October 29th 2011

Dear Wesley,

Yesterday morning, you text me to tell me that on November 14^th you were leaving to work in the Netherlands for six months. It isn’t meant to be like this. I am leaving my work, I am the one who is going away. It should be different and not like this. I am so angry at you right now, even angrier because I text you back three times throughout the afternoon and received no reply.

The last two times I have said goodbye to you have involved train stations. One, where like in some sort of cheesy romantic comedy (half way through – not the end) you were running down the platform. That time, before Christmas 2009, I told you I would buy you a ticket and you could come home with me for a week, where it could be us without being around everyone else. You told me not to bother – you wouldn’t get on the train.

Originally I moved to Staffordshire for the job – I never expected to meet a person who would single handedly fuck up my life with such ease of someone who seemed to do it every other day. Looking back now – I don’t remember even really seeing you at work for a long time before…well, before I told you I liked you. A lot of people where I moved to I wouldn’t look at twice. It’s not that I thought I was better than any of them Wes, I knew that I was. Being there, in Staffordshire working, living ten minutes away from the shit hole that is Wolverhampton – I don’t care what you say the sun hasn’t shone there for 200 years – I was better than a lot of people. Taking the initial job with this company in the kitchen was meant to be a stop gap. Not a career step onto a ladder of hell that I seemed to be glued onto and not able to break free from.

I missed the Peaks so very much. The people – who I had grown to know and love like an extended family – and had an experience of lust for someone I knew I would never have for the first time. With you it wasn’t lust, it was love. Genuine, heart tugging, nothing else matters, die for you love. Now, I had to work with the girlfriend (ex-girlfriend) of the guy I lusted after – she didn’t like me then. Not in the beginning. Although at this new Centre, all people were welcoming, wherever I go people cling to me. I don’t know exactly why, but it is like little flies who have nothing better to do than chase lights that they will never get. Always the performer as my dad says, ‘people need to and want to be around you.’ Can I tell you a secret? It’s tiring. I am tired of being the one to make people laugh, light up a room, bring the funny. I want someone to do it all for me, give everything to me and not vice-versa. Is that so bad? To feel annoyed that I have to continually entertain? I hope you don’t find this arrogance a turn off as they say, I am merely pointing out what others have said wherever I seem to go.

So, the people were fine and friendly and soon, after three weeks I was in there. Doing my usual thing, of working hard and playing harder. I have an uncontrollable need of saying inappropriate things because I can, doing stuff out of character for a reaction…I was back into to this again. Can I tell you another secret? I am actually extremely boring. As I said before, I didn’t notice you – and if I did I don’t remember it. I remember another guy – South African and nice to look at. He had a cheeky smile, and eyes that you could easily be lost in for a long time, never caring if you managed to find your way back. I flirted with him, joked with him and we did spend what people could class as alone time with each other. We kissed once, he had a child back home that he never saw, his girlfriend took that pleasure away. Was it naïve of me to think I would never actually meet people who live like that? In the situations of children who are never seen, parents who are dead, being cared for by randoms and not having homes to go to at Christmas. I know what your answer is, yes…but I always quite naïve about a lot of things. You could always forgive me for that. You would look at me and tilt your head, then the side of your mouth would slowly rise…just thinking about it makes me smile – on the inside and out.

Although I can’t remember the first time I spoke to you – it was probably in the smoking are no doubt. The general banter that happened in there was also sub-par and usually led by me. The night of my realisation that I liked you more than I should, was one that is engraved in my mind much more than I care for it to be. It was your best friend and another guys birthday – it also seemed to fall on the same evening that your girlfriend at the time was leaving back to Canada. She was a crazy bitch mate, I am sure I told you this after and if I didn’t then there it is now. Everyone had dressed up – neon was the theme and it was a Thursday night. I was in work the next day – that didn’t seem to stop me as I would drink most nights in my time at Staffordshire, purely because there was fuck all else to do. The usual pre drinking had taken place with what seemed to be a whole staff team outing to Walkabout in Wolverhampton. At some point in that evening, we had began talking and I had admitted I had feelings for you – subbed with ‘I don’t know why or how it happened, but I can feel something between us and I am sorry for telling you like this.’ To my surprise, you said the same, your admittance of this was more shock on my part than anything else. Little old me, you had feelings for me and I hadn’t made it up this time. However, your girlfriend was leaving and back to her you had to go…before leaving you put your arm round my neck and added: ‘When she is gone, I don’t want to be in anyone’s bed but yours, tomorrow I will be in your bed, with you.’

