Email to K

A few days ago, I wrote K an email. It was late and I was feeling particularly sad, so I was going to write her an quick email, basically just telling her I was thinking of her. It ended up not being a quick email. As far as a response, her only response directly to this email, was that it was sweet, but she didn't know how to respond to it. We still exchange regular emails, so who know what effect, if any, this email had on her.

I already sent you a regular email. But now I'm just sitting around thinking about you and I felt like reaching out to you again. I really don't even know what I want to say in this email. If we were still together, I'd just send you a quick 'miss you and can't wait to see you', and you'd read it with a giant awww instead of a short bah. I know these "mushy" emails make you uncomfortable, but I always do feel a little bit better after sending them.

I know you want me to give up on 'getting you back' and move on. But the only thing I want to do, is get you back and start all over again, but this time with a significantly greater understanding of my own feelings towards you, what i want out of a relationship, and what to put in to one. I'd never been in a relationship past 6 months, and I spent the last 6 months of our relationship pushing you away when I should have been pulling you closer. Everything is obvious, so crystal clear, in hindsight. I don't feel guilty, in the sense that I always did what I thought was best. It just wasn't. I've learned a tremendous amount about myself and about what love really is, over the past few months. I feel like I would thrive in a long term relationship now, instead of before when I was just confused all the time, unsure of myself, or what I was "supposed" to do. But what I've learned doesn't bring me any joy at all, without the prospect of entering this new level of "relationshipsness" with you. I know you are not interested in this right now, despite my best efforts, and it really has been my best effort, of anything I've ever done, but just please don't close the door on the idea completely. Please keep your heart open to the idea that some day we could be together again. In a few short months, I feel like my life has completely changed. Greg mentioned to me that you said you felt like after a year, our relationship was in the exact same place it was when it started. My response to that is of course it was. I was like a deer in the headlights, not sure what I was feeling, not sure what a relationship like this was supposed to be like. I didn't know what I was doing so I just tried to keep things exactly as they were. When people asked me if I thought you and I might get married some day, I would look at them funny, as if this was a question that didn't even compute in my brain. I mean, I'm looking for a place to live, and your lease was up, and moving in together didn't even occur to me. My whole mindset was based on 'this is good, lets just keep doing this'. For what it's worth, now when I think of you, first I think why didn't I spend more time with you. (well, because I didn't want things to get too serious, I wanted the serious level to stay right where it was). But more than that, I think of you as someone I would be incredible fortunate to spend my future with. I had never met a girl like you before. And while I was unsure before, I'm totally sure now that KSG is just the girl for me :) This email isn't meant to be a proposal, far from it. In fact, this email was meant to just be me saying hi. But I want to say this, that thinking about a future where we do stay together forever, that is a timeline I think about fondly. That would be the least dark timeline. My desire to get back together with you is not just because it's "easy", or that being with you was so "easy". I want to be back with you because I think you and I are, not to overstate things, the greatest couple the universe has ever known. My timing sucks and I didn't realize you were the one for me until I had already 'run you off' by treating you for months, not like a romantic interest but like a childhood best friend or something. You've said many times that there was nothing I did wrong, that I treated you well in our relationship. Of course I never treated you badly directly, I always cared deeply about you. But what I did seems like the worst thing of all. I broke up with you so slowly and nicely, that you completely un-fell for me. Usually I apologize to you when an email gets mushy. I try to 'play it cool' cause that what everyone says you have to do. But I do not apologize for the mushiness in this email. This is how I feel goddamnit *fist pound* and it's important to me that you know it. (that was fake anger btw) I wish we had more (any?) personal talks while we were dating. We both dropped the ball there. But now my only choice is to tell you how I feel over email. Which isn't so bad, it lets me think about exactly what I want to say. This is the longest "hi" email I've ever written. 

While I'm letting my feelings flow, I also want to try to explain what it means to "not be sure" you're in love, and then change your mind. In a way, that's a very insulting thing to say to someone you dated, or want to date again. When we started dating, I was completely infatuated with you. I used to just stare at that first picture of us on my boat out in the harbor, and think wow i'm so lucky. As weeks went by, that infatuation went away. I didn't understand what I was feeling. What I couldn't see at the time was that infatuation isn't love. Love it what you feel after that. Love is why I kept wanting to see you all the time, even after we broke up. Love is why I walked you to your door every single time I dropped you off. Well, except that one time it was like -10°. Previous girls I've dated, I've certainly liked them, but I was not in love with them. Thats why the relationships were short. And there have been girls I thought I was in love with, but never got the chance to date. But how can you love someone you haven't even dated? This infatuation was my basis for what love 'is'. So when it faded with you, I couldn't figure out what was going on. You were the prettiest girl in the world, I loved spending time with you, you did interesting things, and though the things that i did were interesting,  you were super sexy, you were all I could ever ask for and more in a girlfriend. What I never realized until you were gone, is that I was in love with you the whole time. Not knowing you are in love, sounds dumb. That one hasn't made it into many movies. Of course, if my life were a movie, I'd be chasing you through an airport terminal right now, not sitting in bed writing you an email. I could write a whole separate novel-sized email about the reasons I now know I was in love with you. But if I had to boil it down to one, I'd say it was the way I treated you. I always treated you and cared for you like someone who was deeply in love with you. I remember watching you sleep in the truck at red lights, as we were driving home from NH on the 4th of july. It's so obvious now, looking back, that I was in love with you. But my brain just hadn't figured out yet, that infatuation isn't love. Had I known then what I know now, I would have tried to touch your heart like *this* all the time. Things were 'dull' in the end, but there was definitely a spark in your eyes for me in the beginning. And I, out of simple ignorance, took that spark and smothered it, instead of helping it to grow.

I also didn't intend this email to be another 'i love you, leave him' email. I just wanted to say hi. As I write this, I do feel like myself again. It feels good to say all this, to say how I feel. When you are trying to get a girl back, you're supposed to hide how you feel, and just be cool, be your normal charming self, let her fall for you all over again, etc, etc. It feels good to take a break from that, to tell you what I'm really feeling. This doesn't bode well for the future of your in box :) One time, after we broke up, you told me something to the effect of, you wanted me to let you go so you could keep searching for that special someone. I want to be your special someone. You definitely are mine. 

Someone on an IRC chat, of all places, told me that our problem was that we had no conflict, that we got along too good. While I don't believe that, at least not from my end, my response was just that, well now I do have something to fight for, her. 

I'm not really sure how to end an email like this. I guess I'll end it the same way I wrote it, from the heart. 

Goodnight K. I miss you, and I hope that some day we can be together again.

p.s. hi