Hey, hope you reached home safely. Thanks for making time to meet today. I thought we would be conversing about certain things and addressing certain bits in our connection for a long time, but it seems like it might not happen soon. I have spent a lot of time shaping and reshaping the conversation in my mind. I thought I would not send you this. Not today. But again, meeting you felt like I am holding an enormous truth in my throat, my nervous system pulling me down, restlessness growing under my skin where my hands can’t reach, and hundreds and hundreds of bees buzzing around my ears. You are my safe space, the last thing I want is to feel like this around you.

I recently read on Instagram how being in love with someone means being part of a thousand funerals of the old versions of themselves. I certainly can’t hold onto what we had, but I want to be conscious of what we have now. I am intentional about all the relationships that I have in my life right now. The difficult realization in recent times also has been that intention and love aren’t enough to carry a relationship. You know how I try to look at things not only personally but also objectively—with my politics and radicality. While it’s affirming many times to have a sense of control over my experiences, the distance between my reality and radical possibility confuses my mind a lot. At times like this, I take refuge in my body and its saying. My nervous system refusing you today brought me back to my mind, and now that I can’t seek grounding from my body, I am trying to write this with compassion and trust in you.

I love you. I know you also love me enough to hold my truth. In the past six years, there’s hardly been anything that we hid from each other, we used to speak every day, mindlessly VC each-other, made impulsive plans, have seen all the places we lived in different cities, know family secrets, past, and future aspirations, shared intimacy, laughed, cared and so much more. Though we haven’t explicitly talked about it, you know I like you romantically and have been referring to our friendship as a romantic friendship. Many of the things that you also bring to our friendship reinforce that. This is not to concretize any archetype of ‘romantic friendship’ or being hooked onto the label. It’s much more than that. It’s about affirmation. It’s about holding hands with complete cognizance that we both want it and I am not being clingy. It’s about shaping the meaning of our connection collectively. It’s about recognition of the feelings that are often looked at with a lot of suspicion in the larger contexts. The rejection of talking about this is a disappointment that I am carrying in this connection for a long time. There have been multiple occasions where I actively sought clarity and shared how this brings distress to me. How do I know what I really mean to you? What should I aspire to from this connection? What does that exactly mean when you say ‘I love you’ to me? If you know me well, you would know I am the last person to cling to heteronormative forms of any connection, this isn’t about it. It’s about my personhood in our connection. I am certainly not the side-chick who is supposed to fade out into the background when you talk about your girlfriend or other romantic interests at a party. I refuse to fade out. I want clarity, context, and reiteration of intentions.

I am tired. Going back to the truth that our connection is built on; our friendship. In the face of the terror that is intimacy, I tried to go back to our friendship in search of solace. Even when I let go of romantic expectations in our connection, I was heartbroken to find out that it was actually our friendship that I was disappointed in. When I look back and think about the needs and communication in our friendship, I realized in so many social spaces I was left alone, even after communicating how I feel and what I am expecting, my needs were repeatedly turned down. You are the kindest person I have ever met, but your generic kindness to people is a silent refusal of my needs in the friendship— which isn’t generic. Whenever we went to places to vacation, your emotional absence hurt me so much. All I wanted was your attention, you looking at me, holding my hands, holding my truth. My envying you for having intimacy with other people isn’t about me being bitter, it’s because I like you. My anger for not talking to you when you shifted to the same city isn’t about ‘I hate you’, it’s about how I really wanted to be there for you but you didn’t involve me. I want you to see me, and no, sending cupcakes isn’t enough. I don’t know how we have reached here where we often walk on eggshells around each other, but this just doesn’t feel right. The deeper I thought, I realized the fallacy of power in our connection. It has always been you who decided the tonality of what we are. When you wanted to cuddle, when you wanted to kiss or make out, or anything else. Your exploration of your identities doesn’t come at the cost of other people’s feelings. Your discomfort of introducing me as anything else but only a friend or mentioning platonic friends while posting about me or not really wanting to post our pictures on the Insta story—all of it feels strange. You do it without really talking or giving complete context. I end up reading between the lines and going back in my mind to make sense of it.

I am tired. I end up saying/doing things to you to elicit a reaction. Your indifference agitates me more, makes me spiral into feeling guilty, scares me over losing you, and then coming back to the home—hurt. I waited too long to collaboratively build boundaries, but I don’t see that happening. I don’t want to bring my magic into a space, where it’s not seen. The disappointments that I am carrying, they are completely mine. I am going to keep them safe in my tarot box. I give you memories—however you want to remember us, keep them safe. From now on, let’s just be friends. It might not be with the same intensity as before, but letting you go completely feels painful. I am letting go of anything romantic/sexual in our friendship. Again, I am offering compassion and space in case you want to respond to this, I will listen. I might not have anything to respond back to, but I promise I will be there to listen. If you don’t want to respond to this text, that’s also fine. I wish you everything that your heart desires and I really really hope you never have to carry disappointments in friendship alone—no amount of grief can help you to hold it in a tiny tarot box.