I left early. Elated that this had happened and with no pang of guilt for the girlfriend to be gone. One thing I have learnt as I grow is that sometimes you cannot take over everyone’s feelings and emotions. People do not do it with you – I am learning this now with my best friend who is dating the guy I like/liked. I went to bed on top of the world as they say, but I was unprepared for what would happen next and I still cannot piece some of the events together. This is why I need to stop right now and think. I need to make sure that I have it all correct – or correct from what I recall. Only then can I let it go. Maybe I will text you again about the Netherlands and hope you will reply. I know you won’t so I will leave you with this…why can’t you look back at that night like I have and remember how you felt? Did you know then that you would lead me on and break my heart or did it just seem to happen? I have all your text messages and more….I still have this…

Errrrrrrmmmmmm…?????? No comment…

No comment? Well, I’m offering with no expectation of a return.

I dunno what to say.

I’m offering you a blow job. This job is sex and booze? Right? As if anybody would know.

Treu true…I’m sorry 4 sounding a prick 4 saying this but I’m just npt in that place just yet. I think ur amazing.

Agh. In the further on place? I like the place we are. Are we in a place? Or did I make it up?

We r

Do you like it??

Tis good blood

Cuz I like the place that we are at. It feels good.

Iiiiiiii

I like you a lot.

I like you to mannnn

Its like being in high school. But weirder and scarier

Yup more words

And better?

Yeah

Oh Wesley. You fuck my brain.

You want me to fuck your brain?

Are you?

Are you

Messing with you?

Huh? I’m lost.

I asked you if you were messing with me and then you asked if I was messing with you.

Lol

So I like you and you like me, that’s all that matters aye?

I just have so much going on in my head at the moment.

I know, but I don’t wanna look like a wang.

Hehehehehehe

Our heads are fucked. What a pair.

Yup.

I hate myself for keeping this, and in this letter it will stay and no longer on my computer. I don’t need it anymore.

Yours truly

____________________________________

25th October 2011

Dear Wesley,

I have found myself reading even more these days and trying to push myself out of everything that is going on. I read We Need to talk about Kevin – which in part inspired me to write in this way to you. It’s an outlet, a need, a tour de force that I know has been unleashed and yet never discovered. The idea of letting everyone but you see what is in my head gives me gratitude – you were always one step behind when it mattered. When it did not matter, or my feelings were involved you were on top form. It is six weeks now until I leave England. You have told me since January and then when I saw you in June that you would come here – time is running out.

I find myself waking up each morning, hoping to hear the iphone tone that will signal you have sent me a message. It must have been two weeks now that I heard from you everyday and now I wish for a replication of these texts. I have not got it. I gave in today and text you first (despite my four pint text to you on Friday evening, again doubting my own sanity the next morning) I asked you how you were. You told me you would be going to work in the Netherlands – it is always been a competition with you. When I said I was leaving you could reply quick enough, when you say to me I am left hanging on for more. More that I never seem to get.

Right now, I am about distance. Distance from you, the people I work with and live with. I find myself, finding them to be unbearable. Whether it is because I am leaving and the pain of saying goodbye will only be harder, or I just need head space I do not know. I am annoyed too, with my supposed ‘best friend.’ Yet again I found myself falling for someone else, someone new. A tattooed, ex-army (he was in Afghan, you were nowhere) nice guy – or so I thought. I misread kindness for something for – sometimes I wonder if this was the same with you. Are you beginning to sweat? Has your grasp on the mouse gotten tighter? The thought of me imagining being with someone who is the farthest from you possible? You can loosen it – he got close to me to get close to my best friend. Now, she sat me down on Friday evening and asked me if I would mind if she went there. How great! If I was to not grant permission then an asshole mark would be a strike next to my name. I told her to be happy but warned her about the falseness of emotions in this place. Your head will trick you – as well as your heart – into believing that being with a certain person is needed. This is what I tell myself to try and get you out of my head.

