Yesterday was just sorrow and hurt.

Today feels different – there is an anger growing. Not a violent anger or anything, more like a quiet under current developing as my thoughts become clearer. I think it may be the stages of grieving moving along, so we shall see what tomorrow brings.

I’ve loved you since at least 2009, perhaps before. I’m not really sure – my first realization was then, however. I’ve always not-so-secretly admired you from afar, and the more I grew to know you, the more enamoured by you I became. Last year when you kissed me and seemed so much more open to some sort of relationship beyond a friendship… I had the sense that you were unfairly having your cake and eating it too, but dealt with it since it meant I could periodically feel your light. As long as I entertained some slim hope, I could hang on.

To realize there was a ‘never’ from the get-go – the more I think on it, the deeper the hurt and anger runs. I feel used, cheap. A mockery. I was up-front from the get go – when you said yesterday you still felt ‘raw’ after everything hit the fan the other day, I didn’t understand. You weren’t blind-sided with this. I was very open with you because I worried so much that I was overstepping boundaries that you never made clear, and wanted to give you every opportunity to shoot me down. You never did. It seemed as if you were encouraging me, and I became more and more wrapped up in you. If I am a ‘never’ – why? Why would you do that? What were you seeking to gain? I kept telling you how I felt. Did you really think there would be no impact? I questioned often that this was not a fair situation to ______, but rolled with it since it seemed the pace you were setting. The fact that you never seemed happy or have anything good about him to say led me to think that there was a legitimate reason you were reaching out to me, so I stopped worrying so much about it. If you really love him and are taken with him, you’ve done him a great disservice. If you’re unhappy with him, what’s keeping you?

So here we are now. You showed me a happiness I had never thought possible when you addressed me; I felt like I was surrounded by a radiance from you whenever you faced me. A simple text would make my day or turn a horrible day completely around. To hear your laugh, or to listen to your fantastic mind working – I really do feel I’ve come across some undiscovered Wonder of the World. The thought of you gave meaning to my life, and things didn’t seem so empty. Now, I question your motives. I don’t know what you want from me, what your intentions were, or if any of those radiant moments were real, or if it’s just a sham or a game. I feel Doubt. To be strung along this whole time – I feel like everything was meaningless, and I blew it up with a delusion. You never shot me down or told me I was taking things wrongly – how was I to know I interpreted things incorrectly?

I feel angry about being toyed with. Not so much angry at you – but angry at that action. I feel angry about the ripples radiating out from this, and the effects they will have. I thought being up front was the best policy, but I see it’s bitten me in the ass. I doubted people before, and always questioned their motives – it’s pretty much guaranteed I will continue to do so at every kind word that may come in my direction. You were the first person to reach me through my fog and to make me feel connected to someone, to something – but I see now the clear reminder to never allow people behind my wall, and my folly in deviating from that policy.

These aren’t the things that make me the most angry though. The worst thing in this? I’ve always known pain and loneliness. You made them go away, and gave me hope, and I treasured that about you. But now that my suspicions are confirmed and it was never meant more than superficially – – my pain before was the longing for some sort of ideal. I now know specifically what I long for, and having tasted it, that pain is amplified to an acuteness I’ve never known. How am I supposed to find my way out of this place?