It’s been exactly a year since we met. Since I stood by your bed, waiting for you to wake up, waiting for my life to start, even though I didn’t realize that at the time. I barely knew why I had agreed to help your sister—for some vague promise that she would find someone like me, a vague promise of a distant future where I’d be understood.

I lied to you before. In one of the letters you’ll never read, I lied. I guess that means I was lying to myself, if I’m the only one reading them. I think I’ve been lying to myself for a really, really long time. About … well, about a lot of things.

But I lied to you. I said I didn’t have anything to say when Sam accused me of being in love with you.

I didn’t say anything to her. That much is true. But I did have something to say.

I was.

I am. Still.

In love with you, I mean.

I think that’s what this feeling is. I barely know anything anymore—I don’t know what feelings are real, what wants are worth giving space to, what parts of myself I should hate. Is it all of me? I think maybe I’m supposed to hate all of me.

But I don’t hate you. That’s the one thing I do know. What I feel for you, whatever it is, it’s a physical ache. Sometimes when I’m on the road at night, the white lines flashing by in the glow of my headlights, hypnotizing me, I feel you in the seat next to me. If I keep looking straight ahead, if I ignore the empty shotgun seat in my periphery, I can imagine you fiddling with the radio dial, trying to find a good station as we go from nowhere to nowhere.

I would drive through a thousand nowheres, would never take my foot off the gas, if it meant keeping you next to me. I would tell you everything about me, answer all those questions you had that I was too scared to answer, reveal every mortifying detail of the childhood you were so curious about just to make you laugh, remove every stitch that’s sewn me up so you could look at the insides of all my scars and warm me with your pity.

Loving you feels like drowning. God, how I love you.

And I think it’s okay that you’ll never know. I think I finally understand now, what it means to love someone, all the different ways you can love them. It isn’t about me. It’s about you. And you’ve made it very clear to me that I’m not what you want. And that’s okay. It has to be okay. Loving you on my own has to be enough.