A Love Letter To My Almost Girls

When you’re an Almost Girl, you’re the one they glance over but never choose. You’re the cigarette break, as temporary and translucent as the smoke that slowly escapes from his mouth as you wait to go inside his apartment for the very last time.

When you’re an Almost Girl, you’re the intermission, but never the show. You make him laugh but the sight of you doesn’t make his heart beat a little bit faster, at least not until the lights are off at 2 AM and he tastes like whiskey and cheap beer. But you know it means nothing, and that it really doesn’t have anything to do with you at all. No, because at 2 AM you could be anyone, and you pretend that you are. Anyone else but you.

And for a minute, you believe you can be her, the girl who fucks without a conscious, whose fingertips make him shiver. You really do become her in those early morning hours, and to prove it you leave before the sun rises. Before he notices you’re gone. Because Almost Girls don’t stay, and they sure as hell aren’t waited for.

But what they don’t tell you about being an Almost Girl is that you won’t be the interlude forever. Not for the right person. You might have been his distraction, but you don’t have to keep dancing with disaster. You have a choice, and I hope you choose yourself.

My God, I hope you choose yourself.

One day, you’ll find grace in goodbyes, and you’ll see the beauty in letting go of the things and people that were never meant for you. I hope you understand how lovely it is the way you laugh at jokes that aren’t particularly funny, how you continue to believe in love despite it constantly slipping through your fingers. I pray that you’ll continue to run your mouth and swear a little too much and drink a little too often. I hope you never lose yourself in someone else’s story.

But mostly, I really hope you know that you aren’t invisible and who you are is more than enough. Because I see you. I am you. And I know that we Almost Girls will always have each other.

We were never alone. And I’m sorry I ever thought I was.