January 14th 2010

In 2010, Let’s Just Not Be Friends

Dear XXX,

I know it makes you comfortable to think about how close it is possible for us to be one day. Maybe you like the idea of the alchemy: from intense love to the province of the platonic. You have done it in the past; everyone you know seems to be able to do it. Take it down a notch, be okay with it, be just friends.

But I don't care if it makes other people comfortable. I have finally gotten to a point in life where I learning how to make me comfortable, even at the cost of the comfort of others, at the cost of your comfort.

Some of us can't "just be friends." We love with a ferocity that doesn't transmute overnight. We can't just be friends because even 10 minutes worth of conversation proves we are never only that, and I am not the kind of girl who likes lying to herself. If I could ignore, if I could dull down, if I could feel less, I suppose we could just be friends. But then I would not be anything remotely like the girl you met. Or left. Or "miss every day even though you are not supposed to."

Maybe there are some people in your life who you will never feel just lukewarm about.

Maybe comfortable bores me. Maybe I don't want to be like everyone you knew before or will know after.

I think of you and I do what normal girls do. Write songs. Write stories. Look at the sky and think of your sky. And then smile because I know, as hard as it is, I am living.

I don't want to be just friends because I know what your family is like. Because I have held you while you cried. Because I talked in secret to your cats. Because you sent me perfect songs and did the cartwheels I couldn't. Because you are such unrealized potential to me still, but there is nothing more I can do. Because I have believed in you and sacrificed for you and on some level I almost felt you hungering to do the same for me.

I can't make you do it. I can't tell you what you feel or felt or need or hurt for. I can't talk to you because there are too many cobwebs inside you about me, about others, about who to be and what to give and how to love. I can't just be friends because I think your caution is limiting you, but who am I to judge.

I can't just be friends because I could hold your hand for hours straight.

I can't just be friends because I know how I will feel about you when I am 45. And 70. And 93.

I can't just be friends because that is why you saw in me what you did. I play loud music. I don't play my hugest, loudest, most searing songs quietly because they bother or scare other people. I turn them on or I turn them off. I don't take lukewarm baths and I like the high dive and I give fierce hugs and I yell when I need to and I cry when I need to.

There is a point when "just friends" rings of psychic death to me.

So, as popular as it is with our generation, and as many times as I have done it in the past, with you--my beautiful, awful dear--I can't just be friends.

And you've known that all along. On some level, I hope seeing a creature true to her nature makes you smile. I miss you every day too, but I know exactly how and exactly why. And I feel at peace with how I expressed it.

So this New Year I can't just be your friend. Which I know you never really wanted anyway.

You are loved in your confusion. I am starting the new year in bright, blinding, joyful, painful clarity.

On my own.

All my love and all my silence,

Katy