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Dear Brianna,

My birthday is in 15 minutes. I will be turning 25 years old. Its funny how the earth has turned around the sun 25 times since the moment I opened my eyes to the world. So many times Ive seen it turn over and over again and its all just so strange you know? Living, this life, this world, all of it.

A year ago my birthday had passed. What did we do then? On my birthday last year were you there? I can’t really remember it clearly but I would like to believe you were. Maybe you had bought me something? Said something good, wished me something well. Why does it matter to me either way?

I remember now though. I got a long message from you. Telling me you still love me very much. That you wished me a good day and that even after all these years after everything you still do. Why does thinking of that bring me a heaviness in my heart? I am getting older, I should be happier that I am shouldn’t I? Tomorrow I should be happy. A dinner with my family, a cake, a year older.

5 minutes. Its five minutes now and I am anxious.

I saw you typing something earlier. Hours ago when I was at work I saw you typing something. I don’t know how, I don’t know why. But I was hoping something would be said. Maybe anything at all would have sufficed. Its four minutes now and I am scared. Why am I scared? I am scared because I am afraid to hear nothing. I expect to hear nothing. So why does it hurt me? Why even with all the mental preparation, the downplaying of how I feel and the expectation of the worse – why does it still hurt?

I am sitting here on my computer in the living room typing this. In two minutes my family might come in and wish me a happy birthday. And I will smile, I will laugh and hug them. I might get a text and call from Janice and Nick. And I should be happy. But my heart isnt. Inside of me, I just wont be. Not a soul would even know. Maybe its better that way.

I wonder what it was that you were planning to say. Maybe you werent planing to at all which is okay, its what I expect.

Its 1 minute now. I am scared.

I am afraid. My hearts racing and I am anxious.

Why do I have to keep getting older.

Why this way? Without you.

I would have liked you being here.

12:00am – Happy birthday to me.

P.S. I saw your message and replied to it. You made me cry. Thank you for always loving me despite my flaws and how everything is. I hope I am still here after a few years so that you know that I never took it for granted. You’ve always been there, having my back and keeping me from falling whenever things got tough. If I needed to count on anyone, it was you. Maybe that’s why it hurts. You’re still here, despite of it all.

Youve always had loved me. Since the first moment you met me, you loved me and cared for me. I am so stupid to always forget that.

I’m so sorry my sweet girl, my sweetest girl.

ohmu, as always.

Yours, Joshua

Dear Beloved,

I started school today.

I wish I could tell you all about my classes. My commutes. My awes and fascinations. But also the looming that comes with it. Chapter turned and pages that now unfold. I wish I could tell you about it all.

I drove today. I drove in a way I cant remember ever driving. I just kept driving. Maybe I was chasing something, or running from it. I don’t know.

I wanted to say more the other day. When i saw your message I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell you that you don’t have to make it sound like were strangers. Maybe I am a stranger to you, I feel like a stranger to myself. I wanted to tell you how much I wish I could tell you about all that I’ve seen, all that I’ve done and want to do. I wanted for us to go back. But I feel like that is a selfish thought to have. I keep thinking you’re happy, so why do I want to intrude your happiness with my doubts?

Do you ever have moments such as those? Do you ever look at photos of me and long, and yearn, and grief? Do you remember moments with me and does an anger stir in your heart when you remember my smile? When you think of my laughter and the way I would cry to your name, does a hatred grow? I would assume so. I like to think so. It feels better that way.

Our conversations grow shorter and shorter. I only heard from you to wish me well for this new year. That’s all, ending it with “Best, bri.” As if I am a stranger, a stranger who cant even remember your name. When none of that is true. Of course I remember you. I think of you everyday. I cant NOT think of you. Regardless of it all. I choose not to touch the playlist, because you don’t either. Despite the many aspects in my life that tell me I could, that I should, that I would, I chose not too. There is a restrain in me. A restraint that I wish I didn’t have. Maybe its hesitation. Hesitation to swallow my pride and accept my guilt.

