It was over before ever having the chance to begin.

That’s what you eventually tell people when they ask why you never got together. You make some self-deprecating joke, that you’re always falling for people who will never love you back. Turn it around on yourself, call it your own problem.

“I’m probably single-handedly putting my therapist’s kid through college.”

Only allow yourself to cry when no one is looking.

Scroll through photos of the two of you together and feel stupid. Feel mislead, but then remember things were always clear.

All your life, your heart has made decisions before you could tell it not to.

Imagine how wonderful you’d be as a couple. Allow yourself to soak in the fantasy, tuck it into the back of your mind. Access it when everything seems dim and dark and utterly hopeless.

Hold onto nothing. Hold onto the idea of everything.

Someone mentions that you’re stuck in the “friend zone” and you get mad. Because that’s not what this is. It’s a ludicrous made up place to be, as if we relegate people we don’t have feelings for to lowly friends.

No, friends are wonderful.

Friends can make you laugh until you cry and rub your back when you do cry. Friends understand you and are there for you. They somehow love you at your grossest, love you at your most honest.

And this is what you have. A friend who loves you. And you love them. But you love them powerfully, unconditionally, in a way, down deep, you know they will never reciprocate.

You do not tell them. You won’t ask for something they cannot give. You won’t risk losing someone you love so much.

Even if it will always be one-sided. Even if they are, and always will be, just a friend.