I'll be honest with you about something. When I encourage you to keep growing, to keep working on yourself — part of that is selfish. I want more from our relationship than what we have now. I want us to be true friends, and right now, as much as I love you, we aren't there yet.
That might sound strange. But think about it. You can love someone and still not fully meet them. Friendship — real friendship — requires that both people have done enough work on themselves to actually show up for the other. Love can survive immaturity. Friendship can't. Love sometimes even does harm, when it comes from a place that hasn't been examined. Friendship, by its nature, helps.
I love you already. I'm waiting to call you my friend.
So keep going — not just for yourself, but for what we could be to each other. I already feel it sometimes, in glimpses. The sense that we're moving toward the same things, seeing the world through lenses that are starting to overlap. Those moments give me something I can't quite name. A kind of borrowed energy. You make me feel less diminished by time.
I miss you when we're apart — of course I do. But I've learned that the joy of missing someone you love is thin. It flickers. What I want is the real thing: to be in the same room, to talk, to feel the particular quality of a person I've chosen and who has chosen me back. Not the idea of you. You.
Find me. But find yourself first. That's not a condition — it's just the order things have to go in.
Here's a simple test I keep coming back to, for myself as much as for you. Ask yourself whether you want the same things today that you wanted yesterday. Not the small things — the deep ones. Your direction, your values, what you're willing to sacrifice and what you aren't. If the answer keeps changing, it means something is still unsettled. Not bad — just unfinished.
There's a difference between a person who is growing and one who is simply being tossed around. Both are in motion. But one is going somewhere. The waves move, but the water stays where it is. The person who is truly progressing moves — and you can feel the direction.
Consistency isn't rigidity. It's the sign that you've found something solid to stand on.
Yours, and hoping to be more so,