I am with someone who, despite our happiness, we have so many problems. I am incomplete in a lot of ways. I am left with something missing, yet I settle for it. I am hidden, I am a secret – I am content. So why do I do this? Why am I writing this to you? YOU who wont ever read this? Why tell you? Maybe its because I want it to be you who knows. But you cant, you probably wont ever.

Its just me and this stupid page. I am talking to only myself. Convincing myself that I am talking to you just to ease the grief. Either way, you’re probably asleep right now. It is 3:38am, I would assume you are. You probably have work in the morning, or maybe you’re with Bryan asleep in his arms. Either is okay. I reap what I sow is all I convince myself.

Who knows, maybe you broke up and I lucked out. Or maybe you’re talking to someone new, already forgetting me. Which is good, that’s healthy and that’s apart of life. People grow apart and things don’t work out.

So why, why does living with that become heavy? Why does it burden my soul. Ill be honest Brianna sometimes when I think too deeply I convince myself of the dumbest things to commit too. I wont do it, I mean I hope I wouldn’t. Then again, was I ever truly strong?

I messed up, that much I know. Hey, do you think you’ll marry Bryan? I talked to Janice about getting married one day in the future, her reaction was “I dont know, we’ll see when we get there.” Weird, how little I care if we do or don’t. Children? I don’t know. Youve talked about having children with Bryan; what names did you give them? I only hope if he marrys you that he treats you right, better then I ever did. God only knows that I was the worst. I could have been worst, trust me.

I know you hate me though. You dint have to say it, but I know it. After all this time, after all the memories and time I had come and gone – surely you do. And that’s okay – I reap what I sow. But is it mutual? No. Never is, never has been. I wanted to hate you, deep down I still want too. But when I dream of you, when I see you smile at me for what feels like ages, and I wake up crying and haunted by grief – I just cant. I love you.

I tell myself that as I sit next to Janice at Santa Monica Pier. We are eating Bubba Gump, watching the waves crash at night. And I think of you for a small moment. In that tiny moment of peace and happiness I think of you and I know deep down you’d hate that I did. So between us I didn’t think of you, I only saw Janice.

I wonder if you have moments like that with Bryan. I saw the photo of you and Jada and your friends and Bryan during Christmas. Ironically, I never look at Jada’s story, but seeing you with him – you looked happy. Much happier then you were with me. So I stay away. I chose to stay away, just for your happiness, not mines in all honesty. There’s no happiness for me to find here. But as long as you’re okay and loved then maybe that’s enough. I may not have a lot of time. Maybe one day I’ll commit to a stupid decision. Regardless if I do or don’t, just be happy is all. Don’t ever stop living your life to the fullest and be happy with all that you have. You deserve it more then anybody else.

I love you and I miss you Brianna.

Best, Josh.

Brianna,

I am a pawn to a greater game.

I see myself in an endless oasis of a life I once used to live. I’ve mentioned before how I felt like most of my life I had been sitting within the backseat of its vehicle. Chauffeured to destinations I never chose, most never wanted. I suppose that is it to say I had some from of control, I only had to stop riding it. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t fathom that my life was controllable. In many ways it still isn’t. It may never well ever be.

I wish I could find some solace in knowing that all is well. That in fact, I had done all I could and it is remembered fondly. That maybe even my actions and decisions, although questionable, they are understood without being blind sided. But, I am naive. I live life too precariously. I expect the worst – for I am the worst. Thoughts such as those keep festering in my mind. They stay because I make them stay with me. I have so much regret.

“I’m hurting by letting you go on your own…I’m dying ’cause it wasnt my choice at all…”

That was one of the lyrics from your songs you shared. I keep thinking about it. If that’s how you feel. If deep down you hurt because you feel as though I inflicted a pain unto you that was undeserved, maybe we did it to us both. I have a strange pain in my heart when I think of you. It feels like you’ve died. I don’t know how to grieve your death. Whether to be angry or upset. I get angry at myself for your absence, I get angry at you for causing it by your choice. I don’t regret my choice, and yet I do everyday. Its a weird way to live. To be content, yet full of regret. I hate it some days. I hate myself most days – I am far from perfect.

“Safe to say, That I am not who you need…”

Another lyric, another whisper, another echo. Do you feel that way? Do you feel that you’re not who I need? I sometimes feel as though I am not who you need. It justifies your decision, your words, your actions.

