365 Days (Part 1) | ✓

101. Recycle

101. Recycle: Take something you've written in the past and rewrite it into a completely different piece.

A/N: I spent a lot of time with my friends today, so I did not have time to write today... On the plus side, I am starting to that me and my crush might actually have a chance! (See Day 2 and 15.) So this is an older piece that I rewrote a few weeks ago.

I've Been Burning for You So Long

This isn't really a story or even a letter, because I don't ever intend to send this, and I think a letter constitutes being sent. It's not a prayer: I am not pleading with God. It's not a note, either, because it's not casual. I don't know what this is. I don't what we are.

Where did you go? I have been waiting for you so long. I miss you. I wish I could speak to you as I want to write to you. I wish I could flood your soul with the words I have in mine. I miss you. My God, how I miss you.

They talk bad about you. They say things that make me doubt you. Are they true? Curse my faithlessness! You could not have done the things and said the things that I hear about. You could not have changed so much... could you?

I defend you always. No matter what I think, I will always defend you. I told you once that after I gave my loyalty, I never retracted it. You have that loyalty, and I will always be there for you. I always have been.

I haven't always loved you. I always liked you, but somewhere along the way that liking slowly and yet suddenly became love. It was a gentle as a flower blossoming and as forceful as a bullet. It felt similar to those two things too. There was a moment -- a blasting, encompassing moment -- when I realized what I felt for you. And oh my, it was like having your skin stripped away by white-hot flames and like being deliciously soothed by a fair Autumnal wind. It was like being submerged in water and being choked by oil. It was like a hundred kisses on your eyelids and a hand scrabbling at your throat. It was both beautiful and terrible and I was both exhilarated and terrified.

To be in love! What a sensation.

I think I started falling in love when I saw you -- I SAW you -- and, perhaps more importantly, you saw me. We saw each other apart from circumstances, from other people, from the world, and even being laid bare, we still stayed. We stayed even knowing how horrible, how twisted, how completely inadequate we were... that's when I loved you. I loved you when you stayed, but I loved you even more when I stayed.

In dark times I have loved you more than the bright. Light is superficial. In the dark I connect with my soul because my soul is made of shadows. In the dark I look for illumination, and you were a candle. Not a sun, but a candle. A candle is all my weak, dark-accustomed eyes could handle.

We've grown apart now. (Or was it that we were never together?) I know who you were but not who you are. It is the memories that sustain me, and powerful ones they were. They comfort me when I think of the you who does not exist anymore.

Do you ever think of me? See me on the street and recall when we made an a capella song for your ringtone? When we chased each other with a leafblower? When you came to my room and we sat and talked... and talked...

Sometimes I look back and think you must have loved me. Yet I was too insecure to ever even fathom my love could be reciprocated and yet, the evidence is there. Why else would you seek me out so? Always try to be with me? Give me gifts and compliments? Or maybe I am just dreaming. You were a nice guy. I was a girl that took the minor incidents and supersized them into something they were not for my own pleasure.

I hope life has been kind to you. I hope you're happy. I hope you love someone as deeply as I love you, and that she makes you as happy as you once made me. It is a glorious thing, to love, and I hope you know it.

Sometimes I see you and the sorrow of lost things overcomes me again. Mostly I see you behind my eyelids in my dreams.

The truth is, we'll never be what we were. We have no excuse to be. I did not make as much of an impression on you as you did on me. If that were so, I would know you again.

If only you knew! If only you knew how I loved and love you. Some people fall in love because someone falls in love with them. Would you?

Darling, I would die for you. If a bullet raced toward your heart I would jump in front of you and take it myself, and I would consider it an honor to sacrifice my life in favor for yours.

If you ever need someone, I vow to be here. Years later, and I am still here. You may have left, but I will stay for you.

I've been burning for you so long.

Love,

Hannah