need you to understand something that i don’t think i understood properly until now.
i know you feel like we’ve gotten nowhere with this for the past two years.
i understand why.
every time we talked about the future, the distance, where i would live, school, moving, any of it, i felt like i needed to immediately know what i was doing with my entire life.
and i didn’t.
so i panicked.
i felt pressured, i got overwhelmed, and instead of actually trying to find an answer with you, i avoided the question.
and i can see now what that looked like from your side.
you were trying to understand where this relationship was going, and i kept giving you uncertainty.
i know how exhausting that must have been.
but i really need you to understand that i wasn’t avoiding our future because i couldn’t see one with you.
i was scared of having to figure out my whole life.
those are not the same thing.
and i wish i understood that sooner.
because in my head, even when i wasn’t showing it properly, i was moving toward you, not away.
when i talked about coming to australia, i meant it.
when i thought about seeing your new house and your job and meeting your friends and walking around melbourne with you and complaining because you made me walk 30,000 steps, i meant it.
i wasn’t imagining some random trip.
i was trying to picture what my life there with you could actually feel like.
and somewhere along the way, i think i got so caught up in being afraid of making the wrong decision that i stopped actually making any decision at all.
i don’t want to do that anymore.
i know saying that doesn’t magically fix two years of you feeling like nothing was moving.
and i know you probably have every reason to wonder why this time would be different.
but something really has changed in me.
when you came back this time, i still had one foot out the door.
i was hurt. i didn’t trust you yet. i was scared that if i completely let myself love you again, you could turn around and do exactly what had hurt me before.
so i watched everything.
i questioned everything.
i waited for you to prove that you were serious before i let myself fully be serious too.
and somewhere in doing that, i think i made you feel exactly how i had felt.
like you were the one trying harder.
like you cared more.
like maybe i wasn’t really choosing you.
and i hate that.
because it wasn’t true.
i was just scared.
the stupidest part is that i was actually starting to get there.
i was starting to trust you again.
i was starting to let myself picture us properly again.
i was starting to think about coming to you, about what living together could look like, about our future without immediately shutting it down in my own head.
and now i think you’re the one who doesn’t know if it’s safe to trust me.
i understand that.
i really do.
i’m not asking you to suddenly forget everything that has frustrated or hurt you.
i’m asking you to let me stop talking about this like some abstract future and actually work on the answer with you.
because you’re right about one thing. “we’ll figure it out” isn’t enough anymore.
i don’t want another year of vaguely saying we’ll figure it out either.
i want us to actually sit down and look at it.
properly.
what are our realistic options?
what would it take for me to come to you?
what would school look like?
what do i need to research?
what do you need from me?
when can we realistically see each other?
what needs to happen so that this distance actually has an end point instead of just feeling endless?
i don’t expect either of us to know every answer before we start.
but i am telling you that i’m not willing to avoid finding them anymore.
that is different for me.
i’m willing to take action instead of sitting there scared until you eventually get tired of waiting for me.
because when i actually picture the life i want, you’re there.
it’s not even only the huge things.
obviously i think about travelling together and living together and eventually getting married.
but it’s also literally just life.
coming home to each other. getting food. watching movies. doing errands. arguing about what we’re eating. annoying each other. going to bed together. telling you something stupid that happened to me five minutes after it happens. getting to be there for your good days and your shit ones.
i don’t want somebody else to fill that space.
i wanna do life with you.
that’s really it.
and i know love by itself is not a plan.
i understand that now more than i did before.
but love is the reason i’m finally willing to stop avoiding the plan.
i’m not asking you to promise me forever right now.
i’m not even asking you to pretend you’re not scared.
i’m asking you whether there is enough of you that still wants this to give me the chance to actually show you what being all in looks like.
because i don’t think we ever got that version of this.
you came back all in while i was still protecting myself.
by the time i finally started putting my guard down, you were already exhausted and pulling yours back up.
and that makes me so sad because it feels like we missed each other by seconds.
i don’t want that to be the reason we lose each other.