Anytime I look inside of the mirror I see temporary look back. That’s all that I am, temporary. This mortal body, this mortal soul and its irises. I am a temporary vessel made for temporary pleasure. That’s all that I’ve though about lately. How temporary all this is. My life, my love, everything. It all changes around me.

I sometimes dream of leaving far away. I dream to just run, escape this life of mines. Forget it all, forget me. Forget everything. Just restart in another.

And I dream of you. Brianna, I still dream of you.

I walk with you around an empty fading museum.

You always walk ahead of me, always smiling, always laughing.

No matter how fast I run, how loud I scream or cry, I cant catch up. You disappear with it.

And I wake up to a life that belongs to Joshua. But its not mine. Its not me.

“May you never forget me, May you never forget me…”

A simple lyric that echoes every morning I wake up. I pass the same places, the same doors, the same halls and chambers of my life. All the same, all the changed.

Staring at mirrors, mirrors that are Joshua’s. But not mines. Its never mines.

And I don’t doubt your happiness in your life. I am happy for you.

But for me. For mines? Oh, for me…?

May you never forget me, is all I ask.

May you never forget me….

Dear Brianna,

I’m in the still waters.

The carnage is over. The tides finally come down. After so much time of thrashing in the waters and clawing at anything to find my footing, I found the floor. I am here, dried up on the shores of it all. There’s wreckage all around me. So much wreckage from it all and I can’t stand. I can’t move, not because I can’t but I don’t want to. I’m just sitting here staring at the still water that was once so violent.

The wreckage around me. I am caught in the middle of it. I want to make sense of the violence. I want to make sense of the hurt. Of it all. Why did the ship burn? Why did it thrash? How did it fall apart?

The tides gone, but the violence in my heart still remains. I feel the calm tide touch my knees. But I find myself kicking the water. I find myself thrashing inside of it screaming and yelling, trying to silence the violence, but also to feel it all again.

But the water stays calm. And its me, I have become the violence.

And the wreckage become me. I want to walk into the water. I want to disappear into the ocean, and sink. I want to drown. Drown with the wreckage as its being swept away, I can no bury it away without being buried away as well.

So I sit here, at the shore staring at the still water.

But there’s violence in my heart. There’s wreckage in my soul. And yet there’s a still ocean.

And I am there, somewhere between it all.

Where are you? Where were you in all of this?

Love,

Josh

Dear Brianna,

Do you even think of letting me go?

I wonder now if one day you’ll end doing so. Does me being with someone else not stop you from wanting to be with someone else? You have all the time now, all my forced silence and space to put your full attention to Bryan. You have the chance to have a life with him, and a life without me in it. Why? Maybe its because you just couldn’t make up your mind, so i chose to do it for you. It was not an easy choice.

I think deep down you know you want to spend the rest of your life with him but you’re unsure of what to do with me. Maybe you don’t want me to be alone, maybe you’re afraid that I’ll wait for you forever. I could, if I really wanted too I know I could. I maybe still am, but my actions say otherwise.

I’m with someone and I am happy with them. Maybe not content, I don’t know what will happen and its not the way you said it. I don’t know even writing this confuses me and hurts a bit. My aunt Jessica had asked me the other day if I was happy with my relationship, or was I content. I asked her what would saying that I was content would have meant, if It did not equate to being happy. She told me it meant that I settled. That I am okay with where I am at,

I told her that wouldn’t be the answer I would give. But I thought of you in that moment and wondered why you said you were content. A tornado had passed in me.

I think that’s more than telling enough. But a part of me, as happy as I am, wonders if I had just kept the same routine would I have gotten worse? Spending days and nights waiting for you anxiously for you to reach out, hesitating every time I wanted too because I knew you might have been with him and I would have been a second thought – or even another. Letting days just pass me by, watching time pass and drinking just to calm myself.

Drowning in melancholy and for some reason I’m the other choice and I am miserable.

Do I wish to do it all over again with you? Yes, without a single doubt in my mind I do. Do I wish we could do it all over again and do it right? Yes, without a single doubt in my heart I do.

