I bet you didn't know that I cried after you left. It's been awhile now, but I can remember wanting to follow you out the door to your car, and I remember wanting to go to the window and watch you pull out. I didn't, though, because my father was right there, and you know how I am about things like that. Yes, you know. That's one of the things that amazed me about you -- you knew what I was thinking and feeling because you thought and felt the same way. Like you could read my soul and tell me about things I didn't know I felt. Yeah, I sometimes thought that about you.

The reality of your departure from my life didn't hit me until about a week after you'd gone. I was standing by my bed going through my shoebox of letters and found the note you left me in my car when I was at work. And it hit me that I would most likely never see you again. Chris, I had to sit down because suddenly I knew I couldn't stand on my own or I would fall over. No realization has ever hit me so hard that I almost fell over from the force of it. They say you never know what you have until it's gone, and that is the most profound truth now that I have felt the power of those words.

You were in and out of my life so fast that I sometimes have to remind myself that you were even real. I know that from the time you showed up on that first day wearing the Smashing Pumpkins shirt till the time you left my house on that last day, I underwent a huge change. I discovered myself. I went from the girl who had grown up with nothing but negative thoughts about herself to the girl who realized that she wasn't ugly, wasn't fat, wasn't stupid. Suddenly I knew that I was someone who could be liked for what she read, what she wrote, and what she thought. And I finally knew for sure that there were members of the male species with whom I could have an intelligent conversation with... for three hours, until I almost came home *after* my school-night curfew.

It's funny how people knew there was something going on with us for the sole reason that I loaned you my copy of The Season of Passage. They knew I'd never loaned it to anyone but Amber. They even came up and mentioned that to me, as well as their discovery of our shared love of Jewel, reading, and the internet. They were always so surprised to find out that I didn't know you were asking about me, that I didn't know you knew more about me than anyone knew about you.

So I guess this is a thank you. For helping me find out who I am. For giving me self confidence I never thought I'd have. For being the guy I'd only written about but never met, the one who loved to read and wrote poetry and had good taste in music and nice eyes. For encouraging me in my writing and being the one I could show it to when no one else would do. But no thanks for leaving me right when I was starting to realize what I would be losing.

Always,