To The Boy Who Is Too Afraid To Love Me

Dearest Boy of Mine,

The days are long and lazy, and your face is always on my mind. I spend hours thinking of you – what you must be doing, what you are thinking and feeling, how much you would enjoy the places I am seeing right now. When I am writing letters to my friends, the first one I always write is to you.

I write you letters on sheaves of lined paper, and I have not yet sent you a single one.

There is a time and a place for love, dearest boy of mine, and I have walked through that gate already. I have entered the garden of love, and I will wait here for you until you join me. Because you are hesitating, with one hand on that gate, but it has not quite swung open to admit your soul into my heart, has it now?

I know what you are going through. I know that the ghost of your past has reappeared, that you have old wounds to heal, that you have a whirlpool of confusion that I cannot calm alone, no matter how dearly I would love to.

You see, my love is not enough for you quite yet. You are beyond my reach when you are like this.

I have seen the depths of your eyes, and I have read the pains of lost love in their blue waters. There are times when I reach out to run my fingertips over your eyelids and you relax utterly beneath my touch. I keep my hands on your face, to remind you of this trust. To remind you that I would not hurt you, that I know fully well the sensitivity of your soul.

I want you to know that your vulnerability is one of your greatest strengths, and it is one of the reasons I love you so dearly. I don’t want to see your soul weighed down by the past. I have borne the weight of the past, and it is not an easy task.

She is back, I know. And seeing her again, as you are doing, is a type of self-punishment that I understand, for I have done it myself, so many times before. Tasting the forbidden fruit, taking back the power and the control. Showing her that she no longer has the power to hurt you as she did before. Because she did hurt you, and you told me as much that one night when we lay side-by-side and held each other tightly.

Lying beside you, I could feel the confusion rolling off of you in waves, and I let my body absorb as much of your pain as I could possibly bear. I would have held you in the safety of my arms forever, but that is not the way to live. I know that if I am to ever hope to have you fully, you must exorcise your ghosts.

Look closely, dearest boy of mine, at what you have, not at what you have lost. I am still holding the gate to my garden of dreams wide open. Don’t hesitate at the gate any longer. Turn your back on the fruits of the world and step closer to me. Purge yourself of your confusion, of your past, of love lost and returned.

If you choose her, I will smile sadly and close the garden gate, but I will leave you a key. And I will hope that one day, you will tiptoe back to see me dancing among the trees, and that you will find that key – that memory – and join me in the grass. Your soul will be light then, I hope, and your mind free of burdens.

You see, I do not want you if I cannot have all of you. I have tasted the beauty of your soul and I cannot bear anything less than everything.

I want all your pieces, fit together in the way I know they belong. I will happily solve the puzzle of your soul time and time again, but only if you choose to show me all the pieces. A puzzle that is missing parts cannot be solved, my dearest boy. And right now, no matter how much of you I have gained, I still have not been given all of your heart into my keeping.

And that is what I hope to gain one day.

So I will wait for you, until you give me reason to stop. I will never stop hoping to hear those three words fall from your lips. And I will always want to explore the world with you by my side.

But I am not in the habit of sharing you with other girls, and that is why you must choose. I will never force a decision upon you; I don’t believe in forcing love. I don’t believe in half-hearted relationships, or in playing games. I will give you the time you need right now, because your happiness means the world to me. But I will demand an honest choice from you one day. And I hope that it will be the one that makes us both happy.

With Love,
Your Brown-Eyed Girl