But do I know if we’ll ever get the chance to make it work?

I don’t. But I wish I did. God but I wish I did.

I passed by the Natural History Museum earlier today, and you were on my mind. How come we never went back anyway? What changed in your mind and heart? I am still there. I am still in the apparatus of history somewhere deep within the chambers of my heart.

Do you ever plan to take Bryan there with you one day?

If you do, I just hope you enjoy being there with him as much as I did with you that day three years ago.

I miss you, and I hope you’re well.

Yours,

Sweet Gum

Dear Brianna,

You crossed my mind today.

I was thinking about you while I was at work for some reason. Maybe it’s because it is summer again, and the heat reminds me of you. It’s strange how remembering you isn’t really seasonal. But the seasons remind me of you. The heat, this damn heat. It reminds me of you. It reminds me of us, about the better times we used to have. A life I once lived.

I miss having you close to me. Close to my life – and not just a secret I deny having. I wonder if there will come a time when a word isnt ever spoken between the two of us. When I will hear nothing from you, and weeks will turn into months without so much as a single sentence from you. It breaks my heart when I recall the good moments between us. Even leaving me torn inside, as if my soul and body rejects itself, or even one another.

I remember that October we took Elsie to the wildlife center. It was October 4th, 2023. It’s strange that I remember the day so vividly. The breakfast we ate, and having Elsie in my arms. I wanted nothing more that just that with you. You and I, and someone like us both. Something so beautiful but its as close as I may ever have gotten. The memory makes me burn. As if my life around me is burning and I am watching this memory burn away with it as I plummet back to earth. Icarus, losing his wings all because he flew too close to the sun, He was there, almost there. I was there, barely. So close, so close that my wings burned too. And yet the warmth killed me too.

And with each passing day as the memory lingers and fades deeper and deeper into the darkest crevice in my mind, I feel myself burn. My wings burning off, and I plummet back to earth, I plummet back to the ground.

But how I wish you’d grab my hand. Oh how I wish you’d have just grabbed my hands and never let me go. For I would have held yours, and never let go.

Is this heaven or am I in hell? I don’t know any longer.

Yours, Joshua

Dear Brianna,

It’s not easy for me to stay away from you at this moment. Something in me feels like its lost a part of itself that can’t really come back. I feel guilty lately, mostly for the moments when I find myself being happy. Whenever I find peace within the mundane moments of my life when nothing occurs, I feel guilty. It is as if I know that I shouldn’t be okay with you not being here.

Are you still here? That’s all that I wonder about sometimes. Are you still there with your heart intact to mines? Or have we both walked separate paths opposite from one another? Is it better this way that we lose the love we had for one another?

I feel like I spent so many years of my life loving someone, yet was I ever seen for it? Your words cut me deeply. Deeper than any pain I had ever felt in my life. Its searing, aching, stabbing me more and more and has me begging that I never once lived. Your only words being “I am content in my relationship.” Have you not said that to me before? Have I not been here before? Just where exactly am I in your life? Was I ever even meaningful after all this time? Or am I just a leaf in the wind of your life. Passing. Ever passing.

I thought for a moment, perhaps an eternity. When the heartbreak and reality had set in, should I even bother anymore? It felt as if I had met a dead end. I didnt know what to say or do, should I be angry or broken? Should I hate you? Resent you?

Should I still love you?

I deciden on walking away from it all.

After so much time I realized no matter what there wasn’t any point to any of it anymore. If I stay and wait, just how much of my life will pass me by? If I just let go.

And you told me to let you go. That you’re not good for me. Maybe in some way we are not good for one another, maybe you know that better than I do. It’s funny, I realize now that even writing this I wont ever give this to you. There’s no actual medium to give, its just letters on a computer I typed. This is just me talking to a ghost of myself that I feel dying within me. Do I still love you? Of course I do, without a doubt I know I do.

I may as well always will deep down. I know deep down I’ll always be in love with you in secret but I can never tell a soul. I’ll lie to my family, to my friends, even to myself. All because you are gone now, and that’s the greatest truth.

But I don’t love you anymore, and that is the greatest lie.

Yours, Joshua