Dear Yellow,

I've written so many letters to you the past two years, and all of them pretty much said the same thing that I'll probably say here. I shredded the physical ones, deleted the digital ones, not wanting to remember all the pain and embarrassment. But here I am writing another one, hopefully the last.

What happened between us wrecked me. Shattered me into a million pieces that I'm still trying to sort through. I am not who I thought I was, I saw parts of myself that I didn't know existed and it terrified me. I was stupid, crass, naive. But I do not believe I was completely wrong in my intentions. I respected you and I believed that you deserved my honesty. I did not want to leave you in the dark. Undoubtedly, I should've gone about it better. I always seem to do things to the extreme or not at all.

I'm sure I hurt you when I left and didn't talk to you. That wasn't about you. You were the biggest reason I stayed at that job and I didn't want to leave you hanging. But it wasn't a good place for me to be, you know that. I didn't want to be there and no matter how much you tried to make it better for me, I wasn't going to stay. There's only so much bullshit I can take, and somehow eight months at place was a lifetime supply's worth. The problem I had with you was the text you sent a few days after, trying to get me to come back. I can recognize in retrospect why you'd do that, but at the time it just felt like a slap in the face. Like you didn't know me at all when I had shared so much with you. Between that and the other things going on in my life unrelated to you, I didn't reach out to you until you removed me from your socials. You know how it goes from there.

Every time I think I'm over it, something pulls me back in. At times I can't resist looking you up to see how you're doing. I hate myself for doing it, makes me feel like I'm overstepping and being creepy. And it's not very fair of me considering I have zero internet presence now and looking up my name gives you nothing except an activity I participated in a decade ago. Anyway, I looked you up last week and saw that you left the job we met at. It gave me relief at first, I've worried a lot about what I did and how it likely made work awkward and emotionally difficult for everyone involved. Seeing that you're somewhere new and perhaps doing something you'd like better made me glad, made me feel like this could be the thing I need to finally move on. Then I saw who else you're working with at this new place and it...upset me, I guess is the best way to put it.

I know that it's your life, that you and I were friends for less than a year and I have no grounds to feel or say much. Frankly I know nothing, all I've done is guess and assume. I don't care that you and her are still in a relationship, but it alarms me that you work together now. It doesn't feel right. To me it reads like she is keeping you on a short leash, keeping an eye on you at all times. That you might not have any time for yourself between working and living together. That she doesn't trust you. It makes me sad for you more than anything. I cannot help but think that it's a direct consequence of what was happening between us, and I feel some sort of responsibility. I just want you to be okay, be happy. But what can I do? Insert myself into your life again and make things all the more worse for everyone? I have to be realistic and level-headed, I can't afford to blow up my life again.

I think about you every single day. I hate caring about you, loving you, so much. It's past the point of making sense. It seems like one of those things that is going to haunt me for the rest of my life. How much of it is the connection we had and how much of it is my craziness? It felt like I knew you my whole life, and I was looking forward to knowing you the rest of it. I'm trying to figure out what happens next, when that kind of connection gets severed. I stare into the empty hole in my heart that you once occupied and I wonder if I'll ever find another friend to live there. As it stands, I don't think I will. Don't think I'm built for friendship, drives me too crazy and I have the habit of being friends with women I'm attracted to. Will the space scar over? I hope so. I'm not sure I want to meet you again. We couldn't even be friends that long because things were too intense between us. Like a bolt of lightning- bright, electric, short lived, and dangerous. And I got struck like the unlucky bastard I am. I'll never be the same as I was.