A Letter To My Unrequited Love at 1 AM

I still remember. I don’t think I’ll ever forget. This love is my burden to bear. Alone. I thought love was a joint burden, one that weighs on both involved—but I guess that’s not the kind of love this is.

Why do I look at you and feel the world? Why do I look at you and feel this thing called love? But when I ask you, you tell me you feel it too… only you’re not ready for me. What does that even mean, my love?

When I’m with you, I feel like I’m with my person, but for you, I’m just… a person. It pains me, my love. I want you—all of you. Why can’t we just be this way forever? Why do you fight it? Why do I give, and you don’t take?

Sometimes I wonder, is it my fault? Did I love you too hard, too soon, too much? Did I drown you in a wave of feelings you weren’t prepared to face? Maybe I should have held back, played it safe. But that isn’t the kind of love I know how to give. I only know how to love completely, recklessly, without restraint. And maybe that’s the problem.

I want to believe you when you say you’re not ready. But what if you’re never ready? What if you meet someone else and suddenly, magically, you’re ready for them? What does that mean for me, for this love I’ve carried so delicately in my hands, afraid it would shatter if I held on too tight?

I’ve asked myself a thousand times—what am I holding onto? Is it the memory of us? The fleeting moments when you smiled at me like I was your whole world? Or is it the hope that one day, one day, you’ll look at me and see what I see when I look at you?

But hope is cruel, isn’t it? It keeps me tethered to a love that only exists in my mind. It keeps me coming back to you, asking questions I know you’ll never answer. And it keeps me here, writing this letter that you’ll never read.

I know I should let go. I know I should move on. But how do you move on from a love that’s carved into your soul? How do you forget someone who feels like home, even when they’ve never let you in?

So here I am, my unrequited love, holding this burden for the both of us. Loving you from a distance because it’s the only way I know how. Maybe one day I’ll let go. Maybe one day I’ll find someone who loves me the way I love you.

But until then, I’ll carry this love like a secret, like a wound, like a gift that was never mine to give.

Forever yours,

The One Who Loved You

Is it a crime?

Is it a crime

That I still want you?

And I want you to want me too.

~ Sade