I know that you don't want to read this. I know that you'll hate every word, and I know that you'll look down on me for pulling all this back as I do now, but for once, I don't care. For once, this is about me. For that reason, I apologize beforehand to you, whether you end up reading it or not, for letting it be about me, for indulging myself. I need to let go. I need to feel as though a new hole hasn't been torn into my heart every time I see your name on my AIM list. I need to shut myself off from you.

I have so much that I want to say before I close this letter. So much, in fact, that I have no idea where to start from. I can think of all the tiny little things I've kept inside me all this time, yet they mean nothing when not put into the proper context. If this seems incoherent, it is only because my thoughts are so scattered. I am not always this way. I wish that you could know that. I suppose I wish for a great many things.

I suppose that you need to understand who I am. I spend so much of my time writing about who I am, but you didn't take the time to let yourself take the information in, and perhaps if you had, this situation might not have arisen: you would have known from the beginning to stay away from me. I refuse to live my life counting regrets -- perhaps if I can take the time to explain my motivations and drives to you now, then I will be able to rest with the feeling that maybe you can understand. I really don't want you to think of me so badly. I want one of those beautiful storybook endings, crisply edged like a slice of fresh wedding cake. The lines in every painting of my world are too smudged. I need clarity as I do fresh air.

I am incapable of casual relationships. I don't know how to make you see that. I invest myself into any relationship that I have, even those with strangers passing by me on the street. I put myself into everything I do. I pull myself wholeheartedly, and I let myself be an essential part of every single element of my life. I don't consider that unusual, but I see things under a different light sometimes than what may be considered the "usual". All that I know is what I am. I always thought that that was all that I needed.

Looking back, I cannot even remember how it was that was came to be friends. Is that odd? Do you remember? Perhaps it was because I had admired you for so long beforehand that the melting of one stage to another was not noticeable. So one day there you were, and you had become a part of my life. At the time, I didn't think that you would have any reason to mind. I didn't think that it was not to be expected. I suppose that part of the problem may have stemmed from there -- the fact that we both considered the friendship to be normal, but we perceived "normal" in different ways. Was that what it was? I hate to assume, but it is all that I can do at this point. I am left to decipher this on my own, and while I know that you don't need to brush off the dust that covers what I thought to be a friendship, I do. Humour me, just this once.

My expectations of you were too high. I had built you into someone that you were not, and I was disappointed when you turned out to be different that you were inside my brain. I thought that our friendship would be like those other ones of yours that I had seen in words and phrases in guestbook entries, guiltily peering through like an eavesdropper. I thought, for a while, that our friendship was like that, that it was in fact exactly what I had been needing. I needed someone else to understand, someone who could love unconditionally, and someone who would always be there to help me stand. I thought that I had found her in you. There were days when you would spread sunshine across my features with the touch of a word. I suppose it was then that I became dependent.

But I always thought that these feelings were mutual, because to me, there didn't seem to be a problem. At times, I thought that you were thinking the same thoughts as I was. I thought that I meant to you everything you meant to me. You were my first true online friendship. I haven't had many. I suppose I am still naive then, holding up my storybook ideals. Oblivion may be bliss, but then came the ice-cold shock.

It took me so long to take it all in. I kept on blaming myself, as I so often do when I find out the truth about how people feel about me. What was it that I did wrong? How could I have stopped this from happening? Am I a horrible person? Is this me getting what I deserve? My mind was in a state of destruction, like an island city after the hurricane. Everything that I had built up so carefully had been torn down, and in the process of cleaning up, I was destroying myself, bit by bit, piece by piece. I needed to find some sort of peace. I needed to clear you from my life.

It was then that the eye passed me over, and a square of an IM box appeared on my screen. From you. It was back again, everything, and worse, but what was I to do? I knew that I couldn't talk to you without hurting myself, and I knew that it would have been best for me to have told you that then, and to have let you go away. To have moved on. The problem was that, even though I knew that I needed to move on, I couldn't stop myself from caring. I couldn't make myself not try to help you. So I steeled myself with a breath of air, and I let you back in for those few messages. I regulated myself, kept guarded, and I didn't allow myself to let go until you had gone. It hurt hurt hurt but I let my breath out when you passed and I let it be. I wouldn't have been clean had I not.

I love you. I'm sorry to say that, but I do. I doubt that I shall ever s stop, but I am learning to deal with it. I am not angry with you, or even with myself anymore. You have taught me more than you may be aware of having done. In such a short span of time, you have moved from stranger to friend to stranger of my life, yet you have impacted it more than you should have. I have learnt not to allow people in so readily, and I have learnt not to expect all friendships to be as I would like them to be.

Thank you for allowing me the time and space to mend the knot in my heart. Thank you for what you do not know.

Sarah