Of course I gave her ‘permission’ – I am so fucking selfless right? Now I find myself being unable to look at her, along with the fact that every decision she now makes will be based around him. I want to spend time with her before I go – my reasons for saying anything but yes would have been selfish. I told her this too. You know me, I have never hidden anything. You always told me that was one of my better qualities, that I could say anything and get away with it. Others find it annoying – sometimes that I lack a brain. The only saving grace in there wonderful, blossoming new relationship is that she will finish on Friday for Christmas as the winter shutdown begins. I find it funny – am I wrong? To laugh at the fact that they won’t see each other in work and it will be outside of it – with him still working that their time will be shortened? I think not – may it be selfish or not. My anger is higher about this than normal as I told him I liked him and he still went for it. I only have myself to blame and my need to feed my alcohol thirst with senseless drunken texts that generally do nothing but fuck people off.

Don’t hate me for liking someone else – I don’t even think I did. It was an idea, but you were always so much more than that. I think about you every day – does that mean a single thing? Or is it like rain, washed away and forgotten so quickly making moving on for you quick but for me even slower. Sometimes the rain does not stop.

I must go right now, but I shall continue to write to you. I need it to make me feel that something may happen.

Yours truly,

__________________

19th October 2011

Dear Wesley,

As he stood in front of me in reception, leaning on the front bar with an air of confidence of someone who had done nothing more than fuck your best friend, saying: ‘You know what’s depressing? Manning a gate for six and a half hours on Christmas day, then having a break and doing it again. That’s depressing. I did get paid £500 for it though – fucking Afghan.’ I flinched at his candid use of the word fuck in a place that anyone could walk into at anytime and I walked backwards in my mind and forwards to now.

As the two year gap between the day I watched you run toward the train on the platform and the day it happened, two years on, I can do nothing but go back there everyday. Every single day. I can’t tell you how the pain felt and still feels, it is still to raw even after all this time. Like someone has seared my skin then ran a freshly diced onion into the wound. I will return to that emotion another day, another time. For now, nearly 24 months on, I realise the way to deal with this is to essentially write it out. If I put everything onto paper, the initial feelings of when I first saw your eyes and decided that I wanted to speak to you, seeing you in others I have met…then that is what I have to do. You need to be gone, erased and ended.

I doubt that at any point you will read these letters – or posts if I have to be ‘now’ about it. The process of writing by hand seems and feels dated, but as the ink falls from a pen and onto a page, the letters on a computer dance and sing with every touch of a key. You are leaving me, maybe not yet, I can still feel the way your finger clipped into mine like the last piece of a jigsaw, but I will reach my final chapter in good time.

The people hear take me back to you. I am not angry at the boy in the reception today. Yet another army ‘god’ who has done nothing but live with other men in a bubble world where it really is sink or swim. Not that I could ever do it. I’m still a firm believer that it takes more to stand up for what you don’t believe in, than be aimless and join a regimental clan because you essentially have a family who wants you gone. This is a generalisation and you would look at me like I had said something truly earth shattering right now. You know I say sweeping statements (my high school teacher taught me that expression) without a thought for there consequence in today’s social setting. You drank my opinions, a bit like a vampire who wanted every once of a kills being. There could be twenty voices and you would solely belong to mine.

The words given now, are merely the beginning. I have covered this I know, but I had to get them out. The inspiration is going to come back to me, it died two years ago in the summer of 2009 when my heart did nothing but not matter to you. For now, I will leave you, with your head just above the water as you remember all the things I said to you, although I imagine that you filled the black gaps of me with someone new since then. Just take in the thoughts that I still remember and right now, I can’t forget.

Hopefully soon, I will be able to.

Yours truly,

____________________________