There used to be a time when I had the answers and excuses for every single problem or good thing in my life. I could explain away just about anything. Sometimes I think I came upon that skill at a very young age. From having to keep on my toes or have them chopped off. Every day I thought it might get easier if I kept sharpening my tongue. It never did, but I didn’t realize it fully until a few years ago.

No matter how good, or horrible I have gotten with words, I never seem to use them correctly. Or I use them too much, too little, out of context or not at all. I want to always be able to tell people what’s on my mind, and I don’t usually think about the outcome before the words leave my lips. Sometimes I feel horrible afterwards, especially when the sparkle in the other persons eyes fade and I know that I stabbed them deep and hard.

There is something disturbing to me about any sort of satisfaction I get when in an argument, when I’m actively looking for the hurt and soul crushing to set in. For them to blink away any emotion they might show me. Because then that means “I won” the argument. That I hurt them before they could get to me, regardless of what I have to drag out of their invariable “skeletal closet” to get the results I’m seeking.

I only wish that I was able to express my emotions aloud as well as I can write them out. Blue ink and paper have been my best friends for a really long time; there is something soothing yet disturbing about that to me. The fact that even if I tried my damnedest to let someone get as close to me and know me as well as my hands know ink and notebook paper/napkins/ a keyboard, they still wouldn’t know me enough.

I have my friends. I have many. And they are all equally amazing each in their own way. As generic as that sounds, it’s the easiest way to put it. And as close as I am with so many of them, I can’t even talk to THEM the way I can talk to a piece of paper.

I have a shitty way with time. Time would like nothing more than to destroy me. I have waited and waited and waited (and mind you, I am not the least bit patient) to speak my mind when I thought it better to hold my tongue. And wait. I always wait until THE most inopportune time to express what’s been on my mind. And even though I come across as “crazy” because these words I blurt out have come out of no where, fallen out of the sky and then vomited forcibly out of my lips…. I’m not crazy.  I just hate rejection. For me, the biggest rejection of all is telling a story or a joke or a feeling to someone that I have invested a lot of time in..  mistakenly or not… and having them look at me like, ‘why the hell are you telling me this?’

…And it always ends with, ‘and why now’. Touche, touche.

All I can say to any of that is, I probably loved you at one time.  Or at least I thought I did. I probably cared about you a great deal. And, regardless of how many days, weeks, months or years I waited to tell you.. at least believe me when I tell you it was real. I was scared. And I am pitiful for being a coward, but I thought that you should know.

I probably care about you now more than I ever did before, just because I had the courage to finally let words escape under my breath… and you heard me. So I had to fess up. Fine. I love you. You are my friend. I love you. You have always been there. You have made me smile when no one else could, and I have never thanked you for that. You showed me things and parts of myself that I never wanted to admit existed, and you didn’t even try.

So, I suppose what I should say, is thank you.