Unsent Messages

hi again. i'm having a bad night. i've been going through memories to try to get through it. I went through the jewelry I keep within reach. I found the friendship bracelet you made for me 7 years ago. I had to stop wearing it so it wouldn't fall apart, but it's still always right there. I went through a yearbook from junior year. before you started dating him. before you abandoned me. we were all over. every picture of me has a memory of you attached to it. our smiles on the trip were so big I don't even recognize myself. I'm going through my old sketchbooks now (I paused to write this). I drew you so goddamn much, I wonder if you knew. I don't think I knew back then. I just knew you were radiant and beautiful and absolutely everything and I had to get the perfection down on paper. I remember on your birthday in middle school, I was basically shouting it from the rooftops. "It's her birthday today!!!" I would tell anyone who would listen. I shouted my love for you from every rooftop I could imagine, but I didn't know. I kiiiinda figured out I had a crush on you maybe eighth grade or freshman year, but I didn't totally understand the depth of my feelings until college. I get it now. I get why I was so hurt when I wasn't your best friend in the way you were mine, why I was so willing to fight for you when our friends were just trying to defend me, why I felt so betrayed when you started going out with him and stopped hanging out with me. I miss you. I miss feeling like I had a person. I don't feel like that anymore. I remember reading the song of achilles and feeling a familiarity in achilles and patroclus to me and you. we aren't heartbreakingly tragic for anyone but me, though. I didn't tell you and I never will, and you don't feel the same and you never will. you wouldn't win a war for me but I would die for you in a heartbeat. you really did a number on me.
this is a long goddamn mess of a text message. I love you, in every way a person can love.