Julie

do you remember how i used to avoid you in high school? how i was so cold?

i’m sure you’re able to piece it together with your now-adult brain, but it’s because I was extremely attracted to you and didn’t know how to process it

it felt wrong to be a senior guy so into a freshman girl. yeah i was a young senior and you were an old freshman but it doesn't matter. it's about what people think. what people say. it would have been social suicide. they would've called me a pedo. i would've believed them. 

and i also felt like i needed to focus single-mindedly on school and sports and other trivial nonsense and that you would not help. 

so my solution was to literally run away. walk my two legs in a different direction when you approached.

and as i’m typing this i just now realize that i’m never going to send it because I already soft-hit on your friend when i learned she was living in Seattle, completely unaware she is in a happy relationship, and Everybody Talks so you probably heard about me from her and that knowledge has rendered my pathetic meandering here completely trite. 

but, if for no other reason than to dig this hole deeper, i’ll add that every time i see a picture of you on social media, i regret being such a nervous self concerned little shrimp in high school — i regret that there was no slightly older male figure in my life to tell me to act on my feelings and make as many mistakes as I can because you’re gonna fuck it up anyway so you might as well get it out of the way now.

it pains me that you’ve grown so beautiful with age. i don’t know what i’m trying to accomplish with this note. i find catharsis in spilling my guts. i write every day anyways, but today you have borne the brunt of it. my dearest apologies (sarcasm).