Regret

There are no words for the regret that I feel right now.
I am not a confident person. When I have feelings for someone, when I feel very strongly, I will rarely act upon such feelings. I push them into a closet while I hope the person will, in some way, notice the way I feel and will pursue me the way I want them to. It’s an unfair way for me to put things this way; I realize this now. It puts the weight of my expectations and hopes on another person. It’s really a form of laziness, and it’s utter bullshit. I don’t know where my lack of confidence comes from, or if there’s even one root thing to blame for it, but the fact is that it doesn’t help me. It doesn’t give me anything, it doesn’t help anyone else, and it certainly doesn’t make anyone feel good or even valued. I don’t consider the fact that someone may have feelings for me; I really don’t. It’s not something that comes up as possible in my mind. Again, this stems from my confidence issue.. But this is not and should not be an excuse.
The fact is that there is a woman I care for now. I don’t call her a girl, despite how close we are in age. She is and always will be a strong and beautiful woman. She makes me laugh, she has made me cry, she is one of the most interesting and intelligent people in my life. Yet when I’m around her, there’s no end to my unease. I can’t deny my feelings. I want to touch her, I want to hold her in my arms. I want to kiss her and tell her that I love her. But I feel we’ve crossed that almost impenetrable line of friendship already. I don’t want that to be. I love this woman. When she walks, I can feel a sense of purpose in her steps, the walk of someone who knows life, who can take the world easily and walk through hurricanes and earthquakes without a scratch on her. She is tough, she is kind, she gives the harsh truth when she knows she must. But the barrier of “friendship”, which in and of itself is a lovely thing, is not what I want from her. I want love to be shared freely, I want to be able to touch her without feeling like she’ll push me away.
But with what’s just transpired, I can’t help but feel that I’ve lost her. Perhaps as a friend too; I don’t know. Why? Because I’ve never really told her how she makes me feel. She makes me angry and confused and sad, but the truth of the matter is that I perpetuate these feelings onto myself. The way she really makes me feel is wonderful. When she talks to me, over the phone or in person or even over the internet, I get this feeling of reverence: because the fact is that she’s talking to me, not someone else. She makes the effort to be with me, to visit me or see me in some way, even just to talk to me, despite the distance between us. The part that feels good is that she does it for me. She does it because she cares for me, she talks to me because she likes me. But what I haven’t been seeing is that this is not normal for people who are just friends. This is not what friends do, but it’s not a bad thing, far from it. At the very least, this is not what friends that I typically have do. And even though I feel this way, even though I know what we’ve been talking about, even though there were hundreds of hints that she felt the same way that I did, I never acted. I never showed the interest in her that was deserved. This is the reason for my regret, why this pit in my stomach is feeling deeper with each passing minute. I never did a thing to make myself and her happy, to at least try to do that.
I don’t know what to do now. If we can only be friends because of what’s happened between us, then that’s the way it’s going to have to be. But I hope that’s the worst that happens, because I can’t lose someone this important to me. I can’t lose her and I don’t think she wants to lose me either. Because I care for her. I know I do. It’s the reason I keep going to visit her, the reason I try to talk to her every night. And I know she cares about me; she wants to see me with equal enthusiasm, we have some sort of conversation almost every day. She tells me so much that she cares for me, and that I’ve been choosing not to see this is ridiculous and hurting devastatingly right now. I wish I could turn back time, I really wish I could. But I can’t. I want to still have her be a part of my life, I want that so badly. And right now, that’s all I want. To ask anything more would be unfair to her after what I’ve done.

~ by scriken on January 11, 2009.