Thoughts on the aftermath

It's strange, this feeling of no hope. Earlier I was pacing the floor. I got up, sat down, on the floor on the bed. I cried intermittently. But now I feel oddly calm. It isn't relief because this isn't the kind of moment where I move on. Perhaps it's just the acceptance of the fact that these feeling are here to stay and I have to put up with them. It won't be easy. For two months I hoped that there was something there for you too, that maybe it was going to take me telling you how I feel for you to have the courage to do the same. Now you know everything and no response is forthcoming. Which I take to mean that you feel nothing. I don't regret telling you everything. It needed to be said and I'm still glad I said it. Perhaps if our friendship doesn't survive this I might come to wish I'd never done it but I very much doubt it.

I want to cry now. I have done ever since I lay down to try and sleep but I can't. If I could they would be tears of frustration and disappointment. But I seem to have run out of tears and after the week I've had that doesn't surprise me. I think I used up most of my tear quota on Friday night. When I heard you were in hospital, I got straight in a cab and went there. Of course it was two in the morning and you'd just had an operation so there was no way they were going to let me see you, but I didn't know that. I didn't even know what was wrong with you. It could have been something terrible for all I knew.

I just lied. I knew it was nothing that serious, but I panicked all the same. I wanted to be there all the same. What better way to make up having not spoken for two months that for you to wake up with me at your bedside? But of course when the nurse rang your ward and found out you were sound asleep I went home and probably seriously dehydrated myself instead. I didn't sleep well that night. In the morning I sent the email and tried to hide the fact that I had rushed to the hospital to see you. In the afternoon I found out that somehow you had found out anyway. Perhaps some well meaning nurse had been impressed by my dedication to you and thought you ought to know. They thought I was your girlfriend.

I do love you. I would never tell you that. It would sound false and melodramatic after everything that's happened. I loved you before I loved you like this but in the other way, the sisterly way. Now I love you in the way that makes me want you sleeping next to me. Not in the laugh at your jokes, smile at everything you say, you are perfect, won't last very long way. I love you in the way that I can hate you at the same time, that I can sometimes not like the person you are, find you irritating, frustrating, rude, will hold grudges against you, will tell you when you're wrong, will do pretty much anything to make you happy, will laugh at your stupidity and let you laugh at mine but love you anyway kind of way. That means much more to me.