I'm writing here what I cannot tell you in person. In a world of reality, a person does himself no service by fanciful dreaming. But realistic optimism takes much temperance and restraint on my part. I am a fanciful dreamer.

Every day I exercise. I work. I study. I create. I do everything in my power to temporarily avert my mind's gaze from your eyes. Your voice. Your thoughts. It helps. It helps marvelously. And just when I had begun to forget you, miraculously, out of character, you appear again. More than likely, just as a friend. Realistically, that's the most probable outcome for our continued relationship, if it is to continue at all.

At my best and strongest moments, that is enough for me. In fact, the thought of never seeing you again is a reality as acceptable as a sunset or a debt needing repayment.

But at my weakest, at my vulnerable moments, I would wish for the opportunity to get to know you all over again. To introduce myself to you. To assume that the old strengths I've unearthed from myself as well as the new strengths I've discovered and developed would somehow change the way that you see me. And as we both recovered from lifelong wounds, we would forge a friendship that would become a bond stronger than most.

Yet I dream. And I know that upon awakening I'll find what I've always found. Life isn't ideal.

This no longer depresses, me, however. I do not need an ideal life in order to love living. In order to work towards building myself a true, honorable man that I can be proud to call "me."

Still, healthy habits are exhausting. Living honorably is exhausting, and seldom rewarded by anything outside inner peace and the love of close friends and family.

I am filled with gratitude for the people that make up that group. And still, a quiet calm voice whispers longingly for you to be among them. So that when I'm wounded, even though I myself possess the strength to heal and rise and continue onward, I might still have you to help tend the wound. To sing to me of your own victories and travels, igniting heart and aiding to focus mind on the battles at hand.

It may be vain to think of such things. But what child of the sun has ever had full control over their dreams?

I now only long to quiet that longing for a new beginning with you by setting these words to type out my emotions onto this digital confidante. That way, I can continue living and surviving, building mind and body and heart and household, unencumbered by those fanciful dreams that would take the place of a more realistic optimism.

"I cannot stay within these walls, gaze upon you every day, and be denied your touch. I've never turned from challenge, yet I am without strength to face this one."

How well those words hit close to heart. And from such an unlikely source. It seems the world is not yet without good writers in different positions. That brings warmth to heart as well.

It pains me to let go of you. But I know its for the best. I will not force anything to bring us together. But I won't hide from it, if it should happen, either. I won't hurry towards us meeting, but I won't run away from it. I will live with the assumption that we'll never meet again. And if we do, that cordial friends is all we'll be able to be, all you'll see me as, and I you. As much as I'd love to shout from my chest that if ever an accidental spark was reignited, I would move heaven and earth within me and in the world to make things work, those are empty words. Words of a dream.

I will not build my life on that hope.

But I will build a life. I will build a man. A man ready for whatever happens to come his way...