Sorting Through Used Books

“It’s been nearly fourteen years since I fell in love with you. Since that day at the old mall where we were volunteering, sorting through used books and organizing them. Why was it that day, of all days, that I seemed to surrender to my feelings about you? I’d known you for almost a year prior, and you were certainly very attractive to me, but it was this day, this very nonchalant day, that I walked away knowing in the deepest regions of my heart that you were the one for me.”

“And yet I did nothing. Because I could do nothing. Because I was under so much grief and turmoil and letting you into my life meant coming to terms with my life. I was frozen – paralyzed – and unable to make any sort of move. I could see it in your eyes: the questioning gaze, the slight confusion, sometimes even grief . . . that I was not moving.”

“And yet, you did not move either. But perhaps that is because you were always more important to me than I was to you. Despite you calling me your ‘best friend’, was I ever really? Or was I just someone that made you feel comfort and joy? Am I replaceable? Let’s assume I’m not. Let’s assume, for a moment, that you loved me all the same. Has it been too long now? Especially since the fight . . . is it not mendable? Are we broken forever?”

“I can’t recall the last words you actually spoke to me. I think it was ‘See you soon’ or ‘Goodbye’. It was outside the breakfast diner where we ate and I told you I loved you. It was where you said, ‘You’re telling me this now?’, and it’s where I failed once again to properly convey my full feelings. Because I didn’t just love you; I had loved you for seven years. That amount of time weighs on a man, it turns his insides outward and skins him to the bone. The year before I told you, I was in utter turmoil. I could not sleep. I could not eat. I could not be.”

“And yet here I am now, writing in my journal, my diary, and realizing how foolish I have been. To be wound up over someone for fourteen years is a sin. I am doing no one any favours – not you or I – as I let this wound fester instead of patching it up.”

“I don’t even know why I’m writing this now. I don’t find it healing at all. Perhaps I just need to bear witness to my own feelings of emptiness, which were once suffering but have since smoothed over into something even more insidious. I have lost so much time to pining, and I know any future time spent in such activities is equally as fruitless, and yet here I am, regretting . . . perhaps not for pining, but for pining to no end.”

“It is a sad tale, I tell myself, for there is a surety now even here, as I write these words, that I feel deep within myself. And the truth is, I still love you, dammit, and I can’t stop. Even though I understand we will never be, and it is best for both our sakes for me to move on, I cannot help but imagine a life with you in it instead. Of the vacations we would take, the places we would visit, the people we would meet, how is it that even as I grow older and further away from that day with the books, I still feel the exact same way now as I did then? If you have cursed me with a spell or potion, please remove it, for I can bear it no further. And yet, I know that is a lie, and I will bear it all my life and until the day I die, even if I were to never see you again.”

“I’m angry at myself for this love. Angry and embarrassed. For, like I said, it does neither of us any good. In fact, it does no one any good. And the thing is, even if you were to come to me and forgive all that has happened, and wish to be together for whatever reason, I have still not dealt with the grief and remorse that has plagued me for even longer than we have known each other. And it is this suffering – this trauma – that holds me back and prevented me from confessing my feelings to you when I should have. Oh, what a fool I have been. And yet I cannot move on, I cannot accept what has happened to me, how my life fell apart . . . I am trapped in a paradox of nothing. An edge with no tip. A space between spaces. What am I even, if not a coward and a saint?”

“No, I mustn’t think this way. This is not healthy. This is not sane. And yet, what help is there? Acceptance? Radical as it may seem, yes, this may be the answer. And yet how do I surrender to the fact that I have ruined the brightest light of my life? Am I cursed to now live in darkness, in a shadow world of my own design? If there is a Hell, that’s the closest thing to it I can think of.”

"I suppose I must simply carry on with this burden on my heart and this gap in my soul. If we ever cross paths again, I pray that you can see in me the light in which I fail to see in myself. For I am lost, now more than ever, and you may be the only one who knows me well enough to pull me back into the world. For now, I will live my life, but not a day will go by without wishing things were different, selfish as that may be. I know it is wrong, and yet . . ."

“. . . I love you.”