It’s 2am and I’m sitting in my room, alone, having my way with a kebab and chips. I’m not even hungry, I’m just using the food as a barrier to protect me from something awful. The truth. (Which is surprisingly harder to swallow than deep-fried reheated offal...)
It’s just hit me like a ton of bricks that I am in love. And have been for six years without pause. And yet it’s not
with any of the three long-term boyfriends I’ve had in that period. And to add insult to su cient injury, it’s unrequited. In fact, he doesn’t even know. He knows every detail about me other than that one TINY, minute little thing.
I can’t tell if it’s more of a pain in the heart, or pain in the arse... when you fall in love with your best friend.
I loved him almost the minute I met him. Tall (too tall), funny, smart, exceptionally geeky, kind and impossible to forget. But alas, he had a girlfriend, so I put my feelings in a box and buried it in the back of my cupboard where I keep my skinniest skinny jeans (the ones that deep down,I know I’ll never fi t into again!). As the years came and went we’ve only become closer, and he’s failed (rather spectacularly) to ever disappoint me. If anything, like a fine wine, or Helen Mirren, he just seems to get better and better with age. The bastard.
I thought it was just some stupid teenage crush that would fade without trace, but I’ve realised he’s become what I look for in every man, he’s who I try to recreate. He’s always the one I would rather spend time with than the one I’m with.
He’s my benchmark. He’s carved into me and I can’t get rid of him. The worst thing is, I love him to the point of selflessness. You know, that sickening love, in which you put their happiness ahead of your own. I love his girlfriend, I think she’s perfect for him. She makes him happy. I want him to be happy. It’s a bloody nightmare.
It’s a horrendous feeling isn’t it? It’s constantly on the tip of your tongue. You fear that those life-changing three words are just going to explode out of your mouth at any minute. But if I say those words to a happily taken man, I force him to carry my burden. And that’s not real friendship, that’s not true love. If it was us they wanted, it would be us they were with. It’s that simple. I guess I have to be the bigger man here, breathe deep and just pray he gets really, really, really fat. Soon.
