Dear My Lavender,

I've written private letters to a few people before. Each one, as of now, is locked away in the recesses of the notes app or proverbially turned to ash in the aether. By now I barely remember what I tried to write to you. I don't think I could if I tried. After all these years the tune of my heart hasn't changed over you, but the passion for the song has waned off of me. I don't even know if I can finish this before I grow tired. We will see together.

I was 16. I had just discovered Phoebe ████████ and began hyper-fixating on her solo music. (All these years later my obsession hasn't really disappeared, but has only increased since my vinyl phase began.) You were just one of the people in my odd Church friend group. I can't remember if you and Nate were still together at this point, but I know I caught feelings at that concert regardless of how he felt. (I wasn't the most righteous guy around if you couldn't remember.)

You were fascinating to watch-though I doubt that's an appropriate word for this. I forget most of the songs you sang by now. I think one of them was a Mother Mother song? I dislike the band enough to have blotted out the exact song from mind, but I'm fairly certain that was the band.

Regardless of the songs before, I can still picture this moment. The mostly empty bar-other than a handful of people splitting their attention between their beer and the band-the horrible cable management on the stage, the rest of your friends standing by the open windows to the patio, and me and Josiah standing off to the side by the dimly lit tables. By then I had already been captured by your voice, but I couldn't anticipate how those lyrics would hit me like a wave as it crashed against my bones: "I hate you for what you did, and I miss you like a little kid..." I was too young to understand what those lyrics meant, but I knew the song well enough to let it melt into the shores of my heart deeper than anyone wiser could ever imagine.

This was one of the few times in my short being that I have felt my heart beat out of my chest. Like the fool that I was, I let that stupid song dictate my heart and I fell for you harder than I could have even anticipated at the time. If time is an endless and looping cycle, I pray the bike hits a rock when we hit that day again.

To be honest, I don't want to dwell on the rest of our story tonight. I do it enough late at night to suffice for today. If you ever find this, you'll probably remember some of our history. Then again, you were so apathetic to me I wouldn't blame you if none of this makes sense anymore. At the time I was a hopeless romantic-and helplessly hormonal-teenage boy. I wish I could tell you I learned my lesson from you, but unfortunately I yet again ruined a relationship not long after with another girl. Somehow I managed to patch up the friendship with her-and sometimes wrestle with remnants of my feelings towards her again-but I wish I could say the same with you. I tried reaching back out a couple times-you replied-but we parted ways again every time.

That season of my life, even without you, was self inflicted torture. Those friend groups we had brought me to the lowest I have ever been and I knew it. It was the most self destructive and suicidal I have ever felt in my life. Yet, for some reason, above every season of my life that has brought me to bliss, I have to fight my own desire to go back. The lack of closure with you is a major reason for why that is. I wish I could hate you for it, but I lost any hate in me when I realized I was the one I should hate the most. Even still, when I long for what once was, I remember that ominous phrase plastered all over my Pinterest feed-You can go back to the past, but no one is there anymore.

It's been a few years since my last relationship. You and the girl I mentioned earlier have raised in me caution I never thought I'd have. For this I am grateful and disheartened. Grateful because caution is a sign of wisdom, and I doubt I will break another heart like I did when I was younger; disheartened because I wrestle with a chasm of loneliness in my heart that never ceases to consume my joy. Nevertheless, I will abide.

Is it too late now to say I love you? Even after all this time I hold onto little vestiges of you. In every broken shard of that teenage boy I filled in dreams of you. Those open and starry eyes that wondered if maybe, just maybe I'd love like this again. Sense banged at the door of my heart, but I held it shut with every fiber of me and every visage of you.

Whenever I hear that song I wonder what could have been, but I can't love a person when all I have are the fragments. We are more than the pieces we share, and we are greater than the pieces others take hold of. Natalie, what little I see online is evidence that you have become more than you ever were. Someday I might forgive myself and forget what little of you remains in me.

You have pierced me, heart and soul, but I will let you go.